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Microsoft has a well-known strategy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish Emb

Microsoft has a well-known strategy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish Embrace, Extend and Extinguish. As one of the other commentators pointed out, they followed a similar model in the ODF Vs OOXML fiasco. First: do not join until late in the game. Next: complain loudly about features and options even though they were fully aware of their existence and had many chances to get in the game to influence them. When told that it is too late or that their comments do not make sense, react by introducing incompatible or proprietary stuff that no other vendor could possibly adopt due to its closed source nature. - Result, the so called standard is rendered a little less "standard" because of Microsoft's refusal to play nice. The software development community loses out and Microsoft goes back to its "business as usual". The nature of Microsoft's comments here makes it clear that this is the second step, namely "complain loudly" that they are unhappy about some of the tags. This will go on for a while, until they will just start bundling proprietary stuff with IE 9.0.

thwarted 17y ago
I saw Embrace, Extend, Extinguish play out first hand with the standardization of SPF. Things seem to be going well and seemingly right before consensus, Microsoft shows up and says it won't work because clients, namely Outlook, don't support it, despite that it has nothing to do with MUAs. This distracts people enough so that Microsoft has enough time to come up with SenderID, which co-opts the data format of SPF allowing MS to say they are trying to be compatible when it really subverts the intent of the standard. They also claimed they may or may not have patent interests but won't say exactly what they are, that will have to wait until after everything is standardized and the patents are filed--because since this is such an innovative idea Microsoft is being kind enough to file patents so that the community and standard is protected in the event someone else is waiting with a submarine patent, even though the IETF discourages standards that are patent encumbered. Microsoft gets to say it is trying to work with the community, and through press releases and public policy statements confuses the goals and intent of SPF and SenderID. IETF decides to create two RFCs and gives them Experimental status, thereby almost ensuring that no one will adopt either fully, but to this day we still need to create multiple DNS records and are never sure exactly how email receiving systems will interpret them. (working from years-old memory, I don't mean to present the above as representative of the exact order of events, but I'm sure someone else could be found who could reasonably corroborate it)

thwarted 17y ago

I saw Embrace, Extend, Extinguish play out first hand with the standardization of SPF. Things seem to be going well and seemingly right before consensus, Microsoft shows up and says it won't work because clients, namely Outlook, don't support it, despite that it has nothing to do with MUAs. This distracts people enough so that Microsoft has enough time to come up with SenderID, which co-opts the data format of SPF allowing MS to say they are trying to be compatible when it really subverts the intent of the standard. They also claimed they may or may not have patent interests but won't say exactly what they are, that will have to wait until after everything is standardized and the patents are filed--because since this is such an innovative idea Microsoft is being kind enough to file patents so that the community and standard is protected in the event someone else is waiting with a submarine patent, even though the IETF discourages standards that are patent encumbered. Microsoft gets to say it is trying to work with the community, and through press releases and public policy statements confuses the goals and intent of SPF and SenderID. IETF decides to create two RFCs and gives them Experimental status, thereby almost ensuring that no one will adopt either fully, but to this day we still need to create multiple DNS records and are never sure exactly how email receiving systems will interpret them. (working from years-old memory, I don't mean to present the above as representative of the exact order of events, but I'm sure someone else could be found who could reasonably corroborate it)