dsandler.org/wp

World Domination HOWTO

After years of complaints about unfair use of their dominant market
position to establish new, de facto standards out of
closed protocols and formats, Microsoft seemed to turn over a
new leaf. “We’ll stop using private, undocumented protocols; we’ll
codevelop SOAP, a human-readable meta-protocol, and use it as the heart
of our .NET initiative. That way, you can read the messages
our .NET apps are passing between one another, and develop your own
replacement for one of those apps if you like. See, no lock-in!”

“Oh, by the way. We had a patent pending
covering an almost identical technology, also named SOAP. Yeah, we had
started this project, and killed it, before the
public SOAP initiative ever got off the ground. But, given the patent
system the way it is, we pretty much have license to sue your ass for even
thinking about interoperating with our apps. Better luck next time.”