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To the SeekingAlpha community:
Mar 14 11:46 am
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All Comments by Dennis Byron »Sun, IBM Continue Open Standards Double-Speak [View article]
The second and third comments above are typical ad-hominem blogoblather and given the anonymous user names, clearly not part of the SeekingAlpha community. But it is worthwhile to address the comments by the first and fourth anonymous commenters above from an IT investment research perspective--even though they are also probably not from investors.
Let me take the fourth comment first because it requires a very simple response. Yes, I can open up my 20-year-old Word and Excel files because I still have the applications on my PC. I can even open up my 20-year old AlphaWorks documents and spreadsheets for the same reason. I have also saved them in .txt and .rtf so common good backup practice provides plenty of protection. The blogblatherers that surf the web looking for blogposts to attack with any mention of Microsoft, even if as in this case I am criticzing Microsoft, do not understand that users have overtaken them. Maybe that accounts for their frustration.
Psychoanalyzing blogblathering aside, the whole Sun/IBM/front-group argument about legal requirements and Microsoft Office going away is the biggest canard in the current Sun/IBM/front-group campaign against OOXML. Ain't going to happen and even if it did, the applications don't go away.
The first comment above is a little more complex. You can exchange information without "buying Microsoft" in the same backup manner as described in my response to the fourth comment. Microsoft also gives away a PowerPoint reader the way Adobe gives away its .pdf reader. I don't know about a "Word reader" (never needed one) but if they don't, the solution to interoperability without "buying from Microsoft" is simply to save to .pdf (or .html or...)
And yes, IBM/Sun and Microsoft are equivalent when it comes to standards efforts. Unlike blogoblatherers, I don't care about moral equvalence but from an IT investment research perspective, all three of them are wasting shareholder money.
-- Dennis