Re:Dumbest Thing I've ever read. (Score 1)

My fiance likes rugby. I like football. She thinks her rugby team would stomp my football team. We'll never find out, because no matter how much they train, no matter how tough each team becomes, they don't use the same rules to play their games.

For software competition, the rules have to be the same also. Microsoft gave us some standards, and then got greedy and began to play with "extended rules". This would be fine if everyone had the same rules at the same time, but we didn't. Competition 'could' create better software, or it could fragment the standards so badly we couldn't trade files with each other.

One behaving Microsoft setting standards for everyone on the OS is incredibly more efficient than 100 mini-Microsofts setting incompatible standards.

Perhaps the OS side of MS should be controlled like a public utility, including a set price. We all use standard electical connections, and look at the innovative things we do with electricity. Voltage is a standard. Perhaps we need 110 volt MS and 220 volt Linux, and then competition will flourish.