On Sat, Jan 26, 2002 at 03:08:40AM -0600, Rodd Ahrenstorff wrote: > I too care about protocols and file formats (although I may not be as well > informed as you). But would you say that Microsoft has a good history of > following these protocols and formats? Microsoft has a long history of deliberately breaking open protocols and insisting upon the use of protocols and formats which are at least hobbled with proprietary extensions, if not entirely proprietary. It allows them to attain their holy grail of vendor lock-in. > Or does an OS like Linux or Mac do a > better job? Linux is excellent at respecting standards and has also been known on occasion to reverse-engineer proprietary protocols/formats (samba, any number of programs that read Word and Excel formats) for the sake of interoperability. My impression is that Apple/Mac has done a much better job than Microsoft when it comes to standards-compliance, but has been known to create their own wholly-proprietary protocols/ formats from time to time. I expect them to improve further now that they've gone to a unix-based operating system (OSX), but they could decide not to. > Would it be in our interest then to see Linux become a popular > OS? It would be in our (or at least my) interest to see operating systems which are based upon open standards become popular. Linux is definitely the hottest name that fits that description today, but there are also the various BSDs, BeOS, and others that fit the bill. Free/Open Source code is a definite benefit to keeping protocols open (Don't have a decent RFC? Fine. Cut'n'paste the code.), but not strictly necessary in theory. In practice, the profit motive tends to persuade companies to make their formats as obscure as possible, thus ensuring that customers can't change to someone else's product. -- When we reduce our own liberties to stop terrorism, the terrorists have already won. - reverius Innocence is no protection when governments go bad. - Tom Swiss