Still Can’t Open Word Docs

What’s interesting in the war of words between Bruce Chizen of Adobe and Dan’l Lewin of Microsoft is that Dan’l used to work at Apple and has a perspective from Apple’s old days that Microsoft software was essential to the Mac’s early success.

It’s hard to believe that it’s 2007, and I still get Word documents I can’t open. As I write “Microsoft’s Interoperable Assimilation” in Get Off Microsoft, I’m unable to use my Mac to open a document sent to me by a normal business that tells me they are using Microsoft Word. I have in my arsenal the Mac version of Word, OpenOffice 2.0, NeoOffice, TextEdit, and on the Web, Google Docs — all of which open older Word docs and standard formats. Sure enough, the only program that would open this file is Word running on Windows XP, and only after installing some kind of unspecified converter from the original CD-ROM. Maybe this is just a glitch, or some form of temporary insanity while we all adjust to a world of Microsoft “standards”.

Peeking inside with BBEdit, I see that the document appears to be a variant of XML. This document was saved that way by a normal business that has other things to do than change default settings so that documents can be opened on other systems. And this is how Microsoft gets away with “interoperability” — co-opting proven standards (like XML) and turning them into Microsoft pseudo-standards, which are then set as defaults for the program while offering the real standards as options. Normal businesses don’t realize how these default settings — which keep them locked into Microsoft products — disrupt rather than unify our multiple-platform world.

Linux Thrives in Shadow of Microsoft Protection Racket

Microsoft’s shakedown of the Open Source community turned Novell into a Microsoft partner with SuSE Linux; now it has turned Xandros into a partner as well. Microsoft made them a deal they couldn’t refuse. Like garbage hauling contractors in the Northeast Jersey of The Sopranos, Xandros and Novell have nothing to lose by paying tribute to Microsoft. In fact, the Linux desktop implementations, as well as Linux servers (well we knew that), are thriving in the shadow of Microsoft’s cold war. See my full report, “Microsoft Protection Racket Helps Novell with SuSE Linux” at Get Off Microsoft.