The Microsoft people seemed pretty pleased at how they were open and documented their protocols and formats, but it never occurred to them to use existing standards. When I asked why they invented OOXML instread of using OpenDocument I was told it was “MS Office’s standard”. When I asked if Skype protocols were open they seemed not to know. It probably doesn’t come under the EU court requirements so it doesn’t interest them, but then all their talk of openness is for nothing. When I suggested Skype should talk XMPP so we can use it with Telepathy I was given largely blank faces in return.

Talking to Samba people and OpenChange people about my opinion that their products should be stop gaps until a better open protocol can be used was met with the reasonable argument that in many cases there are no better open protocols. Which is a shame.

I went into the MS testing lab to test some basic file sharing with Samba and reminded myself about the problems in Kubuntu and discovered some problems in Windows. They had to turn off firewalls and twiddle permissions just to be able to share files, which was something I always thought Windows was very good at. Even then it only worked with IP address and not browsing. They had no idea why but the Samba dudes knew straight away that name browsing had been disabled a while ago and a DNS server was needed for that. Interesting the MS interoperability staff aren’t great at their own protocols.