Blog: Pete Loshin

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Microsoft Wants More Open Standards?

Now that Microsoft has, apparently, lost the battle with Massachusetts over support for Open Document Format (see my previous comments, Open Document Follies), the real battle is just beginning.

As Macworld reported this week, Microsoft: One open document standard good, two better. In other words, you can have any open standard you want, as long as one of those standards was designed entirely in house by Microsoft to enhance shareholder value.

Microsoft could have participated in the open standards process from the start as an equal contributor through OASIS, and then accepted the results. But now that software buyers like the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are standing up against proprietary formats, Microsoft wants to maintain its grip on the industry by opening up its own formerly proprietary specifications rather than accept a truly open standard.

For the playbook, turn back the clock ten years or so, as the Internet and its underlying TCP/IP protocol suite began taking the world by storm. Microsoft had a vested interest in locking their customers into using their proprietary Windows networking protocols, and converting Novell Netware customers to Windows networking. Once it became obvious that an open and interoperable standard like TCP/IP gives huge advantages to enterprises looking to build large heterogenous networks, Microsoft appeared to submit and started shipping their own TCP/IP stack.

But Microsoft continues to this day to build in "enhancements" and "extensions" to their network software that work only with Microsoft proprietary products. Why would customers prefer an "open" standard that was designed from the ground up to lock customers into a proprietary solution?

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