...constantly playing catch-up to Microsoft.

Microsoft .doc is arguably the worst format ever. It's pretty much just a dump of Word's internal state. To make it work, you pretty much have to re-implement MS Word.

I don't think nutter is a particularly harsh term. Have you heard him sing?

Java is not a trap. Never was. Something like Java could have contributed to a world in which Linux on the desktop might have been more useful to more people. Java pre-installs on Windows fizzled because of legal issues, and on Linux fizzled because of unfounded fears.

Now the only de-facto universal platform is web+flash. Stallman will tell you that's a trap too.

RMS is a nutter.