[OS:N:] Developing for developers and users

[Marc Maxwell]

I am not obsessed with blaming Microsoft and I don't care about office,
since I don't use it except in the workplace sometimes.  I also don't
think that all open source software is fantastic -- only that which has
truly been QA'd by some seriously high level developers.  

But what is even worse than making cruddy, proprietary software, is for
a company to kill off innovation with cruddy, proprietary software
patents.  

When a company like M$ wants to 'patent' something like 'click and
drag' , or 'right click and look at properties' of software objects,
then it prevents any TRUE innovators from coming along later and
releasing quality software.  

M$ isn't in the business of making great software.   They are in the
business of selling closed-lid software to dumb people and
organizations, then charging them more to fix it, secure it, upgrade it,
license it, etc.  I went through the entire Microsoft Certified Systems
Monkey certification.  Now I am pursuing Linux certs, where you really
have to know something to pass.  I never *did* know the differrence
between 'Server' and 'Server in the Enterprise'.  I think that's because
there really isn't any differrence, not noticeably anyway....they
probably just put differrent names on products and try to sell them as
differrent.  

BTW I heard what M$ did when it wanted to take over Citrix.  The guys
that wrote Citrix were excited that M$ had expressed an interest.  They
said, 'oh, you want to buy our software?'    M$ said, 'Buy'?  Shortly
thereafter, M$ released Terminal Server as part of the win2k package --
an exact duplicate of the Citrix product.  All of the terms that you
agree to when you click 'I agree' in the EULA, are  *precisely* the
practices that M$ engages in -- reverse engineering, etc.  Whenever a
company creates a good app, like pc anywhere or something like that --
soon thereafter, MS has incorporated it into its next OS.  Thank God for
open source software.  





Marc Maxwell
Programmer-Analyst
Certified Technical Trainer
Scheduling Team
SDES, Registrar's Office
University of Central Florida
Orlando, Florida 
407.823.0588

>>> nbs at sonic.net 8/25/2004 1:18:46 PM >>>
On Wed, Aug 25, 2004 at 10:01:06AM -0400, Matt Frye wrote:
> Point is, somewhere along the line, someone had to look at MS Office
> and decided to build something that was, for all intents and
purposes,
> like it (but not it by invention).  It's wonderful that OO (or it's
> predecessors) are feature rich and can export in all kinds of
formats,
> but that doesn't make it fundamentally different from MS Office.

This thread is starting to imply that Microsoft actually invented the
interface for MS Office.  I don't know any precise history of MS
Office,
but the way Microsoft works is to take other people's work (either by
buyout,
or simply by cloning...  I mean, shit... anyone remember Macintosh? 
...
and yeah, even that was just a ripoff of the earlier PARC stuff)

In some sense, it's not /trivial/ to make a /better/ mousetrap.  That's
why
so many mousetraps look the same.  Compare word processors from
various
vendors and across various platforms for the past 20 years, and you
can
easily argue they were all ripping each other's designs off, as well.
:^)

-bill!
bill at newbreedsoftware.com          "Maybe it's just a parlor trick,
like Fry"
http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/             "Like Fry! Like Fry!"
New Breed Software


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