When we created ODF 20+ years ago, Microsoft first laughed at the committee at OASIS, then made OOXML to render it moot, then rigged ISO to make OOXML a standard, then implemented ODF and now participates in the ODF committee and helps fund its work through COSM.
#Bluesky is Twitter's OOXML to #ActivityPub and it's at the "rigging ISO" stage.
ODF vs OOXML is not the only example.
In 1998, following the submission of VML and PGML (both vector graphics formats using XML) to W3C, a new standards working group was created, SVG, to take the best of both for the Web. Microsoft decided not to join largely because SVG used so much PGML & promoted VML in its products, implementing it in Internet Explorer and Office so SVG would suffocate and die.
24 years later, Microsoft has deprecated VML and fully implemented SVG.
@webmink patience and consistency are the most important, yet underrated superpowers in times of clickbait and quarterly driven companies ;)
@webmink Yeah, but M$ was the pass master at this stuff for DECADES. I'll never forget when they bought SCO Unix for the patents thinking they could sue Linux out of existence.
@bradysflungtablet That's not quite what happened. Microsoft never bought them, just $12M of Unix licenses.
@bradysflungtablet @webmink Oh man! Remember Darl McBride?
@atomicpoet @webmink 😂🤣😂 Oh yeah. Thought he was gonna patent troll IBM outta their shoes.
@bradysflungtablet @atomicpoet I'm still not 100% sure it's over. The zombie keeps twitching.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/30/sco_tsg_vs_ibm_settlement/
@webmink Bluesky may have some interesting elements in it that would be worth incorporating with AP into a new standard.
May be too early to tell tho since the code release is barely an experiment.
@polychrome
It's possible, I agree; AP certainly needs some thought on identity mechanisms and also encryption. However, I think we are in the SVG scenario here, with Twitter showing negligible interest in working with the existing community.
But i'm very skeptic about how many for the public useful things can come out of such a development... mhh
@webmink My impression is that Microsoft has gotten better on these things. It is still not a very Open Source friendly platform though.
In any case, I'm glad they support ODF, because it means my own open source project only needs to support ODT documents as an export format, and it works nearly everywhere.
@veronica I'd say they are now no worse than their peers!
I share these not to dig at Microsoft but because I was involved in both cases. There are others, by other vendors.
There are however more examples of embracing an existing standard and succeeding against competitors by driving its adoption than there are of creating a competing standard to retain monopoly control.