I haven't posted a blog entry in the longest time -- I don't think I've posted one since I arrived in Korea last May, not even on my other blog, which hasn't been working very well due to the drastic changes in Ruby on Rails 1.1 and the webhost not keeping up with the updates. Bastards.
However, I've decided to post here since there actually is a small community here, said community is decently tech-savvy, and I've got some opinions to post. Mainly about Microsoft.
The Redmond boys are at it again, trying to control everything about their operating system, effectively controlling everything that happens on the majority of personal computers and office workstations. The first problem I have is with Microsoft's competition with OpenDocument Format. Why can't they just accept the fact that ODF is better than their Office Open XML? They've even submitted OOXML to ISO/IEC to have it considered as a standard. According to the article, the OOXML "standard" would require any implementing software to have intimate knowledge of undocumented parts of Microsoft Word, pretty much rely on Windows use date/time standards that are not in accordance with other ISO standards, the list goes on and on. Those faults right there are probably going to get it kicked back. I'm sure there are plenty of other problems with the proposed standard, since it's a full 6,000 pages long. Read the article for more info on it.
My main issue is that they're trying to reinvent the wheel with this. There's already a perfectly usable format available that is widely accepted, is thoroughly documented and for which anybody can suggest changes. However, since we all know Microsoft is so against open source and open standards (oh, they've "supported" open source in the past ... solely for PR purposes) and, really, anything over which they don't have complete control, they've gone and created a parallel, if inferior, "open" document format. The only reason they call it open is because you can see it; you can read the documentation on the format instead of having to hack it out like OOo has done for years (and has done quite well, I must say), but it's not truly open. If accepted, you could propose changes to Microsoft, and they'll take those suggestions all the way to the wastebasket.
Ever since I've adopted open source completely, even hacked on a few projects myself, I haven't looked back. I've realized just how liberating it can be not to be locked into how one single entity thinks a computer should run. In the open-source world, several bodies agree on these standards. You get what is good for the community, not for the pockets of a few executives. Granted, I enjoy making money as much as anybody, but they're doing it the wrong way.