Article: Document or else

[Lou Quillio]

Stuart Burnfield wrote:
> Doesn't it give you a sort of guilty pleasure, seeing a company being
> bullied into providing documentation!

Yeah, but it's guilt-free pleasure.  Too bad the EU has to drive
this comeuppance alone.  The bottom line, to me, is that MS has
relied unfairly on file-format lock-in and has refused to compete on
product quality, because ... because it didn't have to.  Where U.S.
authorities have not, the E.U. particularly understands that open
file formats are the key to a healthy, low-litigation desktop
market.  That's insightful leadership.

Doesn't happen in the U.S., where we seem to think that cheating at
the margins -- in the spaces average observers haven't thought
through -- is fair game and an admirable thing to pull off.  We
Americans created Microsoft, in our own image and likeness.  The
Euros know better than us when they're being enslaved.  How'd that
happen?

Happened cuz Americans don't worship free markets, as we claim, we
worship rigged markets.  We dream that one day we'll get to do the
rigging.

For the same reason, we're willing to destroy hard-won consumer
protections in the name of "deregulation".  Not because it would
likely benefit us during our rather short lifetimes, but because on
a long shot and if everything goes just right, there's a chance that
*I* could exploit the system and cash-in.

I'm with the Euros.  Next thing:  bust the FrameMaker file format
open.  Then it's complete, in our world.

LQ