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Microsoft Just Says No to .Doc Replacement Panel
Schlemphfer writes "OASIS is a nonprofit consortium backed by top technology companies, and the purpose of this organization is to set open standards for desktop and business software. They've just announced a working group that will create an XML-based document format standard for openoffice.org. And even though Microsoft is a member of Oasis, they aren't going to be taking part in this group. It's a logical move on Bill's part, considering that standardized XML docs are sure to weaken the hold that Microsoft's proprietary .doc format has on business software."
I was under the impression that Microsoft Office 11 was promoting their own??? version of XML. If that is the case, I am sure that BillG wouldn't want anything else as a standard
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Cheese it! It's the FEDS!
Expecting M$ to openup .doc formant or to use a Open format is like expecting Saddam to disarm. ..
it ain't happening any time soon fellas.
Sure they will allow the inspectors in
for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
this is the third article concerning microsoft today? At this rate, we will have 6 - 8 articles concerning MS by the end of the day. How wierd is that?
Also, the other thing no one has really noticed has been that Office XP has it's own XML document specification. Even they are starting to get away from the proprietary format.
Just like Unix took over the proprietary OSs on large systems, XML will eliminate proprietary file formats.
Why?
Because the major corporate customers know that proprietary products screw consumers in the long and possibly short run.
If anyone is still in the dark on how a proprietary single source for technology can screw your company, just look at the price increases, license changes and other efforts by Microsoft to screw its own customer base during tough times.
You might expect Microsoft to raise prices and tighten up terms during good times. But, the idiots running Microsoft are so dumb and stupid (that means Gates and Ballmer) that they do so during difficult times.
It is proof positive to avoid doing business with Microsoft Corporation.
Any business.
After all they are looking for more partners to screw.
Do not blame me for the decisions made by Microsoft Corporation. Blame Gates and Ballmer.
NexuSys - Linux support by the best
XDocs supports any customer-defined XML schema and integrates with XML Web services.
The way I understood things, XDocs support XML but allows for extra (read: non-standard) functionality, similar to MS's "Java". The problem then lies when someone uses this extra functionality to create a document -- anyone using an application that doesn't support XDocs will not be able to use it. One of the main goals of XML is to encourage compatibility.
Tell your writers to check what MS is doing before putting their foot in their mouth and auto-bashing MS. MS has been talking about Office 11 for weeks now with their new XML based file format. Also they said on this issue they are taking a wait and see approach. Now I fully believe MS will tweak their XML so it's not fully compatible with others, but I'm going wait and see so I can legitimately complain.
Seems to me that MS may be doing this as a (prudant) way to avoid potential conflict-of-interest issues.
As has been reported, they are developing XDocs in the future, and this consortium could potentially be putting together something fairly similar to XDocs.
I doubt MS wants to be involved in something that appears like the whole DDR SDRAM/RDRAM fiasco.
-Jayde
What's a sig?
This week we learned that Windows and Office are the heart of Microsoft's monopoly, financially speaking.
Office, one of MS's two profitable divisions, gives Microsoft a 79% profit margin for each product sold. I have a feeling that if your average Joe only KNEW about openoffice.org as an alternative, they'd use it in a heartbeat. Businesses might be harder to convince, but when I told my dad about OO.o, he just about shat himself. $400 saved.
If the Internet community can raise $100K (in what was it, 5 weeks?!) to free Blender, surely if given enough time we could raise a million for say, a Superbowl or Oscar ad in 2004. I'm sure there's more than one corporate competitor of Microsoft's that wouldn't mind kicking Bill in the financial balls by making a modest contribution to the OO.o publicity effort.
I can see the ad now...
"Coming up next, the Oscar for Best Picture..."
CUT TO BLACK.
FADE UP:
MEDIUM SHOT OF a SILVER CD-ROM on a DESK with "openoffice.org" scrawled in BLACK SHARPIE.
AS WE SLOWLY ZOOM IN TO THE CD-ROM...
ANNOUNCER: Hey, America. Four hundred bucks is too much to pay for Office software, don't you think? But now there's an alternative you can download for free and copy for your friends. It's called OpenOffice.org. The people who make the "monopoly" version of Office don't want you to know about it. But we do. So visit www.Openoffice.org and give it a try. This message was paid for by thousands of Internet users around the world who thought you should know about alternatives to supporting the monopoly.
TEXT: "OpenOffice.org -- A free alternative"
FADE TO BLACK.
I'd put ten bucks in for this ad. Just the articles ABOUT the ad and how it was financed would be great publicity.
(Oh, and I hereby release all the text above under the open content license, v1.0.)
M$ is a big player in XML. Now they now have to either continue the pro-XML strategy and acknowledge that XML will commoditize their precious proprietary files (hastening the decay of the M$ monopoly), or "embrace and extend" the XML used by Office into something that looks like XML but isn't.
As a desperation ploy, they could use XML file formats, leaving the tags in plain text but encrypting the data. Any competetive products trying to work with the file would be face the wrath of DMCA.
Ignore all of the obvious issues about the value of the .DOC monopoly. Consider instead that the name of the working group is the same as the name of a product that competes with yours and that the working group has pretty much decided that the file format will be based upon the file format of that competitor.
In other words, Microsoft would be participating in the canonization of the file format of not only a competing product but an open source competing product. Can you really blame them from seeing that as a no-win situation?
I wish the standardizers and coders the best of luck and I would love to see them succeed. But I'm sure none of them are naive enough to have expected Microsoft to participate. Only the scandal-hungry hounds at CNet and Slashdot consider this news.
Well, my business spending coupled with them being the bastard of the industry (and pissing everyone off) will. I (and I'm certain that I'm not alone), use OpenOffice/StarOffice and I'll only do business with people that can use my document format (I'm the spender). When some sales-drone asks for a document from me, I give it to him in OpenOffice format. If he can't open it, that's his problem, not mine. By using software that adhere's to industry standards wherever possible, I'm doing my share to help combat non-compliant data bullying. Whenever possible I spend my money on companies that support open source. The only way I can truly affect change (in a meaningful way) is with my wallet.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
There is alot of interoperability and software that uses Word and Office automation so it's not going to kill it.
However, MS definitely isn't going to want to lose any market share to the home/student market who have no need for such things.
as digitaly signed documents are coming, there comes a question like "should i sign a document in proprietary format if i dont know exactly what the specs include" ? With XML i know or can find. This is not only about marketshare...
I have been involved with 2 "from Office" migrations, one from MS Office to Star Office, another to OpenOffice.org. The first move involved showing two secretaries, 6 library workers, one tech, and an admin Star Office. Since they were born this century and have been introduced to desktop computing, learning how to click different looking buttons was not hard for them and navigate run-of-the-mill menus. It took less then a day to "train" them. The second move was for a small office of about 6 people to OpenOffice.org. It was likewise painless and fast.
I understand that each company will have the trademark little old lady that is almost unable to learn new tricks, or the gung-ho MS fan that will whine all the way through, but that really shouldn't be a major issue to a seasoned IT pro - just business as usual. The "high training cost and time" to move to OOo is just FUD.
It would be much smarter of Microsoft to participate; then they can obfuscate and delay the new standard. Their refusal to participate makes me suspect that perhaps they beleive they have some patents that might apply, and don't want to get accused of acting like Rambus when they spring the patents on the committee to try to shut down the new standard.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Except when embedded in a sig, but I guees you knew that ;-)
Microsoft Office file formats are the lynchpin to their dominance of the computer software world.
I am amazed that so many people who should know better - all of the /.ers who claim to be clued in - believe this tripe. Let me enlighten everybody who has fallen for this line...
First, do any of you out there remember a software company named Claris? For those of you who don't, Claris was the software division of Apple, and was responsible for programs such as MacWrite, MacDraw, MacPaint, etc. Claris not only had proprietary file formats for all of its software, they had inside knowledge of every detail of the Mac - the OS, the hardware, everything. What happened to them?
MacWrite was killed off rather effectively by - you could see this coming, right? - Word Perfect and Microsoft Word.
MacDraw was buried completely by Adobe Illustrator.
MacPaint was annihilated by Adobe Photoshop.
The lesson here is simple. If Claris, which had access to every facet of their only target platform could not dominate the Mac software market with proprietary file formats and exclusive knowledge of the OS, no one can.
Microsoft Office will not be taken down because its file formats are open, or because a 'standard' format comes along. Office - and this applies to pretty much anything - will be beaten by something better.
And as an aside, MS Windows is the dominant OS out there because - and think on this for a bit - there was no alternative to Win95 at the time it was introduced. Where was Linux at? BeOS? I owned a Mac IIfx, and it cost three times as much as a PC at the time. No alternative there.
Or, put trays of OpenOffice CD-ROMs at checkout counters everywhere for 99 cents.
Moving to XML will make their formats more accesible -- it might not make much difference to a serious implementor, but it will make it much easier for the average perl hacker to do something with their documents.
When the wrapper is XML, but the data still looks like this "r1M@d2S_JBu Smyf-TCL", what will a perl hacker be able to do with it?
I can understand how they've done their best to eliminate the competition with regards to browsers and operating systems ... but Office??
Does anyone have any actual details on what they did with Office that was so anticompetitive?
Propiatory document formats as a reason don't cut it, other manufacturers use that sort of thing (insert any non-MS package under the sun here) - the only reason it's so widespread is because of the massive take up of Word at a time when the competition was, quite frankly, rubbish.
But I've never read anything about them exercising anti-competitive behavours with word - more that the entire world and his dog have become so entrenched with the .doc format, that MS don't need to actually do anything.
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It's inevitable. All free software has to be is good enough and it'll make massive inroads into MS's office and OS monopolies. XP and Office together retail for more that twice the price of a basic PC. The dam will burst when major OEMs start bundling non-MS OS and applications with their computers in order to boost their paper-thin margins. Naturally MS knows the value of being the default and gives massive discounts to OEMs, but even 10% of retail is a lot more than free.
I don't know about you guys, but OOo is more than good enough for my needs. So is Mozilla. So is Linux. Not even taking into account the traditional free software advantages (interoperability, stability, security, no spyware or excessive restrictions, etc.), it's a matter of time before free software becomes the standard.
It's simple economics: Money talks, bulls**t walks.