First, I appreciate the thoughtful discussion. Good points, and it's nice to have avoided Godwin's law in a thread this deep.
> Skype
I fundamentally agree with you. Skype does support way more platforms than just about any service I can think of, especially when you consider Skype for Web beta (http://blogs.skype.com/2014/11/14/please-welcome-skype-for-w...). But I agree that nobody can support every platform.
> Chrome
Kind of true, but not all platforms can or will support arbitrary browsers. Worse, as a user I should never have to run multiple browsers just to use a web app. Extra chagrin here because holy cow this is the web we're talking about, and Google's established a pretty clear pattern over the past year of Chrome-only dev that should be pretty worrying to anyone that cares about web standards.
>shadenfreude
In my case, I decided that I was irritated enough at Google's actions that I'd rather not have Google apps on my phone apps than support their ecosystem. Plus, I genuinely prefer Windows Phone as a platform.
>OOXML
That was 2006, the same year jQuery was first released. Cars and Da Vinci Code were big movies that year. That was before Windows Vista shipped. It was a long time ago. If that's your reference on Microsoft's standards support, it's not the full picture.
>Blame all of them or none of them
I'll blame them all then, but I definitely feel like Microsoft's by far the least bad in this area. I'm disappointed, when I first got excited about the Android platform, I had high hopes that it would be something else. I ran early releases in VM's before phones were available. I was excited about an open source phone platform, and Google's general trend (at that time) of doing cool stuff on open source, open services, open API's. Things turned out differently.
> That was 2006...If that's your reference on Microsoft's standards support, it's not the full picture.
The new standard for high capacity SD Cards - SDXC - specifies a filesystem in the standard. That filesystem is exFAT, a proprietary, patent-encumbered filesystem from Microsoft.
Microsoft like to make out that they're an all new and open company, but they were a nasty company in the past, and they're a nasty company now.
I'm not clear on how this relates. Microsoft created and patented a filesystem that solved some problems for flash memory. The SD association decided to adopt it for high capacity SD cards. I haven't read anything alleging that Microsoft did something sinister to trick them into doing that - is there something I'm not aware of there?
I get that this is inconvenient for users on other platforms that don't or can't license it easily, the same way GIF and MP3 and similar file formats have been in the past. I don't know why the SDA picked a proprietary filesystem.
Regardless, that was something the SDA did, and they did it in 2009. How does it relate to talking about how Microsoft currently produces apps and publishes APIs for other platforms?
Oh please! You can't honestly believe that Microsoft didn't exert any pressure to get exFAT specified as the filesystem? There was no reason to specify a filesystem in the standard at all. SATA drives don't have a 'specified filesystem' now do they?
But even assuming that Microsoft had nothing to do with exFAT being adopted as the SDXC filesystem (yeah, right) it still relates as MS could have released the exFAT specification and they could have released the filesystem from licensing.
That would have been sign of them being a more open company, allowing integration with other OSs, but instead it just looks like since they failed to kill off OSS, they're now trying to own it. Same old Microsoft.
Once again, that standard is nearly 5 years old. Microsoft has definitely continued changing their approach to OSS software. I think my favorite move posed by Microsoft that supports this is their open-sourcing of .net and working with the Mono developers to bring a better experience to all platforms.
The effects of that standard are only just hitting us now. Have they dropped the requirements for a license for exFAT yet?
As for Open Sourcing .Net, what good has come of it as of today? It looks like a move to push their own environment more than anything else. But I'll tell you what: if in 2020 the decisions Microsoft are making today prove to be for the good, then I might start think better of them. At the moment, though, they've got a lot of past to make up for.
> Skype
I fundamentally agree with you. Skype does support way more platforms than just about any service I can think of, especially when you consider Skype for Web beta (http://blogs.skype.com/2014/11/14/please-welcome-skype-for-w...). But I agree that nobody can support every platform.
> Chrome
Kind of true, but not all platforms can or will support arbitrary browsers. Worse, as a user I should never have to run multiple browsers just to use a web app. Extra chagrin here because holy cow this is the web we're talking about, and Google's established a pretty clear pattern over the past year of Chrome-only dev that should be pretty worrying to anyone that cares about web standards.
>shadenfreude
In my case, I decided that I was irritated enough at Google's actions that I'd rather not have Google apps on my phone apps than support their ecosystem. Plus, I genuinely prefer Windows Phone as a platform.
>OOXML
That was 2006, the same year jQuery was first released. Cars and Da Vinci Code were big movies that year. That was before Windows Vista shipped. It was a long time ago. If that's your reference on Microsoft's standards support, it's not the full picture.
>Blame all of them or none of them
I'll blame them all then, but I definitely feel like Microsoft's by far the least bad in this area. I'm disappointed, when I first got excited about the Android platform, I had high hopes that it would be something else. I ran early releases in VM's before phones were available. I was excited about an open source phone platform, and Google's general trend (at that time) of doing cool stuff on open source, open services, open API's. Things turned out differently.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/10/googles-iron-grip-on-...