Microsoft: Yes, We're Really Scared

It is a truism that if you believe in your product you welcome comparisons with the competition. After all, if you really are the best, you can only gain from that fact being made manifest.

So this delightful tale from PC Pro suggests that even Microsoft has no faith in its own products:

There can be no doubt that Microsoft is afraid of the open-source movement. Last month, as part of the conditions for allowing us to include Office 2007 on the cover disc, Microsoft Corp - in many ways a company distinct from the far cuddlier and more approachable Microsoft UK - wouldn't allow us to put any open-source software onto the same disc.

...

Microsoft specifically named OpenOffice.org as a program we couldn't include on the cover disc. That's an incredibly short-sighted move. The whole point about Office 2007 is what it offers over and above OpenOffice.org, that it allows you to create more sophisticated documents more quickly. If I was on the board of Microsoft Corp, I'd be demanding that magazines bundled both side by side so that people could make their own comparisons.

Obviously, the powers in Microsoft Towers aren't quite so confident of what the outcome might be. (Via SunMink.)