This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
Subject: RE: [OT] MS Breakup From: Bernhard Rosenkraenzer <bero@redhat.de> Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 15:45:07 +0200 (CEST) On Thu, 8 Jun 2000, Anthony E. Greene wrote: > The only possible problem is the lack of a > ubiquitous, non-proprietary, document format. Take a look at KOffice (http://koffice.kde.org/) and AbiWord (http://www.abisource.com/) - both are using a completely open XMLish file format. We have the formats, we just don't have their acceptance in the outside world. > The Internet was already making it possible to do things that just weren't > practical before. There were less people with computers back then, but > there were free, easy to use, graphical, browsers and mail clients back > then that supported HTTP, HTML, POP3, SMTP, MIME, FTP, and other standards > long before Microsoft decided to include these things in it's OS. People > generally got a full set of tools from their ISP. The Internet was coming > right along, well before Microsoft got involved. True - it's a coincidence that telco monopolies in Europe were starting to end (and connection prices are starting to get affordable) at about the same time M$ started doing their Internet stuff, so M$ isn't responsible for getting the net to Europe either. ===