[
Lists Home |
Date Index |
Thread Index
]
On 27 Oct 2003 17:24:21 -0800, ari@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (K. Ari Krupnikov)
wrote:
>If a startup assumes a technology will not see wide use in the MS
>world, they won't develop it. If they think it will get adopted, they
>assume that adoption will lead to MS involvement in the market, and
>the only viable exit strategy will be to try and sell the technology
>to Microsoft. Not every startup's idea of success is a Microsoft
>buyout. Certainly, not every open source project's.
It's not always quite like that. MS can't do *everything*,
and there are many, many niches where its effort falls a
bit short, leaving room for others to fill the gaps. True,
in the long run, you always know that they can roll over you,
but then life is uncertain anyway. ;-)
For example, we're a small software company engaged mainly
in producing on-line Help. MS has HTML Help, but has frozen
development for years. It has WinHelp, frozen even longer
but still in use. In both cases, the tools used to produce
the files used by the systems are pretty unfriendly, and a
lot of companies, both large (like eHelp, just bought by
Macromedia) and small (like us), provide alternative ways
of producing files in the MS-specified formats.
MS, after an abortive try with HTML Help 2 (for VS only),
has announced that the next major Help solution will be a
part of Longhorn. That's a ways off. In the meantime,
we've come up with an Open Source alternative HTML-based
system, cross-browser/platform, using pure JavaScript:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/omnihelp/
(We started off with XHTML, BTW, and had to fall back to
HTML 4.01 because browsers have odd problems with CSS in
XHTML which do not come up with HTML. Unfortunate...)
Will MS eventually run over us? Probably, but we'll worry
about it when it happens. If ever. ;-)
-- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc.
(support@omsys.com) http://www.omsys.com/
|
