Re: About satandrads and politics

[Donovan Rebbechi <elflord@pegasus.rutgers.edu>]

On Sat, 7 Aug 1999, Bud Beckman wrote:

> >standard, and despite the fact that MS's product won ultimately, they
> were
> >forced to support the competing standard.
> 
> Didn't Sun take MS to court?

Correct. Microsoft were forced to support java because it won the
standards war. They took an alternative approach -- rather than ignore
java, which could have hurt them a great deal, they moved to undermine the
platform independence of java.

> Hmm, don't know, seems MS Office was developed from a word processor,
> added  a sperad sheet, graphics and all the other junk they could throw
> into it. An integrated hodge podge.

MS Office is a collection of several components that can talk to each
other. It is not a monolithic mess as you suggest. The main problem IMO
with Office ( besides vendor lock ) is that it's "security" ( ie none ) is
a joke. 

In fact KDE/GNOME are both working on Office like technology, and Koffice
already is a proof-of-concept. I am not fully aware of CORBA's security
features ( besides the fact that it has "some" security ), but at the very
least, the linux office apps are written for multi user systems.

> >Office selling so well is the fact that it is the only office suite that
> >completely conforms to the (defacto) standard.
> 
> Never having used MS Office, to what standards are you referring?

Defacto standards, in the sense of the industry "standardising" on
products. As opposed to credible, documented standards, developed by open
groups ( no pun intended ). The industry "likes" open standards, but if
there's no open standard, they will often standardise on a single vendor's
product, as a pragmatic ( if somewhat unsatisfactory ) solution.

Cheers,
-- 
Donovan