Re: [xml-dev] "Open XML" et al... Blech... Re: [xml-dev] Microsoft buys the Swedish vote on OOXML?

• From: "Bill Kearney" <wkearney@...>
• To: <xml-dev@...>
• Date: Fri, 7 Sep 2007 11:08:28 -0400

> Office and Windows are good products and are highly successful because
they
> meet user needs, but they are also outrageously profitable. The high
profits
> are derived essentially because (a) there's a natural tendency in the user
> community to converge on a single product, thus creating an effective
> monopoly, and (b) the beneficiary of such a monopoly also benefits from
the
> existence of a copyright law that was designed to reward individual
> impoverished writers but now allows mega-corporations to exploit the very
> individuals it was designed to protect.

I completely disagree with the 'impoverished writer' argument.  I likewise
disagree with the 'outrageous' description.  To say nothing of the
'exploitation' inference.  It's a product, the market has been willing to
purchase it.  Another product, unable to compete in commercial market,
copies it's feature set.  Dressing it up in rhetoric doesn't change that.