Comments on: Why are only Microsoft’s competitors allowed to innovate?

By: Blogs, references and hyperlinks at Mustafa Arif

Blogs, references and hyperlinks at Mustafa Arif — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 05:56:22 +0000

[...] Recently I’ve been guilty of taking this “hyperlink the reference” approach too literally. You may have noticed that many of my posts have involved a long reference in square brackets. Take, as an example, the post Why are only Microsoft’s competitors allowed to innovate? The use of hyperlinks as references in there is clearly wrong. It is unsightly and detracts from the subject matter. In retrospect the real problem is failing to understand that whilst a hyperlink need not always be a reference, a reference need not always be a hyperlink (at least not to another page). When we have long things to cite, perhaps the best way to reference, without compromising writing style is to make use of good old-fashioned footnotes in web pages [SmackTheMouse.com]. [...]

By: Mustafa Arif

Mustafa Arif — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 01:31:26 +0000

No, I was blaming legislators and competition authorities…

By: Saracen

Saracen — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 11:49:12 +0000

No problem all. But these are the downsides of commercial business. Can’t blame Adobe, or MS; it’s what they’re programmed to do.

By: Mustafa Arif

Mustafa Arif — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 10:41:37 +0000

What on earth is the problem with Microsoft creating their own open document specfication? Microsoft Office documents are already a de facto standard, adopted by the market. An open specification for Office documents, enabling other software publishers to write compatible software, would be no bad thing for consumer choice. If it topples PDF, so be it. PDF is clearly not good enough given that it has failed to supercede MS Office formats for everyday work. Consumers should not have to be forced to download a plugin. If there is consumer demand MS should be able to bundle the software.

By: Saracen

Saracen — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 10:13:07 +0000

Link: http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513-6079320.html

Note where they said they’ve been forced to remove both.

By: Saracen

Saracen — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 10:11:18 +0000

There is conjecture that MS wanted to add the PDF capability into Vista in order to avoid Antitrust suits in bundling its own “XML Paper Specification”, since that would preclude charges of taking advantage of market dominance. Adobe probably felt that this would then lead to MS pushing XPS, and eventually toppling PDF, quite likely, depending on how each was made to function.

Might be an interesting angle, and I wouldn’t put it beyond MS!