Microsoft Leaves UN Standards Group
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pk2000 writes &quot;Microsoft withdrew from a United Nations software standards group for commerce.&quot; &#39;Unfortunately, for now, we have made the decision to stop participating in UN/Cefact for business reasons and this serves as notification of our immediate
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Countries like Brazil are shunning Microsoft's proprietary software in favor of open source Linux.
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I'm back, with a very interesting topic too!  Joel Spolsky, ex-Microsoft Manager and software engineering guru has a new essay, How Microsoft Lost the API War that is creating quite a big storm in the blogging communitiy.  Joel posits that the priests in the holy Temple of Microsoft have lost their way, because it has split into two factions, and the wrong faction is winning. One faction worships on the alter of backward compatibility, while the other is led by fervent priests who are proselytizing to raise up the new gods of .NET and Longhorn. Joel suggests that the new gods will cause the destruction of the holy Temple because Microsoft's great victories were built on the altar of keeping customers happy with backward compatibility. Furthermore the old gods of the Windows API continue to grow more grotesque and cruel with the passing of time, driving former worshipers into the arms of the friendlier gods of World Wide Web.  This story sounds extremely plausible. I must admit that i fit the profile of the developer who used to develop on the Window's API, is familiar with COM and Win32 who now develops mostly using PHP and Python. However I continue to develop and maintain Windows apps that keep our customers happy, and we still plan to develop new Windows apps. Some points:  Temple of the Blind? Firstly, Microsoft is still a compelling place to work for to people who feel that they can make a difference. The Temple continues to attract talented people with a Unix background. For example we have the recent hiring of Ward Cunningham, author of the Wiki.  Microsoft is still able to keep talented people like Raymond Chen, and others like him who continue to look after the Windows API, and Longhorn apparently will still give high priority to backward compatibility. Open sourcerers like Miguel Icaza are sufficiently attracted to the .NET vision to stake their careers on Mono. Longhorn and .NET are compelling technologies, so even if Win32 is not so cute anymore, M'soft is providing something that remains very attractive.  What i do see M'soft doing wrong is that they aren't disseminating the .NET runtime fast enough. It remains an optional install in XP Service Pack 2 for example. Also their IE dev team appears to be hog-tied due to political reasons; nevertheless IE remains good enough, particularly when I can embed IE as an activeX control, something I cannot do with Mozilla (AFAIK) - Update: I'm wrong.  Temple of the Spider?  Secondly, people don't merely use a web browser. They run the web browser in the OS.  So let me ask you, if you are using DreamWeaver or HomeSite or Photoshop or vi or emacs or Gimp, how many of you are willing to give it up for a java applet (or whatever your favorite technology is) running in your web-browser? Precisely.  Temple of the Abandoned?  Third, Joel makes the claim that developers are not developing to the Windows API. Well he could be right. But I bet a lot of them are still calling Win32.  If you are using a framework or IDE like Delphi or wxWindows (or .NET or VB) then you certainly are insulated from the Windows API, but that doesn't mean that you're not calling the Windows API all the time. I don't see Borland dropping their Windows version of Delphi at any point in time.   In fact, the fact that many developers are using some form of framework is a compelling argument for Microsoft to enhance the .NET framework to attract developers who are using other frameworks.  Today, not that many students learn x86 assembler, but that doesn't mean that Intel lost the CPU wars. Just because fewer people are learning Win32 doesn't mean Microsoft has lost the API wars, if the frameworks run predominantly on Win32.  Temple of the Lost  Joel even warns you in the beginning that "because I'm talking about big trends, I need to exaggerate and generalize". But you still get sucked in because Joel Spolsky is a first-class writer, in the same order as Philip Greenspun or Eric Raymond. That makes him so persuasive and plausible. But this is not Indiana Jones and doomed temples, but Steve Jobs and reality distortion fields.  Other opinions:  Harry Fuecks (PHP is ASP's upgrade path),  Dennis Hamilton (M'soft is just covering all bases), Robert McLaws (Joel is wrong in 7 points), Oliver Travers (the web is not good enough), One Run-time to Rule them all....
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The Internet Engineering Task Force has disbanded its working group tackling spam, saying it was deadlocked, in part, over troubles related to Microsoft Corp.
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Microsoft has pulled out of an international standards body because of concerns over control of intellectual property contributed to the group.
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Bruce Jaffe, who spearheaded Microsoft's acquisitions activity, will leave the company in February.
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Microsoft Corp ended three years of  resistance on Monday, finally agreeing to comply with a  landmark 2004 antitrust decision by the European Commission.
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In a move that could signify more trouble for Microsoft's seemingly confused Windows Live group that has seen a number of products revert back to MSN branding, Corporate Vice President Blake Irving is resigning his post, according to Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley.
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Like many, I was pretty shocked by the recent Microsoft-EU deal to settle the long-running investigation into interoperability issues.  This was not so much because of the way Microsoft has used every kind of delaying tactic it could before eventually agreeing (for the nth time) to try harder in the future.  My real dismay was provoked by the gap between appearance and reality â a chasm that I think bodes ill for the future of open source. read more
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Experts say countries from Brazil to Russia to China are shunning Bill Gates' proprietary Windows operating system in favor of open source systems such as Linux, mounting a major challenge to Microsoft's global dominance.
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As expected following news Monday that Microsoft would finally comply with the European Union's requirement that it make parts of its Windows source code available for distribution to developers, the Redmond company has officially dropped its appeal of the original 2004 antitrust ruling, as well as an appeal of the fine imposed in July 2006.
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MicrosoftÂ Chief Financial Officer (CFO) John Connors is leaving the software maker and will become a partner at Seattle area venture capital firm Ignition Partners LLC., Microsoft and Ignition Partners announced separately on Tuesday.ADVERTISEMENTWhite paper: Solutions to Address IT Control RequirementsLearn how BMC Software Solutions address requirements such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 in this 20 page whitepaper!
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Software maker plans to move leaders in its Windows, Windows Live, and Windows Mobile units. Executives leaving the company include two prominent outside hires.
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Microsoft Corp. will drop a much-touted new technology for organising and storing data when it releases the next version of its Windows operating system as expected in 2006.
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BRUSSELS - Microsoft Corp. dropped a nearly decadelong legal battle with European regulators yesterday, agreeing to key parts of an antitrust ruling that has already led to hundreds of millions in fines.
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BRUSSELS Nokia said Tuesday it had quit the Computer and Communications Industry Association, or CCIA, a trade group that had been fighting Microsoft for almost a decade, after the group announced that it was ending its war with its former foe.
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Bang another day Microsoft's product groups are quietly distancing themselves from next February's big-bang major launch event, unveiled by COO Kevin Turner last week.â¦