When will online office applications take off? How will Microsoft handle the transition? Will we get locked into another proprietary file format?
……

Seriously man, what happened?

Take some time off, get yourself back together.

I am with you here: It seems to me that the commercial software makers of this world (MS etc) have gotten addicted to ‘lock in’ where users cannot break free from their non standards compliant software.

It has been a nice ride for them, but it is coming to an end. Pressure from the EU and other sources has made MS open up its document formats. Google is making more and more web based etc.

What is very interesting for me is to see how business models can be changed to meet the new reality. At the moment companies extract money out of people by upgrading products - which uses cannot get away from using - and then stopping supporting the old product thus forcing the upgrade. This gravy train will end, how will the companies cope.

Open source already has working business models (around support etc) that work without people buying software. That makes for an interesting dynamic.

Cheers

AJ