[StJacques]

"I think it is fair to say that Microsoft has never been the bearer of gifts when it comes to interoperability with anything other than Microsoft products. They do what their customers request, but ensure a tie-in to the MS product line, which is fair since they are a business concern. . . ."

I contest this point outright. Supporting Document-Style Web Services before the W3C, which Microsoft has consistently done, will enhance the software development industry more than the operating system suppliers. Microsoft does not have a hand in the thousands of software development shops that will reap the benefits. And those types of applications can be run without ever using a Microsoft product.

You can make a case that Universal Data Access benefits Microsoft since it enhances the commercial viability of their operating systems, whether for servers or PCs, since it makes them a more viable development platform choice for software developers when designing applications. That must be admitted. But the range of choices is not limited to Microsoft alone. What IBM and others want to do is to restrict data consumer options to software that must be run on individual machines, which is what really raises the costs for business. That is why Microsoft is more economically democratic. The machine won't matter if Universal Data Access becomes the standard and businesses won't have to pay the costs of "machine access capability" as IBM and others want them to do.

[usgator]

I don't know why the Linux people are complaining so much. There is still a place in the market for them ... admittedly a very smallplace, but still a place.

[rit]

Supporting Document-Style Web Services before the W3C, which Microsoft has consistently done, will enhance the software development industry more than the operating system suppliers.

What qualifications support such a broad claim like that?

[antiRepublicrat]

The machine won't matter if Universal Data Access becomes the standard and businesses won't have to pay the costs of "machine access capability" as IBM and others want them to do.

Then why is Microsoft pushing a mail protocol that requires a restrictive license (and therefore rejected by the IETF), and refusing to open up their Office XML format so that everyone can read Office documents? Meanwhile, OpenOffice has a completely open XML file format that can be read by anyone or anything.