Microsoft Open Source Website

At first I thought this was an April Fool's joke. In July. Just not really sure what to think now.

Collaborative Editing

I like reading Dare Obasanjo's blog. Though he is frequently too pro-Microsoft and, as one would expect, anti most-of-the-rest, he raises interesting issues and his counter arguments to much of the web zeitgeist is insightful. But I'm not sure why he can't use something besides MS Word to edit a document with his coworkers.

One of his usual targets, Google, offers Google Docs, which is a great way to collaborate with a small team. I have used this to collaboratively edit documents, and I like it a lot for small group collaboration. And it's only one of maybe a hundred or more different web-based solutions for collaborative editing.

The irony, of course, is that Dare is pointing out a key shortcoming of the traditional and still present Microsoft way. That is, fat-client, file-based solutions to things. Maybe that is still the problem with many of the Microsofties (and I certainly see this from time to time with people I know well who have a strong Microsoft background) and with the company in the larger sense -- that the web is still this thing that they don't feel too comfortable embracing to solve typical problems.