Hello, Jeff Waugh: > Here's an idea: Engage!
When engaging an opponent who is cunning, powerful, ruthless, opportunistic, predatory and with a history of misleading, dishonest and even outright illegal behaviour, including turning on those it previously led to believe were its partners, it behooves one to proceed with caution. (I think all of those are pretty accurate descriptors and relatively uncontroversial here.) In particular, we should be careful of the language of cooperation, since it is apparently alien to MS and may be interpreted as weakness to be exploited rather than reciprocated. > It's not like sticking our collective head in the sand is going to achieve > anything useful (apply liberally to topical issues such as patents, OOXML, > standards in general, etc). Which begets the question, is this session is likely to achieve anything useful? I cannot see it. Are we trying to get them to make admissions, waivers or promises of some kind? If so, perhaps professionals should be asking the questions and follow-up questions, not random geeks. Otherwise, we're likely to get the kind of answers that say nothing, at best, and re-frame the debate in Microsoft's terms or otherwise mislead, at worst. Hardly the "lion's mouth" that you or Con think it. BTW, since you mention OOXML in particular and standards in general, last I heard OOXML is still being merrily railroaded through the ISO and Microsoft is explicitly refusing to commit to following it, even if it does pass. I don't think any question we ask would change any aspect of that situation. Jiri -- Jiri Baum <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.baum.com.au/~jiri -- ubuntu-au mailing list ubuntu-au@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-au