unoriginalname38 – the blog of Dave Cole

I hate you, Microsoft

Microsoft
Microsoft Campus
Thames Valley Park
Reading Berkshire RG6 1WG

Dear Microsoft,

I like blogging. I've been writing a post recently. It's about a film called Holy Mountain and I've been writing it over a few days because it's a bit complicated. The film, that is, not the post. Now, I know this isn't very environmentally friendly, but I left my computer on overnight with the document open. I woke up this morning to finish the post to find that you had decided that my computer needed an update. I probably said yes to this at some point. However, I didn't say that you could restart my computer and I didn't say you could ditch my document.

I think you've gone beyond 'embrace, extend and extinguish' because people are becoming wise to the fact that open source software is pretty good, too. Lots of people already use LAMP set-ups for higher-end stuff, but people without lots of technical skills are increasingly using Mozilla and OpenOffice. I think you're using the guise of security to come up with technologies that lock people in to your products. I think you're adding a flashy GUI but reducing what people can do with their data. I think you've realised the only way you can defend your position, now that the EU is acting on some of your anticompetitive practices, is to make the Total Cost of Ownership higher for open source than for your products. I think one of the ways you're doing that is by making it harder to move data from Microsoft products to alternatives, locking people in to your kit.

Anyway, I'm moving to Linux. I'm certainly not upgrading to Windows Vista - I'm ditching Windows XP for Ubuntu.

Regards,

Dave.

Labels: Open source

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