Information on the life insurance industry…

As for McAfee, well, that’s what you get for violating legal terms. Either comply with the GPL and release the source code or rewrite the code (as was stated in the podcast).

Another enjoyable podcast!

Actually, I was waiting for more disagreement to what at the end of my post was most likely a flawed argument. None coming, so I shall argue with myself. :-)

The signs are not really pointing the way I had said. Remember when M$ decided to build their own internet. It was called MSN. Reminds me of the Dilbert comic where the PHB decided ‘I fixed the internet’ one day. M$ was wanting to say ‘I replaced the internet’. When you look back at it, it is equally as absurd, and shows the incredible arrogance of any one company, no matter how powerful, that they thought they could take over the world’s communications channel. They have probably rewritten history by now to attempt to state that MSN was only ever going to be apps and services leveraging the internet, not a complete alternative to it. Unfortunately for them it is a free global world, where million of people still have the evidence to the contrary.

Anyway, back to the issue. Their days of knocking off one company at a time and thereby gaining significantly are now over. I open-source land, where are far too many players, and many many are small and if fact individuals. The strength of open-source is in the diffusion of power.

Subverting the open data standard by attempting to effectively replace OpenDoc with OOXML might still be a bit of an issue though. However the same quality of open-source, that shear strength and resilience of a planet full of individuals, will undoubtedly have to ability to counter this issue too. It really does not matter what the issue might be, a planet-full of free people will always prevail one way or the other.

ps. re your comment regarding why would that new M$ website focus on Redhat and not Linux in general? Here is another reason: its the old Microsoft strategy: divide and conquer. How do you think they got to where they are? One hit at a time. One company at a time. Year in, year out. Its worked brilliantly well over decades. Never change a winning strategy. They will never change. Never. The only answer for a while was to break them up. However the US court system proved to be too corrupt, weak or both to do that. Now that chance is lost. Next step for M$: eliminate the open world. Sorry to say, but the signs are all pointing to them winning. How? One step at a time. One company at a time. One standard at a time.