Microsoft Standardizes Incompatibility from 1991-2010 Reveals Novell - Groklaw

This is an interesting article, but anyone who's has been a Microsoft insider for as long as I have, this doesn't come as much of a surprise.  Still good to have the "facts".  This is also a call to action to open source and cross platform compatibility.  In other words, never standardize on Microsoft technology.

It's a Microsoft memo from 1991, regarding a suggested attack plan to beat out IBM's OS/2, written by Joseph Krawczak, currently group program manager for Outlook at Microsoft. Here are just three damning sentences from the confidential memo:

Pursue a product development strategy that prevents IBM from claiming Windows compatibility. Prevent Windows applications from running correctly on OS/2....Reposition OS/2 as impractical and incompatible in the minds of customers.

Nice. First quietly create incompatibilities to make sure that Microsoft applications wouldn't run right on OS/2. Then tell the world that they shouldn't buy OS/2 because Microsoft applications wouldn't run right on OS/2.But 1991 is a long time ago, I hear some of you say, and there is a new Microsoft. Oh? Let's see if that's so by highlighting one of the recent Novell filings with the SEC, its work agreement with Microsoft titled "Improving Microsoft-Novell Interoperability through Open XML" and dated March of this very year.
It's regarding work Microsoft was willing to pay Novell to do to make Microsoft's cynically misnamed Open XML seem like it allows interoperability. Novell has been at work since March to make Novell's version of OpenOffice.org interoperate, sort of, but as you will see not completely with Microsoft Office 2010 so that it would at least look like Open XML works and that somebody is implementing it.

Read the full article here