I do not use Microsoft software on my home computers, and I do my best to avoid it at work as well. This is a personal choice. I prefer Linux. Some people prefer Mac, and some prefer Windows. The merits of each could be argued 'till the sun goes down, but ultimately it comes down to a personal choice.

The Problem

The problem of protocol decommoditization has recently come to my attention. It is not a new problem, but it is becoming more serious. For the sake of brevity, I'll stick to a single example: Microsoft's new HD image format. In Windows Vista, all imaging software will use this format as a default, instead of the common and standard JPEG format.

You might ask why I care what Microsoft does, and what Vista's defaults are, when I don't ever intend to use it. That's a perfectly valid question. The answer has to do with interacting with the rest of the world. If my brother sends me an email, and attaches a jpeg photo of his new son, I can easily view, save, or print the image. Suppose now that my brother installs Windows Vista on his computer. Now, when he sends me an image from his digital camera, it will not be a jpeg. It will be Microsoft's new image format. And I will not be able to open it. Now, new formats are created all the time, and old software can take some time to catch up. When Microsoft makes new formats though, they do their very best to make it illegal or impossible to decode it unless you pay for a license. So my brother has paid for the right to use Microsoft's new software. And in return, Microsoft holds photos of my nephew for ransom. If my brother was the only person to use Vista, this would be a small problem. Everyone he sent photos to would reply that they could not open them. He would realize that his software was not working properly, and perhaps install some different software that saved his images in a standard format. My brother will not be the only person to use Vista though. In time, as much as 90% of the PCs in the world will run Vista. So my brother will assume that the problem is mine, because everyone else seems to have no trouble.

What can be done about it?

I'm kind of at a loss here.

If the law required openness for certain formats, or defaults that encouraged platform neutrality, that might help... but in general I don't approve of laws that restrict what programmers are allowed to do. In fact, Microsoft's behavior would be perfectly acceptable in other cases. It is only their monopoly power that causes changes to Windows to affect people who do not use Windows.

Encouraging people to stop using Windows is a great idea, but not an easy task to undertake. The linux community is sharply divided as to the importance of mass adoption, and whether compromises like binary modules are acceptable to achieve that goal. I myself can easily see both sides. Even if the community could work together toward widespread adoption, chances are it would have minimal impact. Apple has historically had very good PR and advertising campaigns, and they still have only made small dents into Microsoft's monopoly.