I want to discuss something quite different: whether the open source community should be boycotting Microsoft, and if that is even possible. In part, the trigger for this is Microsoft's recent behaviour during the approval process for its OOXML document format. As I've written elsewhere on Linux Journal, it seems to me that on this occasion Microsoft has crossed the line of acceptability: not only has it stooped to just about every trick in the book to win “approval”, it has broken the entire ISO organisation in the process, with huge, long-term collateral damage.

Observing the company over the last year of so, it's evident that its policy towards open source has shifted. Where before it fell back on crude invective – it's “communism”, it's a “cancer”, it's “un-American”, etc. - today it has completely re-thought its approach, and taken a far more subtle – and hence dangerous - tack.

Now, it seems, Microsoft just can't snuggle up close enough to those cute little open sourcies.

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