Microsoft pledge excluding primary competitors

Microsoft pledge excluding primary competitors.

Yesterday's media briefing by Microsoft on its pledge to release interoperability information for flagship products contained little actual news. Over the years Microsoft has made multiple similar pledges and they at times proved to be detrimental rather than beneficial for interoperability. Examining the terms of the Microsoft's latest action shows no major change of policy.

The announcement confirmed that Microsoft was planning to use its software patent portfolio against interoperating products by requiring a patent license for all commercial activity. This is consistent with its previous attempts at allowing competition only where it provides no actual challenge to its monopolies.

Microsoft's patent licences are incompatible with Free Software, the primary competitor to Microsoft in many markets. Almost all major competitors have made significant investments in Free Software and built substantial parts of their business on the principles of freedom of competition and innovation.

Free Software's freedoms to use, study, share and improve software without additional restrictions are key to the success and utility of Free Software in both commercial and non-commercial ICT infrastructure. They are also the basis for many of today's working examples of interoperability and competition.

Microsoft's announcement contains little more than a statement that they will support interoperability only under terms that disallow fair competition. Their press statements may indicate otherwise, but terms of release highlight this explicitly. There has never been a shortage of promises by Microsoft, but results are what must be considered rather than words.

Regrettably, the lack of substance in the pledge and the timing suggest that Microsoft is primarily hoping for positive media coverage and not an examination of the substance of their limited interoperability release.

It can be no coincidence that delegates are meeting in Geneva for the Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) during this period to discuss serious issues in the proposed MS-OOXML format, through which Microsoft aims to reaffirm their control over standards in the global marketplace.

If Microsoft truly means to facilitate interoperability and fair access they should spare delegates the BRM, retract MS-OOXML from ISO and converge this work into the global effort for the Open Document Format, the existing Open Standard at ISO for office documents.

They should also release full interoperability information for all their products without restrictions of any kind.

About the Free Software Foundation Europe:

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a non-profit non-governmental organisation active in many European countries and involved in many global activities. Access to software determines participation in a digital society. To secure equal participation in the information age, as well as freedom of competition, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) pursues and is dedicated to the furthering of Free Software, defined by the freedoms to use, study, modify and copy. Founded in 2001, creating awareness for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are central issues of the FSFE.
Further information: http://fsfeurope.org

rakeshkumar
www.close2job.com

FSF to Host Summit on Freedom for Web Services

The Free Software Foundation will host a mini-summit on Freedom for Web Services to discuss how the free software community can ensure that software, and its users, stay free in this new technological environment.

On March 16, 2008, FSF board members Mako Hill and Henri Poole will gather a small group of free software activists, thinkers, and scholars to identify the important questions that web services raise for free software and to start probing answers.

The last decade has witnessed a rise in the role of computing as a service, a massive increase in the use of web applications, the migration of personal computing tasks to data-centers, and the creation of new classes of service-based applications. These shifts have raised a host of important questions for the advocates of free software. For example, by separating use and distribution of software, these models have reduced the relevance of GNU GPL-style copyleft which treat modified web applications as if they were private software. Much more importantly, the movement of software off of personal computers has reconfigured power relationships between users and their software and complicated questions of ownership and control in ways that free software advocates do not yet know how to address.

What does freedom mean for the users and developers of web services? What is at risk? What should the free software community, and the Free Software Foundation, do to ensure that software, and its users, stay free in this new technological environment? These questions and more will be discussed at the summit.

The FSF is committed to protecting computer users' freedom, and always has been. Last year saw the release of the GNU AGPL, a license that requires service providers to provide the source for applications that users interact with over a network. While this is a helpful option for developers concerned about this use case, it doesn't completely guarantee users' freedom, and so the FSF plans to begin talking very directly about how web services affect us all. This summit will help us establish goals for a campaign to address the issue more comprehensively, and begin taking action.


ref:fsdaily

rakeshkumar
www.close2job.com

New Domain Name

Hi Friends

Now Close2job.co.cc has successfully released with WWW.CLOSE2JOB.COM domain name...........

please give your feedback to improve this site ..........

Shell programing

hi friends ... here i want all of you to post a some sort of shell program and share the knowledge ..........

wish you all the best


rakeshkumar
www.csestuff.co.cc