my stance

If you haven't figured it out yet, I am a big fan of the whole "data-com" thing. As the human race has progressed perhaps the most amazing advancements in technology have been in communications. Where just a few hundred years ago trans-continental messaging consisted of hand-written letters on an oceanic barge, we can now communicate with every continent simultaneously at a speed nearing that of light.

Things like "global commerce" now have an entirely new meaning and the transfer of knowledge from people vastly separated by distance is now possible in just a few milliseconds. Sounds pretty cool right? The fact that you are reading this shows that to some extent you also care about this industry.

Here lies the problem: what happens when the free and open exchange of information is stifled by anti-competitive, monopolistic, overly-regulated behavior? In short, everyone suffers but sadly very few even know they are affected because progress is difficult to quantify in the forward direction. The question "where should we be" hardly gets asked.

At this point many of you are probably thinking "great, another conspiracy-theory having idiot that thinks big business is evil". This could not be any further from the truth. I am a capitalist and the last thing I want to do is stifle business. I also believe the re-distribution of wealth to be a down-right dispicable idea, and I believe the big 500 pound gorillas should be allowed to keep their money... So long as they play nice with the rest of the boys and girls.

I love competition, and I believe businesses should compete with eachother and battle for the top because competition drives innovation, and innovation and choice benefit the consumer. What I do not love is a corporation that has "vendor lock-in" at the heart of its business model. Who am I talking about? Well of course offender number one is Microsoft. No company has single-handedly held back the entire computer industry like Microsoft has. How you might ask? By stifling innovation and open communication. Let's face it, people don't exchange documents or slideshows, people exchange "Word documents" and "Powerpoints". If you want to communicate with everyone guess what? You NEED Microsoft Office. Yes boys and girls, just conform it's easy right?

Then comes the next problem... Software developers who write an alternative to M$ waste thousands upon thousands of hours trying to write software that will inter-op with the non-standard microsoft software instead of developing the next big thing and writing next-generation code. Why? Because Microsoft has monopolized a market and has done so by forcing the people in it to conform and buy Microsoft's products.

Did you know that ISO (International Standards Organization) has already defined a standard document format? Do you know what it is? If you guessed "word" as the format please refrain from patting yourself on the back. The correct answer is the Oasis Open Document format (odt). Does Microsoft support odt? Of course not! If Microsoft added odt support to their office suite consumers would have a choice and that would take business away from them. Why run the expensive and buggy Microsoft Office suite when Open Office is free and works just as good if not better? The answer of course is you have to if every body else is sending around those obnoxious docx or ooxml files and you want to communicate with them. Want some more examples?

1. Microsoft lobbies in ISO for OOXML to replace Open Document Format
   
2. Microsoft writes an entirely non-compliant browser (heard of the W3C?)
3. Microsoft bastardized SIP for their Communicator platform
4. Microsoft continually breaks Samba (Windows File Sharing) compatibility
5. Microsoft web applications (OWA, LCS Web, etc...) require Internet Explorer
6. The list could go on for days...

Is Microsoft the only problem here? Of course not, but they are much more harmful than a company like Cisco for reasons like this:

• Cisco uses Skinny (SCCP) instead of SIP (standard) but also supports SIP
• Cisco uses ISL (inter-switch link) for vlan trunking but also supports 802.1q
• Cisco wrote EIGRP (enhanced interior gateway routing protocol) but supports all standards based routing protocols
• Cisco uses HSRP (hot standby router protocol) but also supports the standards based VRRP (Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol)

So the big difference is that Cisco offers their proprietary solutions but also gives their customers the choice to run a standards based network. This is something Microsoft DOES NOT DO because their software is inferior to the competition. Viruses and Spyware and Blue-Screens don't seem to bother anybody because they do not know of an alternative. Well, the last thing I want to tell you is that there are alternatives. In fact, many of the alternatives are far ahead of M$ and also support standards. Here are a few:

• Linux (newbie to Linux? Check out Ubuntu)
• BSD (OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, DragonflyBSD)
• Solaris (Unix)
• HP-UX (HP Unix)
• AIX
• Be-OS
• Minix
• Plan-9

Want to help in the movement to once again allow consumers the freedom of choice? Stop running Microsoft period.

-Ryan McGuire