[NTLUG:Discuss] EU Experts back antitrust plan against Microsoft

[Wayne Dahl]

On Tue, 2004-03-16 at 18:34, Steve Baker wrote:

> The problem is the failure to distinguish between a library component
> and a full-blown application.

This was one of the things I was thinking about this issue.  The versions of Linux I've seen
tend to take a much more modular approach.  M$ wants to make everything
part of the OS...which adds to bloat...which adds to potential
problems...which adds to security holes, etc.  Not that Linux doesn't
have it's problems too, with security and other things, but it doesn't
seem to have near as many and what it does, seems to get fixed VERY
quickly.


> What's *FAR* more important is whether they are mandated to document and open
> up the '.wmf' and other file formats.  It sure would be nice if mplayer could
> play wmf files.

Is this the ultimate point of all this?  The format is proprietary and
no one has figured out how to duplicate it (play it from other players)
or is the format itself a licensed format, requiring a licensed product
to be able to play it?  If it's just a new format, I would think it
would only be a matter of time before the coding for it was reverse
engineered so other players could play it too.

Wayne