"Maemo would have made a real alternative"
You're a Linux worshiper I guess.... Yes, the truth is Maemo appealed only to Linux worshiper - most phone users didn't and don't care about being able to run a bash shell and open a SSH session from that, or run an X11 session. Really, almost nobody cares about that features. They are not killer ones. Apple and Google knew it... they are where they are, and Nokia phones doesn't exist anymore but as a pale brand on somewhere else's hardware.
It was too little and too late - with little appeal but to a restricted target. You can keep on dreaming Maemo and Linux would have conquered the world, but the ugly truth is Nokia phones were already dead - Blackberry too stabbed them before going nowhere too - and getting eight billions from MS was the clever move.
The very fact you talk about porting desktop applications shows you don't understand phones need true mobile app (the reason why WinCE failed), and open source would have not helped at all when mobile developers could make nice money selling on Apple and Google stores.
So what competition was MS needing to kill? That in the 1% market left by the others?
> That duopoly is Microsoft's fault, imo.
ROFTL!!!!! Yes, their fault was to fail miserably in the mobile market. But if it was successful you were accused them for being successful - when blinded by hate, using the brain is out of question.
> Rightly so? Says who?
Of course. You're paid to work, what do you believe? Good companies doesn't like to pay lazy workers.
> not by some pointy-haired boss (you?)
Sorry, I'm a developer and not a pointy haired boss. While you looks someone who doesn't want others to know how much works or doesn't work... met several of them in my long careers, they can deceive pointy-haired bosses, but not fellow developers... I don't really need any automated tool.
> it seems to be overridden by Group Policy - so again, they work for the corporations, not the users
Of course. It's not your software and it's not your hardware. If you don't like it you're free to build your own company. For the matter, reports that tell me if people are stopping to share documents through emails and are switching to use other collaboration tools available are welcome. But you'd need to have managed something big and complex enough to understand the difference...
But keep on hating MS alone - you're being screwed by the others and probably never understand it...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
