With the release of Vista, Microsoft is up to it's old tricks. At least, that's what IBM, Sun, Oracle, Red Hat and others want you to think by filing a complaint with the European Union. Specifically, they are claiming Microsoft is attempting "to extend its market dominance to the Internet" by releasing XAML in .Net 3.0 and OOXML with Office 2007. The remedy proposed is to delay the release of Vista.
First, the fact IBM, Sun and friends choose Europe is the EU has been harsher on Microsoft than other countries, and the hope is they will be able to slip by with little challenge. If this happens, then the EU is blind. First, neither XAML or OOXML are part of Vista. XAML has nothing to do with the web and HTML extensions aside from the fact you can install a plugin to run XAML applications in your browser - the same as you can with Java. XAML is aimed for UI designers, and provides a clean separation of logic and interface in developing windows applications. The fact a windows application framework is designed to work on windows isn't an abusive use of a monopoly.
OOXML has a bit more history behind it. It boils down to a VHS vs. BetaMax debate - both are file formats to save documents in XML. The claim is OOXML documents only open easily on Microsoft systems; I'm guessing part of that is because Sun hasn't spent much effort supporting OOXML in OpenOffice. I really see this as a waste of effort, both formats boil down to plain text so it should be easy to write import methods. Also, if all office applications used the same format, how much freedom would one application have to add new features and methods given that the way a document is save cannot be changed? I think the biggest fear in the group comes from Abode, who worry that the PDF format may finally be replaced - and I'm all for it. Beyond a "print to PDF" methods there isn't much support for PDF outside of Adobe, and I'm tired of the resource hog Reader crashing my browser because I had to print a coupon.
The big picture here is while IBM, Sun and friends want you to think it's the same Microsoft of the 90's - it's not. Microsoft has released and supports a large array of free software. There is a full line of Visual Studio products for developers, applications like Accounting Express, Media Encoder, Live Writer (using that now), and open source efforts such as CodePlex. You can even get software (free) to develop XBox 360 games. Microsoft employees are active in the community, fully blessed with blogs and forums supported by Microsoft.
How did this happen? Same way Google keeps itself at the top - listening to it's employees. Microsoft employees became passionate about changing things, and to capture that spirit gapingvoid drew the blue monster. They have been focusing on good software while others are focusing on licensing and litigation. All of these issues are only relevant if you think Microsoft still represents a monopoly, and I'm not sure they do. To say they are a monopoly would be to say they aren't under market forces when it comes to pricing, and it's pretty clear they are. The desktop market is only a fraction of the operation system market, the real money is in corporations which are often mixed environments of Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, IBM, Red Hat, etc. Lawsuits and complaints now are acts by companies wasn't to have the government protect their business models at the expense of competition, and ultimately us the consumers.
