http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/resultsForCategory.aspx?displaylang=en&categoryid=7 is what you're looking for; it's a little inelegant, but searching by date and using your browser's find feature to find Windows XP makes it quite managable. Hope that helps, may you never have to personally use Windows XP ever again (:

I've never touched the piece of absolute shit that is Windows XP, so I'm guessing it doesn't have the sensible update mechanisms that Vista/7, OS X, and every version of Linux that has any degree of polish has, hence the update website(WTF was MS thinking?). That is only useful to Windows pre-Vista users though, so a dependence on Windows is quite reasonable. Live Workspace initially bitched about incompatibility, but having Opera mask its identity as FF fixed that and allowed the thing to load. I have no clue what "full functionality" is, but loading it in IE brought up the same UI, and says nothing about an Activex control. I do actually have one example that slipped my mind before; to drag and drop files or folders from one's pc to Live Mesh requires an Activex control, although uploads and downloads can be done without drag and drop just fine in Opera, and I do not know of any other way to allow drag and drop file transfers to and from a web app. I'm guessing at some level the Live Workspace has a similar drag and drop thing needing an Activex control for use.

What horrible website requires ActiveX controls? Even MS just uses that for flash/silverlight, perhaps some in house app was developed around it, but that's not MS's fault. Also, Apple already changed their proprietary media sharing protocol so that all other apps and earlier versions of iTunes cannot access an iTunes 7+ share, and only five people a day can connect to a share.

Microsoft allows developers to augment WMP in any way they see fit, see the xiph.org ogg codecs, or a ffwdshow, or doisp(which allows WMP to sync with iPods better than iTunes does, as it allows one to sync files from ipod-> computer). iTunes is the most crippled, proprietary media software on the planet. You cannot sync from a device to the computer. You cannot share your library with more than five people in a day (a new "feature" in 7+ that is quite annoying). You are required to give Apple a credit card if you want to use their recommendation engine or download cover art. Developers may not make iTunes extensions or plugins, no .ogg of .flac playback, or syncing to most 3rd party devices within iTunes.

MS is actually very open with the DirectShow interface; it's quite well documented and gives rise to plugins for WMP so that one can sync non-mass storage or MTP devices (read: Apple's proprietary devices) with a 3rd party plug-in (search wmp ipod), and even get .ogg and .flac and every file format under the sun to work in it via DirectShow filters (directly from xiph.org (: )There is no xml library file as far as I know, but when you can amend the sync capabilities of the program itself, why bother? If somebody's managing their media with the program, chances are they will use it to sync their devices. Also, there isn't the bullshit, no reverse syncing in WMP that iTunes has always had, nor is the library sharing crippled as it is in iTunes 7+. iTunes is the media software most beholden to the music industry, with lots of stupid, arbitrary restrictions and extremely proprietary, unfriendly protocols, probably because Apple is willing to accede to demands from labels for the ITMS ):.

To the GPL question, obviously yes. That's how many projects take off; do you think the Linux kernel would be anywhere near where it is today if IBM wasn't developing it to support their proprietary extensions for the Blue Gene systems? If someone wants to use an OSS library in their program, that's great. It builds up the install base for that library, and increases the chance that that developer will improve the OSS library, and the developer doesn't have to implement that functionality themselves. See IBM and the Blue Gene system software for a prominent example of this; IBM builds proprietary solutions around Linux, and ends up contributing about 7% of ALL changes to the Linux kernel. Everybody wins! Admittedly, Palm is definitely breaking contract law here; in that sense they are in the wrong. However, I'd guess that an antitrust lawsuit against Apple would come out in Palm's favor; Apple is acting like a meaner Microsoft from 1999, explicitly breaking support for a competitor's device ):.

Nothing beats the Iphone and Itunes for DRM and vendor lock-in. NOTHING.