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…and the trumpets sounded, fire and brimstone rained down amidst a great gnashing–ok a bit over the top. Still for Bill Gates to embrace royalty free protocols and standards even in the smallest way is a major event. Maybe the days of embrace and extend protocols and standards are finally over. In New York Bill promised Microsoft’s full support for XML, SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI as well as a number of other standards and protocols currently under development.
Bill was in New York promoting web services across all operating systems right beside IBM. The web service demonstration showed an application connection between a Windows 2003 server, an IBM WebSphere server running on Linux and a Linux hand held device. I applaud him and Microsoft accepting that, especially in networking and the web, open standards are beneficial, even if they do level the playing field. Bill even had a sense of humor when the press questioned his use of the phrase “royalty-free” responding: “I can’t believe I just said that.” Read the Wall Street and Tech report of the event for more…