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Relax NG has a compact non-XML syntax. But C++/Java is a horrible syntax to use if you want a language to be readable and easy to understand. Since when was 17 levels of operator precedence easy to understand? Of course any good programmer always uses parenthesis to avoid ambiguity, so why should a language have 17 levels of built-in ambiguity just to make it that much easier to make hard to find mistakes?

-Don

From my blog: Relax NG Compact Syntax: no to operator precedence, yes to annotations!

James Clark is a fucking genius! Hes the guy who wrote the Expat XML parser, works on Relax NG, and does tons of other important stuff. Relax NG is an ingeniously designed, elegant XML schema language based on regular expressions, which also has a compact, convenient non-xml syntax.

I totally respect the way he throws down the gauntlet on operator precedence (take that you Perl and C++ weenies!):

There is no notion of operator precedence. It is an error for patterns to combine the |, &, , and - operators without using parentheses to make the grouping explicit. For example, foo | bar, baz is not allowed; instead, either (foo | bar), baz or foo | (bar, baz) must be used. A similar restriction applies to name classes and the use of the | and - operators. These restrictions are not expressed in the above EBNF but they are made explicit in the BNF in Section 1.

You can translate back and forth between Relax NG's XML and compact syntaxes with full fidelity, without losing any important information. Relax NG supports annotating the grammar with standard and custom namespaces, so you can add standard extensions and extra user defined meta-data to the grammar. That's useful for many applications like user interface generators, programming tools, editors, compilers, data binding, serialization, documentation, etc.

Here's an interesting example of a complex Relax NG application: OpenLaszlo is an XML/JavaScript based programming language, which the Laszlo compiler translates into SWF files for the Flash player. The Laszlo compiler and programming tools use this lzx.rnc Relax NG schema for the OpenLaszlo XML language. This schema contains annotations used by the Laslzo compiler to define the syntax and semantics of the XML based programming language.

The schema starts out by defining a few namespaces:

default namespace = "http://www.laszlosystems.com/2003/05/lzx"
namespace rng = "http://relaxng.org/ns/structure/1.0"
namespace a = "http://relaxng.org/ns/compatibility/annotations/1 .0"
datatypes xsd = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-datatypes"
namespace lza = "http://www.laszlosystems.com/annotations/1.0"

The a: namespace defines some standard annotations like a:defaultValue, and the lza: namespace defines some custom annotations private to the Laszlo compiler like lza:visibility and lza:modifiers. Thanks to the ability to annotate the grammar, much of the syntax and semantics of the Laszlo programming language are defined directly in the Relax NG schema in the compact syntax, so any other tool can read the exact same definition the compiler is using!

To show how truly simple and elegant it is, here is the snake eating its tail: The Relax NG XML syntax, written in the Relax NG compact syntax:

# RELAX NG XML syntax specified in compact syntax.

default namespace rng = "http://relaxng.org/ns/structure/1.0"
namespace loc

OK, enough FUD, time for some cold hard facts:

Open XML is *NOT* proprietary See for yourself: http://www.ecma-international.org/memento/TC45-M.h tm

ODF is *JUST* as patent encumbered as Open XML is.

The owners of both ODF and Open XML do not and will not collect royalties (both have published a covenant not to sue)
Sun: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/ipr.ph p
MS: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx
Non-Legalese Explanation: http://www.bakernet.com/NR/rdonlyres/CC54A6B6-79E8 -4E0D-B290-C836D5F70867/0/OpenXML.pdf

To implement either standard, a developer need not accept any kind of licensing agreement whatsoever.

A user, using software that implements either standard, does not have to accept any licensing agreement that covers the either respective format's standard.

Thanks for playing :)

You fail it.

Sun for sure. I believe IBM uses it extensively. http://www.oasis-open.org/events/adoption_forum_20 05/slides/tenhumberg.pdf is a pretty extensive adoption in the public sector document. I've seen surveys that talk about 'fifty large [some European country name] companies' and such.

But I don't see the business world abandoning MS Office anytime soon, either. If nothing else, inertia is a powerful force. On the other hand, if I can read and write MS Office formats (and I've had no troubles with the sort of documents, spreadsheets, etc., that I use) I'm fine, and don't really care what the rest of the world is doing. It's none of my business, now that I have an interoperable choice.

I've heard that there are compatability issues (or were with 1.0, at any rate) in doing regression analysis with Calc/Excel, but I haven't had to share that sort of thing, and I suspect very few people do.

Some decent companies look like they're involved in the OASIS committee for this project, including VISA...

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?w g_abbrev=xri

ODF is XML. ODF is XML.

There, say it with me now...

ODF is XML. ODF is XML.

And when I want to use Open Source Software that reads Office files and saves them as ODF, well, I already do sue that.

BUT it is slow..

You are mistaken. Have you had a look at the bytes of a typical binary format such as MSDOC? It's mostly zeroes.

A text format with general purpose compression (as ODF is) can be considerably faster than a primitive binary "memory image". The reason is that that by far the biggest limiting factor is disk speed, not CPU, and if compression can reduce the disk size then the CPU needed to decode the text is not important. That's why read+decompress is often faster than read uncompressed.

M$ have highly optimized MSDOC read/write routines. OO's routines aren't highly optimized. The ODF document format is almost irrelevant.

Typical numbers. This is 719 pages. It's about 0.5MB in both sxw and odt forms. A typical disk drive can read 10MB/s (just measured it). The entire document can be read in 50ms. Modern PC's have memory speeds of typically 1GB+/s. The entire document can be read from memory in 500 microseconds.

This doesn't prove that the ODF document can be parsed quickly but unless the ODF document format is totally brain dead, it does strongly suggest that decoding is not a big deal time-wise. It's not as if serial decompression and parsing is a computationally challenging task. e.g. This XML parser read from disk cache the entire uncompressed 5MB (400KB compressed) content.xml from the above document and processed it in 0.7s.

So please, stop spreading the all too common student excuses about primitive binary formats being magically faster. They may be but it's not automatic.

---

Open source software is everything that closed source software is. Plus the source is available.

- authentication (no, dear MS people, HTTP basic is _NOT_ sufficient for the IBM MQ guys)

WS-Security, an OASIS standard (like OpenDocument Format), has been around since 2001. You may wish to update your SOAP knowledge.

But coding these days requires click and run...

No: it's all about the APIs and who's making them available. Got CORBA bindings for Google? How 'bout the National Weather Service? If nothing else, people are publishing SOAP APIs that we actually want to use. That alone makes it much more interesting that competing RPC protocols.

Very true! That's why I encourage people to look at DocBook. I've been using it for over a year now in lieu of LaTeX for documents ranging from simple HowTos, to design and specification documents, and some nearly book sized projects.

Paired with a sensible XML editor, you can be very productive!

No, it didn't. For appeasement's sake, Oasis even had to start an accessibility subcommittee.

There already is a smaller scale version of Silicon Valley roughly centered on Boston, Massachusetts. The partial circle defined by Route 128 (and to a lesser extent the larger one surrounding it defined by Route 495) has most of the required properties already. Heck, it even has the same elevated levels of Asperger's Syndrome that Silicon Valley has.

I think a bigger point is the number of colleges and universities in the Massachusetts area (like MIT, Harvard, Northeastern, and Boston University, to name just a few). Plus, besides Boston, there are numerous other technologically advanced places in that ring (including Cambridge, Saugus, Waltham, and Billerica, to name just a few). If you do a look-up on the saga of ODF and the history of OASIS and/or GNU you'll find a lot of these places mentioned -- OASIS originated in Massachusetts, the Free Software Foundation is headquartered in Massachusetts, and AFAIK Massachusetts was the first government to sanction a special "Open Source Software Trough" to encourage the usage of open source software within both its own branches as well as its local community governments. It's not clear to me where the weird view that Massachusetts is somehow against free software, open source and information sharing that some are espousing is coming from...

The ODF format is limited to the features and performance of OpenOffice and StarOffice

Micro$soft is lying through their nose. They know very well that KOffice, the Free & Open Source office suite that comes with the KDE desktop environment also supports the ODF format. In fact, they were publically informed about KOffice's capabilities last year in a open letter sent by the KOffice developers.

Yet they continue to spread the outright lie that only OpenOffice and its derivatives support the Oasis Open Document Format (ODF).

KOffice has a much cleaner architecture and a leaner codebase than OpenOffice, making its startup faster and facilitating the addition of new features. Because improving KOffice to meet the usability needs of governments, businesses and disabled individuals can be done with much less effort, KOffice is an even greater threat to Micro$oft.

Not yet, but it is being worked on: http://www.oasis-open.org/archives/office/200602/m sg00030.html

Can you please provide a link to the open, published specification? I'd like to see it so that I know that anyone can implement that spec under whatever license they feel most comfortable with.

An example of a truly open standard is:
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/ 12572/OpenDocument-v1.0-os.pdf
Or also, the PostgreSQL wire protocol:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/protocol .html

The MySQL wire protocol is proprietary. You would have to reverse engineer the product to create code under a different license. They did that on purpose.

Note, there are documents in existence, such as:
http://www.redferni.uklinux.net/mysql/MySQL-Protoc ol.html

That is someone who read the source files and produced a spec for a hypothetical re-implementation. The problem with that is that MySQL has made no promises to adhere to that spec, so it's quite possible that MySQL could manipulate the protocol to break 3rd party implementations without breaking their own. And nobody would have a standard document that they could use to file a bug report against. That's the definition of a proprietary protocol.

If you are implying that those statements negate each other I don't see it. No where in the second statement is a particular license mandated nor is OSS mandated. Interoperability, on the other hand is mandated. In other words, if Microsoft wants to supply software that is interoperable with other software that a citzen can use, all is well. Now getting Microsoft to interoperate with *anything* is where you might run into trouble :) It seems as though this is exactly the same thing as what Massachusettes is running into with regard to OpenDocument.

Just my 2cents.

I am not sure. I can't speak for the office team (or any team, for that matter ;)), and if I was one of the people that could, I am not sure how much legal whitewashing my answer would need :)

That's ok, I'm not trying to get you in trouble! ;)

Good points by the way.

A 180 degree turn towards ODF would be kind of awkward at this point.

I don't think the government bodies are asking for a 180 degree turn of microsoft's direction. As I see it, they only need a 'save as' option that will work with office. Open XML could still lead the way features-wise until these features can be standardized so they can be embedded in the ODF format. Since the two file formats are esentially XML, I'm guessing it won't be a very painfull process, but I don't know the specifics.

I wonder if the Office XML formats will satisfy the governments that are interested in this type of legislation.

I think the problem is the patents on the formats that are in the way. If a company sues MS over patent infringement, they automatically lose the right to use these formats. This gives MS an unfair advantage over competition I guess. It is in the governments' interests to have viable alternatives, so aside the lobbying powers, I think ODF is the best way to go. Even if some features will not be present immediantly, long term MS and competitors will be 'fighting' on terms of merits and not formats.

I would be curious to know what people consider truly open file formats

I'm a linux user. Saying that, I find MS Office to be 'the best choice for their situation' in alot of cases as you say, let alone the interoperating problem I have when sending a windows user a document that needs features RTF can't support. I know asking for a port of Office to linux is a bit farfetched, but I believe a sufficient standard supported well by Office and any other competitor would be just enough to trigger healthy competition. Sadly, Open XML is not 'GPL compatible' and can be used against OS projects in the future. But I'm guessing that even if, say, Corel wanted to port wordperfect to linux, they would be in the same acquard position of losing 'patent power' over microsoft if they were to innovate under the current patent laws.

I outlined some of my requirements in my original posting. To be realistically useful, you need more than just openness.. you also need a defined change control process, some sort of "owning body" etc. Fragmentation in the file format space makes everybody lose.

This is what Oasis is for. Fragmenation won't be that much a problem, as the versioning sytem you pointed out. I admit that I don't have information on this myself, so I can't argue on how big a problem that could be also.

Bottom line, what I want from microsoft is to just play fair and as you say, win on technical merits and not on patents and FUD or leveraging monopolies and what not. I know for sure that innovation is not a microsoft only thing, I see it daily in opensource projects. This is why I believe the management is the problem over there at Redmond and not the developers. Don't comment on the last remark... ;)

Since the spread sheets are being used for analysis you get an added advantage being able to easily parse the data with other programs and scripts. OpenDocument is basically zipped XML and, unlike one high profile competitor, is fully documented and can be used without restrictions. Sorry for plugging something as esoteric as a data format, but being able to mix and match between an off the shelf spreadsheet applications and homemade scripts with the same data files has been something long overdue.

I think you are a bit mixed up...

OpenOffice 1.x was released, and was put under an open source license. This used the old open office format.

Sun (and others) wanted an open document standard, so started working on ODF through OASIS. _Microsoft_ was a member at that time. [http://www.oasis-open.org/about/%5D

At any time MS could have had it's input into ODF. It really couldn't have been more open. ODF is easily flexible enough for MS to use if they wanted.

Whether ODF will be pointless... I don't know. I think MS will feel the pressure. They are too arrogant about this all.

You can see the list of OASIS members here:

    http://www.oasis-open.org/about/

That's certainly worth worrying about. I'm not 100% sure here, but I think that the ODF will be administered in such a way that if you want to claim "OpenDocument compliant" on your product, you have to implement the standard fully and properly. Improper implementations can of course be produced (since the spec is openly published), but they will not be able to state/claim "OpenDocument compliant." (This can be protected with trademark law, etc.) It should be noted, however, that the standard clearly states that there will be no fees required to use it.

The OASIS faq states that "The OpenDocument format is owned by OASIS, a non-profit consortium dedicated to the open development of public XML standards." So I think they will use legal means to protect the "OpenDocument" format name from being mis-used, while allowing free implementation of the format by anyone desiring to do it properly.

This has little or nothing to do with MySQL.

Why is Berkeley DB so popular? Because the folks there had the foresight to envision a need for a lightweight embedded transactional database engine. That was in the past. The only thing that really matters to any forward looking business, and that includes Oracle, is the future. What has Sleepycat been up to? A lightweight embedded XML database: DB XML. MySQL is not a threat, because the whole premise of what they are doing will soon be an anachronism. The current center of the IT universe is OASIS. Guess what kind of technology you need to play in that space? XML databases.

The F/OSS community is now left with only two real contenders: eXist and maybe QEXO. Both need stinkin' java. Neither does XML Schema validation. DB XML was the F/OSS communities most advanced native XML database. And Oracle just bought it.

This is a huge setback for F/OSS. If you don't understand the importance of distributed XML applications, you're just not going to understand this. If you do, you should be crying.

That's quite true: Haskell's notion of pattern matching is much more powerful and extensible than mere regular expressions.

Jim Clark's Haskell implementation of the derivative algorithm for validating Relax NG is a wonderful example of how powerful, elegant and concise Haskell is. Relax NG is all about tree structured regular expressions over "hedges" (mixed trees of XML elements and text). It's based on the same automata theory as regular expressions, extended to describe "hedges" (XML documents).

An Algorithm for RELAX NG Validation By James Clark, January 07, 2001. Author's note to XML-DEV: 'I have written a paper describing one possible algorithm for implementing RELAX NG validation. This is the algorithm used by Jing, which I believe has also been adopted by MSV... If you try to use this to implement RELAX NG and something isn't clear, let me know and I'll try to improve the description.' From the introduction: "This document describes an algorithm for validating an XML document against a RELAX NG schema. This algorithm is based on the idea of what's called a derivative (sometimes called a residual). It is not the only possible algorithm for RELAX NG validation. This document does not describe any algorithms for transforming a RELAX NG schema into simplified form, nor for determining whether a RELAX NG schema is correct. We use Haskell to describe the algorithm. Do not worry if you don't know Haskell; we use only a tiny subset which should be easily understandable." Jing is a validator for RELAX NG implemented in Java;

Another interesting Haskell library for XML is HaXml:

Consider Haskell in lieu of DOM, SAX, or XSLT for processing XML data. The library HaXml creates representations of XML documents as native recursive data structures in the functional language Haskell. HaXml brings with it a set of powerful higher order functions for operating on these "datafied" XML documents. Many of the HaXml techniques are far more elegant, compact, and powerful than the ones found in familiar techniques like DOM, SAX, or XSLT. Code samples demonstrate the techniques.

Here's some more stuff about Relax NG, comparing the Haskell implementation to the Java implementation (jing): Maximizing Composability and Relax NG Trivia:

Here's some interesting stuff about the design and development of Relax NG:

James Clark wrote about maximizing composability:

First, a little digression. In general, I have made it a design principle in TREX to maximize "composability". It's a little bit hard to describe. The idea is that a language provides a number of different kinds of atomic thing, and a number different ways to compose new things out of other things. Maximizing composability means minimizing restrictions on which ways to compose things can be applied to which kinds of thing. Maximizing composability tends to improve the ratio between functionality on the one hand and simplicity/ease of use/ease of learning on the other.

Clark describes the derivative algorithm's lazy approach to automaton construction:

I don't agree that <interleave> makes automation-based implementations impossible; it just means you have to construct automatons lazily. (In fact, you can view the

That's quite true: Haskell's notion of pattern matching is much more powerful and extensible than mere regular expressions.

Jim Clark's Haskell implementation of the derivative algorithm for validating Relax NG is a wonderful example of how powerful, elegant and concise Haskell is. Relax NG is all about tree structured regular expressions over "hedges" (mixed trees of XML elements and text). It's based on the same automata theory as regular expressions, extended to describe "hedges" (XML documents).

An Algorithm for RELAX NG Validation By James Clark, January 07, 2001. Author's note to XML-DEV: 'I have written a paper describing one possible algorithm for implementing RELAX NG validation. This is the algorithm used by Jing, which I believe has also been adopted by MSV... If you try to use this to implement RELAX NG and something isn't clear, let me know and I'll try to improve the description.' From the introduction: "This document describes an algorithm for validating an XML document against a RELAX NG schema. This algorithm is based on the idea of what's called a derivative (sometimes called a residual). It is not the only possible algorithm for RELAX NG validation. This document does not describe any algorithms for transforming a RELAX NG schema into simplified form, nor for determining whether a RELAX NG schema is correct. We use Haskell to describe the algorithm. Do not worry if you don't know Haskell; we use only a tiny subset which should be easily understandable." Jing is a validator for RELAX NG implemented in Java;

Another interesting Haskell library for XML is HaXml:

Consider Haskell in lieu of DOM, SAX, or XSLT for processing XML data. The library HaXml creates representations of XML documents as native recursive data structures in the functional language Haskell. HaXml brings with it a set of powerful higher order functions for operating on these "datafied" XML documents. Many of the HaXml techniques are far more elegant, compact, and powerful than the ones found in familiar techniques like DOM, SAX, or XSLT. Code samples demonstrate the techniques.

Here's some more stuff about Relax NG, comparing the Haskell implementation to the Java implementation (jing): Maximizing Composability and Relax NG Trivia:

Here's some interesting stuff about the design and development of Relax NG:

James Clark wrote about maximizing composability:

First, a little digression. In general, I have made it a design principle in TREX to maximize "composability". It's a little bit hard to describe. The idea is that a language provides a number of different kinds of atomic thing, and a number different ways to compose new things out of other things. Maximizing composability means minimizing restrictions on which ways to compose things can be applied to which kinds of thing. Maximizing composability tends to improve the ratio between functionality on the one hand and simplicity/ease of use/ease of learning on the other.

Clark describes the derivative algorithm's lazy approach to automaton construction:

I don't agree that <interleave> makes automation-based implementations impossible; it just means you have to construct automatons lazily. (In fact, you can view the

That's quite true: Haskell's notion of pattern matching is much more powerful and extensible than mere regular expressions.

Jim Clark's Haskell implementation of the derivative algorithm for validating Relax NG is a wonderful example of how powerful, elegant and concise Haskell is. Relax NG is all about tree structured regular expressions over "hedges" (mixed trees of XML elements and text). It's based on the same automata theory as regular expressions, extended to describe "hedges" (XML documents).

An Algorithm for RELAX NG Validation By James Clark, January 07, 2001. Author's note to XML-DEV: 'I have written a paper describing one possible algorithm for implementing RELAX NG validation. This is the algorithm used by Jing, which I believe has also been adopted by MSV... If you try to use this to implement RELAX NG and something isn't clear, let me know and I'll try to improve the description.' From the introduction: "This document describes an algorithm for validating an XML document against a RELAX NG schema. This algorithm is based on the idea of what's called a derivative (sometimes called a residual). It is not the only possible algorithm for RELAX NG validation. This document does not describe any algorithms for transforming a RELAX NG schema into simplified form, nor for determining whether a RELAX NG schema is correct. We use Haskell to describe the algorithm. Do not worry if you don't know Haskell; we use only a tiny subset which should be easily understandable." Jing is a validator for RELAX NG implemented in Java;

Another interesting Haskell library for XML is HaXml:

Consider Haskell in lieu of DOM, SAX, or XSLT for processing XML data. The library HaXml creates representations of XML documents as native recursive data structures in the functional language Haskell. HaXml brings with it a set of powerful higher order functions for operating on these "datafied" XML documents. Many of the HaXml techniques are far more elegant, compact, and powerful than the ones found in familiar techniques like DOM, SAX, or XSLT. Code samples demonstrate the techniques.

Here's some more stuff about Relax NG, comparing the Haskell implementation to the Java implementation (jing): Maximizing Composability and Relax NG Trivia:

Here's some interesting stuff about the design and development of Relax NG:

James Clark wrote about maximizing composability:

First, a little digression. In general, I have made it a design principle in TREX to maximize "composability". It's a little bit hard to describe. The idea is that a language provides a number of different kinds of atomic thing, and a number different ways to compose new things out of other things. Maximizing composability means minimizing restrictions on which ways to compose things can be applied to which kinds of thing. Maximizing composability tends to improve the ratio between functionality on the one hand and simplicity/ease of use/ease of learning on the other.

Clark describes the derivative algorithm's lazy approach to automaton construction:

I don't agree that <interleave> makes automation-based implementations impossible; it just means you have to construct automatons lazily. (In fact, you can view the

Does this certification actually mean anything, or is this just yet another Microsoft maneuver to be able to a government/corporate entity "See, we meet specification XXX that you demand software that you use have."

Microsoft did this with POSIX support for Windows NT; NT's Posix is next-to-useless (they don't have fork(), for example) but Microsoft got it so that they could tell the relevant people "See, NT is posix-aware."

Another example: Internet Explorer for Solaris. Probably one of the most horrible browsers out there; Microsoft only did it so companies that said "We standardize on one browser for all users" could standardize on IE. Microsoft had no real intention of supporting Solaris.

In fact, I will go so far to say that Microsoft's proposed "open document format" doesn't exist because Microsoft has any intention of opening up their format, but so that Microsoft can meet Massachusetts' requirement to have an "open" format. This is why Massachusetts should continue to tell Microsoft that they will not use Office Vista until it supports the Open Document standard.

So this doesn't sound like a typical anti-Microsoft post, I will say that Microsoft products are far easier to learn than the Linux equivalents, and that Microsoft made some beautiful fonts the blow away anything for Linux.

• Adobe Systems
• IBM
• Intel
• Novell
• Sun Microsystems

That's just wrong.

What Arjuna supports are WS-CAF and WS-TX. These are protocols which abstract the implementation of transactions. They can be supported regardless of the data storage technology used by the application server.

Bringing these technologies into the open source world means that many enterprises will now be newly able to operate entirely without proprietary software technology, if they so choose. Enterprises ranging from webshops to Fortune 500s to national government departments.

Do we really want this mess to become our standards ?

No, we don't.

As the time flies, I'm getting more and more convinced that OSI is actually harming our cause. While RMS sometimes has bad ideas as well (GFDL, GPLv3), Free Software is the way to do. Not the collestion of look-but-not-touch-and-we-reserve-all-rights-to-su e-you licenses endored by OSI and friends.

Do we really want this mess to become our standards ?

*shrug*, call me a flaimbaiter - but whatever happened to clear and simple ?

--
Petition for iPod to support .ogg

I think we already have this :

http://www.oasis-open.org/news/oasis_news_05_23_05 .php

so we don't need MS' crap.

Definitely, if there is no need for the outsiders to edit your documents, send them allways as PDF. However, internally you should use Open Document Format, not the old .sx* formats. You can even distribute your open documents. Open Office is not the only office suite to support them. If you do work for the EU and need them to edit your documents, use open document format, the recommendation by the EU.

http://europa.eu.int/idabc/en/document/3439
http://europa.eu.int/idabc/en/document/3428/5644
http://www.oasis-open.org/home/index.php

Sorry to break up that little run of sarcasm to point out ahead of time; Almost every reply that I would automatically get to this post about the licensing of Microsoft Office 2003 XML schema license is to a great extent FUD. There is not really a terrible patent issue, all licensees get royalty-free rights to all Microsoft patents to allow using the schema freely. Granted this is GPL-incompatible since anyone distributing the result has to accept the schema license, and also the schema license has a BSD-style advertisement clause. These are hardly the earth-shattering taking-away-our-freedom-lets-sing-with-RMS issues though.

One notable thing to point out here is that OpenDocument actually has a similar IP issue, notice how you get a royalty-free license from Sun for the IP in that format?

Overall this is making an awful lot of noise considering that people are supposedly getting "liberated" from a fairly reasonable product here, despite it being from Microsoft.

Wouldn't that be true for any lockin? At least OpenDoc is an open standard, ie anyone can write software to read and write to it. Using MS Office is using a proprietary file format and to read or edit it you have to use Office. If a person can't afford the $400 for Office then they can't read an Office document.

We shouldn't let the desire to see Microsoft impaled blind us to the reality of government types who abrogate their responsibility, and instead say "whoops, can't use that, we standardized on the other one back in ought six".

You or others might but I don't see it as impailing MS, I see it as a bid to make sure government uses a file format that allows anyone to read and write documents without having to have MS Office. If MS is really concerned about Mass or any other government not using it's product because it doesn't support open standards then it can support those standards itself. And it's not enough to say Office supports XML because if it can't save or open OpenDoc documents then it doesn't in fact support XML seeing as how OpenDoc is an XML file format.

Well, that's true, though one did come from the other according to the FAQ:

OpenDocument previously was called Open Office. What is the relation to OpenOffice.org?

When the OASIS OpenDocument TC was founded, it chose the OpenOffice.org XML file format as the basis for its work, because the OpenOffice.org XML file format had already proven its value in real life. The OpenDocument format, therefore, is an advancement of the OpenOffice.org XML file format. It us usable and used by OpenOffice.org, but also by other office applications like KOffice.

By realizing the difference, we realize the concerns raised on behalf of the blind are pure FUD. The move to OpenDocument has nothing to do with the faults of one or another application used to read it. In fact, it allows for competition in presentation not possible with Microsoft's closed formats. It is already happening, and we can be sure the results will be better than anything Microsoft has to offer.

Microsoft FUDsters will exploit this confusion as much as they can, but it all rebounds on them. No one is pushing a specific application but Microsoft.

This is typical Microsoft and hopefully their reputation is catching up to them. They have focused on something few people know about, confused terms and tried to project the weaknesses of their own softare onto others. We've seen it again and again: Linux costs more than Microsoft, Linux is less secure than Microsoft, Microsoft is better than anything. You can insert Word Perfect, OS/2, DRDOS, Netscape and a host of other "competitors" into the above formula. It's been bullshit all along and it's bullshit today. People have caught on and it's not going to work forever.

You can fool some of the people all of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

Well, that's true, though one did come from the other according to the FAQ:

OpenDocument previously was called Open Office. What is the relation to OpenOffice.org?

When the OASIS OpenDocument TC was founded, it chose the OpenOffice.org XML file format as the basis for its work, because the OpenOffice.org XML file format had already proven its value in real life. The OpenDocument format, therefore, is an advancement of the OpenOffice.org XML file format. It us usable and used by OpenOffice.org, but also by other office applications like KOffice.

By realizing the difference, we realize the concerns raised on behalf of the blind are pure FUD. The move to OpenDocument has nothing to do with the faults of one or another application used to read it. In fact, it allows for competition in presentation not possible with Microsoft's closed formats. It is already happening, and we can be sure the results will be better than anything Microsoft has to offer.

Microsoft FUDsters will exploit this confusion as much as they can, but it all rebounds on them. No one is pushing a specific application but Microsoft.

This is typical Microsoft and hopefully their reputation is catching up to them. They have focused on something few people know about, confused terms and tried to project the weaknesses of their own softare onto others. We've seen it again and again: Linux costs more than Microsoft, Linux is less secure than Microsoft, Microsoft is better than anything. You can insert Word Perfect, OS/2, DRDOS, Netscape and a host of other "competitors" into the above formula. It's been bullshit all along and it's bullshit today. People have caught on and it's not going to work forever.

You can fool some of the people all of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

I've known Ted for over 20 years and love his idealism. I believe that XRI can provide a seamless transition from the current document web to the future social web (PDF), complete with authenticated transclusion.

Read between the lines very carefully. What Nick Tsilas says is:

Andy, this is not accurate. I think what we have said is that features are dictated by customer demand and, until the Massachusetts-related activity occurred, Open Document was not even on our radar screens.

Yep. OpenDocument is not even on their radar screens. Nope. Never heard of it before the Commonwealth of Massachusetts wanted it.

Puh-lease. Does he think we're all stupid?

Microsoft may or may not support it. More likely not. But I agree with you. What difference would it make?

OK so there's a license agreement for using MS Office XML schema's.

The terms of this agreement basically say you have the right to distribute use these schema's in any software system to READ AND WRITE Office documents ROYALTY FREE, so long as you give Microsoft credit and the real clincher is... you don't extend it.

Let's quit the emotional BS and talk tin tacs... how much input do you think the guys at OpenOffice have on the OASIS standards when it comes to the evolution of the OpenDocument format ?

A) 10%
B) 20%
C) 90%
or
D) Complete Control

Considering OpenOffice is really the only software with any footprint at all in the market place using this schema, I'm betting right now and for the immediate future it's bound to be C or but really probably D. I also think you have to be completely naive to think the OpenDocument schema comes with no strings attached, it also comes with license agreements that you have to adhere to so basically what we have really is two groups competing with each other. There's nothing wrong with that.

Microsoft invented the embrace, extend, extinguish doctrine, they're not about to let anyone use their own tactics against them. Allowing someone to extend their own schema would create a one way flow from MS Office to a competing product, documents written by competitors software in the extended MS Office schema would be incomplete when viewed in an MS Office application. I think it's reasonable for them to insist that documents based on their schema's be readable (in their entirety) by MS Office.

I personally haven't encountered an enterprise using OpenOffice, I don't know what its market share is but I'll guess and say not much, until it has a reasonable market share I don't blame Microsoft for not supporting it, that costs time, money and comprimises their OWN vision for their OWN product. The schema's Microsoft have provided give complete transparity to Office XML documents, they are clear, very well documented, any software product should easily be able to support them, allowing that software to freely manipulate and rewrite that data into any schema it likes.

No they didn't. Only Sun Microsystems, IBM and Adobe Systems however did. Sponsoring OASIS is very different from sponsoring a certain TC. Why do I have repeat this every single time a new article about the OpenDocument comes along?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Massachusetts isn't using OpenOffice's format, it's using OpenDocument. This is an open format that OOo just happens to use as well. I understand OOo had a hand in creating it, but it's not "their" format.

Indeed -- and Microsoft also had a hand in creating it. Just to be clear, this is the specification for the OpenOffice.org file format; and this is the OASIS OpenDocument specification. (Both in pdf format - I can see why, but there's a certain irony there: in what format do you write the specification of your format? ...)

Maybe someone should remind Microsoft that they sponsored the development of OpenDocument.

Open Office was perfectly free to make their own document format, but ...

However, I suspect that OpenDocument may have been meant instead, which is OASIS' Open Document Format for Office Applications. OpenDocument is the work of a consortium of companies and organizations and not the sole work of a single project as implied in the comment above. Microsoft is the only member taking a "wait-and-see" approach to the format. Everyone else, is moving ahead.

Oh yes, I know, that's blasphemy and my karma is now lower than Lucifer's, but if you stop and think for a moment you'll realize that it's the logical and realistic choice.

Then your logic must be flawed. You know MS won't ever release full specs for any of its formats, it could be licensed to big clients (just like their Shared Source program) but NEVER there will be a 100% compliant free implementation. So I fail to see how it could be a standard, the definition you give from the dictionnary is the MAINSTREAM definition and certainly not the one recognized in science or more precisely in the technics (more as in "normalization").

The logical choice is of course OASIS, which has already been recognized as the official document standard in most of European countries, and was compared technically, practically and logically to MS doc by a commission (with people who decided for technical reasons that OASIS was better in most points and rejected MS's bribe yeah).

Still, I don't know how it has evolved, but I remember last february when their was a call for boycott from the FSF against the OASIS Group, regarding their policy towards sw patents. I hope they have/will fix(ed) that but they can't be worse than MS regarding patent abuse or bad patenting policy.

Though I don't find MS fanboys that irritating anymore (it's more that I don't care about MS anymore now that they have a very low impact on my computing life), I don't understand how people can still support them and consider that just because they're the bigger software company they must remain so. And forget excellence.

Oh, and FYI, OpenDocument IS a standard. http://www.oasis-open.org/news/oasis_news_05_23_05 .php

Applications supporting OpenDocument

Abiword 2.3, through the OpenWriter plugin
eZ publish 3.6, with OpenOffice extension
IBM Workplace
Knomos case management 1.0 [4]
KOffice 1.4, released on June 21st 2005
OpenOffice.org 1.1.5 and 2.0 beta
Scribus 1.2.2, imports OpenDocument Text and Graphics
TextMaker 2005 beta [5]

Yep, MS is even a member of OASIS (Sic!). There really isn't any excuse for not implementing the "missing" functions into the standard...

OK, I've read the typical array of bashing connected to any MS story. While I don't disagree that MS has made some sleazy business choices, this does not mean that their competition is any more angelic. Here are a few tidbits of food for thought:

Eric Kriss is a busy man. As well as his heroic efforts on behalf of the people of Massachusetts, he is also quite the entrepreneur. Along with his boss, Governor Mitt Romney, he founded Bain Capital a 17 billion dollar capital management firm that owns pieces of such widely diverged companies as Staples, Dominos, Burger King and Toys-R-US. Bain also tried to buyout the entire NHL and partnered with the Chinese in the attempted buyout of Maytag. He also worked for previous Massachusetts Governor William Weld. He took some time off to start a couple of companies of his own before continuing in public service. Workmode offers a web-based subscription model project management application called iProject. Follow the link and notice to what competitor he compares his product. Anyone want to take a guess before they click? Kriss started MediVision, Inc and was CEO of MediQual Systems, both health care companies. MediQual is especially interesting since it deals with medical information and documents - like web forms submitted to a state government. Yes sir, I bet they can make your practice compliant with that new format for billing documents pretty darn quick. When was the last time you believed a health care company was on the side of the people? Finally, take a look at this, looks like MediVision wanted to cover their butts before paying some government office holders an honorarium at a political fundraiser. Hey, I'm not saying that there is anything WRONG with any of this. Just that factors other than "because it is an overriding imperative of the American democratic system" may be involved in the decision. What I'm saying is: a wolf in geeks clothing is still a wolf.

You can call OpenDocument an 'open' format, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have to be licensed. The XML format is actually provided by Sun and a license IS required. There are some interesting terms involved in the license, including cancellation if the licensee sues the licensor over ANY "infringement of claims essential to implement any W3C Recommendation" and the granting of reciprocal licenses. MS might have some legitimate hesitations about acquiring such a license. By the way, you need a license for PDF as well. And Reader STILL takes forever to load.

This whole discussion is about forms used by a state government for internal AND external use. Meaning the forms used to communicate with the citizens by the government. This can include informational presentations (possibly multimedia), online registration for services (motor vehicles, voter registration, unemployment, schools, etc.) and yes, maybe even embedded VOIP (click here to leave a voice mail for your city councilman). Why would a company spend time and money to develop gee whiz technology and willingly support a standard incapable of its implementation? How willing will companies and individuals be to toss out their tried and true Office routine and switch to apps that even most zealots describe as 'catching up' and 'almost as good as' Office? And that's not taking into account Office 12, due in '96, and, you guessed it, featuring improved XML. Do you call the government forcing you to quit using the overwhelmingly most popular business document tool if you want to communicate with them a good thing?

So what I'm saying is: there ain't no fre

Contrast this to Microsoft's poorly-documented new XML format, which is mired in the deep and dangerous swamps of backward compatibility with everything from OLE onwards.

Which would you trust?

Excuse me for using the f-word in my title, but since I got you attention, I'ld like to try and make a point.

A lot of institutions worldwide have tried to force MS into a less monopolistic role. People have tried to get refunds for unused copies of Windows which they had forcedly bought. People have tried taking MS to court. The EU has tried to make MS behave nicely by forcing them to make a Mediaplayer-free version of Windows and there are several other examples, but they all failed to catch the main issue.

Microsoft's monopoly is not built on forcefully sold, pre-installed copies of Windows, nor on some Mediaplayer application, nor on Internet Explorer or even Windows.

Microsoft's monopoly leans on Office, and almost exclusively that. The Office file formats are secret. MS has - in a very clever way, namely by letting people pirate Office in the beginning without shouting bloody murder all too hard - made half the world use Office, on way or another. And now loads and loads of documents are in the MS Office format, people can't switch.

By forcing MS to adopt the OpenDocument format (MS _is_ a member of oasis, by the way) Microsoft monopoly is broken. Boom. With one computer batch-converting old MS Office documents to the OpenDocument format and all other computers running {$anyOS} with {$anyOfficeSuite} you can both choose your own software, save money and be free. Or not, your choice.

If the politicians want to break the MS monopoly, let them break it where it counts: in the MS Office document format area. That's where it matters, hardly anywhere else.

So, this leads me to draw 2 conclusions:
1) Politicians do NOT want to break the monopoly, sadly and ununderstandable. 2) Bill will have nightmares for the rest of his life if the Mass. idea catches on in the rest of the US and the world. I hope it will, though - in the light of the vast marketing budget of MS - I doubt it...

As for OpenOffice.org - they're using the OASIS format and Microsoft is a sponsor of that so you'd think they'd get around to it eventually

I think you've got the facts right. First, OASIS standardized a variant of the XML format used internally by OpenOffice (and KOffice now), not the other way around. Second, Microsoft didn't want to get involved in the standardization of OpenDocument, and they are not a sponsor of the OpenDocument TC.