It certainly gets heated when it comes to the age-old 'bad Microsoft' discussion. :)

I never really got to politely post my comments in the last post, I hope its ok if I do here. This is just my humble opinion – no harm intended. I will fully attempt to be discreet and tactful.

In my humble opinion, this isn't really about Blender at all. I feel that Microsoft's overarching strategy in contacting all these successful opensource projects (Blender isn't the only one) regarding better 'interoperability' is about beating Linux. Nothing else.

In my opinion, Microsoft feel that if they can 'help' an opensource project to build some software that is beneficial exclusively to Windows then they have a reason to say, 'Yeah, Linux will run blender, but the Windows version has more useful features.'. You know what, it may be a really useful feature that they add to Blender *that is only fully useful when coupled with Windows*.

I don't think they'd be coming after Blender with lawyers. I feel that this is not what they want. I think that their plan is simple: beat Linux. Build platform specific features into successful opensource projects that give users some excuse to use Windows more than Linux.

Just as I said at the beginning of this post, I don't feel that this is about Blender at all. Its about Microsoft beating Linux.

…..heh, personally I don't want them to win. :)

Ah well, we'll 'see how the cookie crumbles' as we head on into the future. But yeah, as others said, tread carefully. :)

And Bart, with you're little comments, "Or else I'm wasting my time here" "Or else I'll turn this car around!"

You and Kernon are being more dramatic than anyone else. If you didn't anticipate this kind of reaction from a core base of open source enthusiasts, to having relationship with one of HISTORY'S ALL TIME MOST INFAMOUS MEGA COrporations Microsoft then you must have been living in a cave.

You're asking fire and ice to mix and make nice. Well just because in your head it makes sense doesn't mean that it's not going to be a cause of conflict in reality. You're "tsk tsk" attitdude shows me that you're out of touch with teh situation. To you, it is about as simple as functionality and compatibility.

But to a very large chunk of the rest of us, it's about personal experiences with Microsoft. It's about economic philosophy and critical thinking. It's about political thought and personal feelings. If you cannot appreciate THAT part of the human blender community equation – then you ARE out of touch. But don't wag your finger at something that you are oblivious to. Just becasue you don't grasp it doesn't make it illegitimate.

Now ODF export option wound be questions why but would not get a nasty reponse. Reason we are sure we can use it and not get our asses bitten.

Tell them to come back when the can provide paper work that commercial users can use it without risking getting there ass sued off or paying anything.

If you think that is 'irrational', take a holiday. Preferably in space.

So yeah, quit acting as if something is bad because you don't like it. There are plenty who do.