Rob Weir has an
eye-opening report on how the Microsoft-stuffed committee implementing fixes to OOXML is extending the "standard", which turns out to be not exactly standard, to better conform to Microsoft Office 2007, and without following usual procedures. That is utterly backwards. Normally, vendors work to make their products conform to the standard, and it's very unusual for a "standard" to be made to conform to one vendor's proprietary product. I want to reproduce the article here, because it is an object lesson, a timely one.
Some are saying that MySQL should be placed in a nonprofit organization rather than allow Oracle to purchase it. However, note, please, how Microsoft took over a nonprofit organization with mere numbers. So it's too easy for most nonprofits to be stuffed with an entity's operatives, who then do the will of whoever placed them there. Numbers almost always win in a nonprofit. Taking over Oracle would not be so easy. So as you read what is happening currently with OOXML, extrapolate please to other situations, because Microsoft left us a template on how some can take over an nonprofit organization so that it advances proprietary interests. Could that happen with MySQL? I don't see why not.
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