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April 5, 2004
Can I make a difference against Microsoft?
(Continued from Saturday's post)
During the last several weeks, my perspective on the Microsoft vs non-Microsoft issue has changed. I'm now thinking seriously about how I could reduce or eliminate my dependency on Microsoft. In particular, how I can work around the mandates of my work-place to use proprietary Microsoft file formats and proprietary Microsoft versions of open standards (I don't get at all why someone writes in cross-platform Java using the proprietary extensions of the Microsoft JVM that's only available on Windows with Internet Explorer).
In early March Eric Raymond released the Halloween X document that showed how Microsoft was secretly funding SCO (contrary to their public statements) to discredit Open Source. In case this evidence wasn't concrete, the person who wrote the email in the document validated it a few weeks later. Mike Anderer talked about how the SCO lawsuit against FOSS (GPL, IBM, Red Hat, AutoZone, etc, etc, etc) was the beginning of what Microsoft hopes will be a long line of lawsuits backed by standards-derived patents to discredit FOSS, or at least limit its spread.
It's one thing when a company succeeds through good, solid business practices, well-marketed products, "good" products (whatever the market thinks that is), fair competition, etc. Their success, at least in theory, contributes to the success of their customers and the economy.
But a company that tries to halt progress, be the spoilsport loser, by scaring people away from potentially superior products, by dampening the success of those products by taking advantage of the legal systems, and by locking customers in and preventing them from making their own choices, that's a company I just don't want to have anything to do with.
It's not like Microsoft will go out of business, but it's becoming more of a matter of principle to me that I don't support a company that does what Microsoft is doing. Maybe in some small way it might make FOSS more successful while it makes Microsoft either change their approach to FOSS or go away, but it'll certainly make me feel better about what I'm doing.
Groklaw writes today about a similar dilemma that Sun is going through.
Posted by pete at April 5, 2004 2:30 PM