Earlier quoted context omitted.
More "Microsoft called, they want the 90's back".
To be fair, I wouldn't mind having the 90's back either.
Go through puberty again? omfg no.
How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in
51–60 of 130 posts
Re: How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
When the original application is open source, its format is public and anyone who wants to create a converter to another format can either use the original code or inspect it to see how the format works. When the format is proprietary, you get a blob of binary data that you have to reverse engineer through guesswork, made orders of magnitude more difficult if the original service isn't even available anymore.
The problem reminds me of pdf, the format is well known, there are tons of third-party readers, but they all glitch somewhat differently. Also PDF is turing complete. Modern rich content formats are hard . Open formats solves only small part of the problem. I think the universal interchangable format is static HTML.
PDF is a mess because it's an ancient originally-proprietary format based on a proprietary language and the Adobe "standard" didn't actually specify a lot of important things for a long time, leaving other implementations to try to reverse engineer them.
Meanwhile you look at actual standard formats like PNG or UTF-8 or, as you say, HTML, and the implementations generally do a lot better because there is a proper spec.
Re: How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are they? They extended DNS, LDAP and Kerberos to make Active Directory so that now every Microsoft-locked corporation is stuck using Microsoft as their internal DNS. They do the various things they do to get everyone stuck using their email instead of any other standard IMAP/SMTP/webmail provider. Azure is "somehow" one of the three major cloud providers.
Yes, given how many FOSS projects change their licenses thanks to FAANG leeching, and walled garden platforms built on FOSS software.
Lots of projects started off with the BSD license instead of GPLv3/AGPL/etc. and then discovered what the consequences of that are, but those consequences haven't been hard to predict for a while now, since they're the reason those other licenses exist to begin with.
Re: How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, given how many FOSS projects change their licenses thanks to FAANG leeching, and walled garden platforms built on FOSS software.
Lots of projects started off with the BSD license instead of GPLv3/AGPL/etc. and then discovered what the consequences of that are, but those consequences haven't been hard to predict for a while now, since they're the reason those other licenses exist to begin with.
Which is why all big tech companies belong into the same basket, and not be idolatriased only because they happen to contribute to some FOSS project that helps their bottom line, have marketing toys for engineers or whatever.
Re: How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ummm... OpenDocument, which is an ISO standard? https://www.oasis-open.org/tc-opendocument/
Standard doesn't mean good. Win32 is a better API than POSIX. MSOffice used to work much better than LibreOffice. Linux is better than UNIX.
You will be relieved to learn it is also good. I have used it for years without issue - standard format for libreoffice / openoffice. It is a much better thought out document standard than Microsoft's abomination.
Re: How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in
#56This is one of the things the community is pissed with https://github.com/euro-office They are using Microsoft formats instead of the open-source one.
I think now would be an excellent time for an EU directive that all government documents must at all times be stored in an openly standardised format. So no OOXML Transitional.
The British government switched most things available to the public over to ODF (the exception I have noticed is ONS stats in excel) years ago.
I suspect they still use MS formats internally though.
Re: How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in
#57Outside of corporate I think the world will just abandon MS. Their tactics has become so aggressive and their software so broken that it’s getting harder to ignore
Re: How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lots of projects started off with the BSD license instead of GPLv3/AGPL/etc. and then discovered what the consequences of that are, but those consequences haven't been hard to predict for a while now, since they're the reason those other licenses exist to begin with.
Which is why all big tech companies belong into the same basket, and not be idolatriased only because they happen to contribute to some FOSS project that helps their bottom line, have marketing toys for engineers or whatever.
Contributing to FOSS projects because it helps their bottom line is the reason everybody does it. It's a good reason to do it. That's not the problem.
The problem is when you try to establish barriers to the customer ever switching to a competitor. Microsoft isn't the only company that does that but they are obviously a company that always has and still does do that.
Re: How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is why all big tech companies belong into the same basket, and not be idolatriased only because they happen to contribute to some FOSS project that helps their bottom line, have marketing toys for engineers or whatever.
Contributing to FOSS projects because it helps their bottom line is the reason everybody does it. It's a good reason to do it. That's not the problem. The problem is when you try to establish barriers to the customer ever switching to a competitor. Microsoft isn't the only company that does that but they are obviously a company that always has and still does do that.
Every single FAANG does it, but for some strange reason the HQ address changes the point of view on them.
Re: How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in
#60I think people should get over with "file formats" Cloud/browser based office tools were already a thing decade ago. Do we have an open format except .md ? Sadly no. Afterall, format is just a way to serialize features.
So lets have all your data vendor locked in a cloud somewhere so that the corp runnning it can milk you for ever or just decide to delete it all on a whim ? Perfect!