Mohammed Akif was representing Microsoft Interoperability with Java at Java One. He has a blog documenting his “Interoperability peace efforts” and the not surprising hostile reaction to his company at the conference.
Here is the bottom line on Interoperability, Mohammed, Steve, Bill or any body else from Microsoft. Until the following gets changed:
1)Java with the latest version of the Sun JVM is distributed with the Microsoft desktop line of OS and servers like it is with most other competitive OS;
2)IE7 meets its 1997 commitments to implement W3C standards for HTML, CSS, DOM completely. The WaSP ACID2 are the first set of compliance benchmarks. Meanwhile, Microsoft is overdue on Web standards such as SVG, XForms, JavaScript 2.0 and E4X to speak nothing on DOM rationalization, XPath2 compliance etc;
3)Visual Studio and all Microsoft development tools should have a “stick to standards” switch that would ensure that all Web and other development standards are adhered to – issuing a warning statement/highlight for any code that breaches standards. Also the switch would actively gray out any menus and commands that would generate non-compliant code. This is not mission impossible as Adobe, Macromedia and others already deliver such capabilities in GoLive, Dreamweaver, etc;
4)Microsoft gives users a choice in Office applications – they can choose to store any Office file in ODF format;
you and your company are pariahs and persona non grata in the development community for the tens of billions of man-hours/year you have heaped onto developers and end-users workloads. So dont talk about the little triumphs like Tango because frankly they are “flak catchers” – small concessions to Interoperability so Microsoft can continue to stonewall on the larger issues of Interoperability noted above.
(c)JBSurveyer 2006