Where Has the Live Buzz Gone? -- Visual Studio Magazine

Desmond File

Where Has the Live Buzz Gone?

It seems not all that long ago that Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie turned a lot of heads with his demo of Live Clipboard last March. The technology was cool, to be sure. Ozzie's Web-based "clipboard" would let people grab bits and parts of other sites and aggregate them on the Web. What's most important is that this stuff was wide open, based on open standards and unattached to the Windows monopoly.

Suddenly, the company known best for producing antitrust lawsuits and threatening to "cut off the oxygen supply" of choice competitors (cough, Netscape, cough) was getting that mashup religion. This summer, we heard talk of an honest-to-goodness Live development
platform, expected sometime around the new year. Yet now, on December's doorstep, there's been remarkably little buzz about these
once-exciting developments.

So what happened to the brave new world? Did Ray Ozzie get too busy in his new role to foment an open software movement? Has Craig Mundie won a battle to close the open source barn doors at Microsoft? Or is some of this stuff just...delayed? Microsoft isn't talking in full sentences about all this stuff yet, as our contributing news editor Stuart Johnston found out. Stuart's piece on Live Clipboard, Live development and the Web is coming in our December issue, and will offer some insight into what really could be holding up Ozzie's mashup movement. And it's bigger than Mundie.

What are your thoughts? Do you think Microsoft has what it takes to live in peace with the powers of open source? Do you trust Microsoft when it untethers copyright restrictions on technologies like SenderID or Virtual Hard Disk format? Let me know at [email protected].

Posted by Michael Desmond on 11/29/2006

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