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Microsoft Eases Licensing On Office 2003 Formats
kfiller writes "Microsoft has negotiated a deal with the state of Massachusetts to lower licensing restrictions on the Excel and Word XML formats in Office 2003, in exchange for the state to reconsider their focus on adopting 'open standards' to adopting 'open formats'. Is this just another move to encroach on the open source community?"
state: We're going to go to open formats!
MS: Psst.. if you pay us, you can stay with closed formats instead! You know, the ones we use to squeeze you for $$$ ever other year?
state: Great idea! We love paying to be locked in!
Bah.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
They are trying to get Microsoft jealous by flirting with opensource to get Microsoft to lower their prices. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
"Is this just another move to encroach on the open source community?"
Well...yes. Why would you expect Microsoft to do anything different? Open source is one of Microsoft's primary competitors - they're certainly not going to do anything to help it along.
This space intentionally left blank.
For all software developers to use documented, open, royalty-free standards for file and other information interchange formats?
If the formats are open, then anyone can write software to read and write them. Surely this is at least a good first step in that direction?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
... so what are the terms of this new licensing model?
Is the state of Massachusetts stupid enough to drop the long term benefits of open standards and open formats for an indeterminate, short term gain?
Since with proprietary software there is always kickbacks involved, you just have to stir that up with a few politicians and my money is on the state going for the MS "solution".
I'm cynical because I've seen a lot of governments (esp. UK) talk a lot about open formats but it just doesn't happen. Hence, UK govt sites being littered with .doc's :(
The Machine stops.
Policy makers in general really don't understand the differences between open source, shared source or open standards or open formats. And maybe they don't even care most of the time, since the majority of their voters also do not understand or do not care. They can present this as a victory, while only a small minority cares about the details.
actually hes right, this is a perfect example of competition. Because of a possible substitute to their products the overall demand curve for their product diminuishes (ie movement of the curve).
Now you are right that microsoft still has a huge advantage and so the market resembles a situation of monopoly, but the fact that because of another product MS is forced to diminuish their prices just shows how even slight competition directly benefits the well-being of the customer.
You could find this as being bad news, because in the end MS gets his way, I see it as the beginning of the end of MS's quasi-monopoly!
Who knows, me might even start to see some evolution in Office software resulting from this.
Long answer: Is this question just another move to ask rhetorical but inflammatory questions on the front page?
Damn Microsoft, if you would just let us switch to Open Source without your bitching, maybe we can focus on spending less for maintaining our state systems and giving some money back to the community. I have no clue how much Mass has to pay Microsoft but I can ensure that it will always be more than just going with open source. And Microsoft's little Open Source Initiative is a joke. I'm going to try and get some of the source but I highly doubt I'd get anywhere close to it. "Ohh, you're a college student looking to find out why Windows is programmed and structured in such a bizarre manner. Sorry, only businesses whose individuals we can keep a close watch on can view our code because we know that once large enough segments of our code gets leaked, we're pretty much fucked."
"You see them trees out back, I take care of them. I'm a tree, I'm a tree wizard." - Crazy Homeless Guy
You guy love piling on to Microsoft, but don't some of you remember when nothing talked to anything else? Don't you remember what a bully IBM was when they could be? Don't you remember how IBM gouged you for software mainframe licenses that continued as long as you had those ugly beats? At least these two companies gave us some standards!!! Now, nearly anything will talk to most anything else with almost no effort on the user's part. Consumers voted for these two companies products with their dollars. Consumers got what they voted for, some interoperability standards for hardware and software that actually work! IBM for the most part has fallen by the wayside as far as PC's go --- waiting to see how this "on-demand thingy" works out. Perhaps Microsoft will become only a memory of old geezers. Open source ideas are great! I hope in the long run that it succeeds. But Bill Gates isn't really the devil, (off topic) nor is Karl Rove for that matter. At work I mostly use AIX and Solaris with some Win2K. When I am at home, give me an XP platform for my Far Cry and Half-Life2. When good games are released for Linux, then I'm onboard man... until then, I'm with Bill.
Does this mean that I can start making perfect doc format documents in Abi Word and Open Office? Where is the documentation on the open standards so we can start fixing the open source apps to be compatible with the open formats.
I will not hold my breath.
Cheers,
Adolfo
How on earth are you going to make an open standard for reading, but not writing? Either the specs are available, or they are not. If OOO is going to be able to read a format, it doesn't require much intelligence to do the opposite.
Licensing. This stuff is patented so even though writing MS-XML files may be trivial, it may be just as illegal.
Pavlov. Does this name ring a bell?
Umm . . . so because you can't get the software you want preinstalled, there's a monopoly? Face it, you'd never get anything you wanted installed because it then has to be tested & supported by the seller. This just isn't going to happen, monopoly or not.
You forgot an E.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
This is where Open Source might be a less effective rallying point than Free Software. Since Open Source encourages practical reasons why someone using software distributed with source ( like the arguments Eric Raymond gives in "The Magic Cauldron" of cost sharing, risk spreading, or the arguments that file formats are open if the code is visible, etc.), they are designed to appeal to companies and organizations that want to reduce cost and risk. Free Software is much more moralistic that computer owners should be able do as they wish with their machines, and anything less than full right to change and redistribute source code is evil.
The Massachusetts state governments IT department doesn't care about open source. What they do care about is that a MS Word document created by one of the users they support can be read by another user. Or by the same user five years later. Or that the documents can be manipulated by other tools (like automatic indexing, automatic taxonomy generation, or even virus scanners.) They used the request for "Open Standards" to solve this particular issue, and to their satisfaction Microsoft licensing changes solve this problem as well
The advantage of the practical arguments for Open Source is that one can find just need to find one of the arguments compelling to come on board. The disadvantage is that you can lose them just as easily by solving that same issue in a closed source manner. The argument for Free Software is much more absolutist, and it may be easier to get someone to join, but you won't lose them nearly as easily.
We remember Microsoft's TCP stack being a little bit different, which sped things up - if you were talking MS-to-MS. Sometimes. And sometimes it broke stuff badly.
We remember Windows explicitly not talking to DR-DOS, and the solitary little bit of encrypted code in the installer to achieve that.
We remember CIFS back when it was called LANMAN, and please pass me that bucket.
We remember last week when a customer's WinME machine refused to tune into the same wavelengths as XP SP2. We remember another customer who has to run one CAD machine on Win98SE and the other on WinME otherwise for no discernable reason they can't talk to the big plotter.
We remember MS-DOS being deliberately built to not run Lotus 1-2-3.
We remember M80 being different to every other Z80 assembler on the planet.
We remember Bill choosing \ for a path separator when everything else bar a few (VMS comes to mind) used
We remember not being able to authenticate against MS-Exchange because it only trusted Outlook's proprietary and secret authentication protocols.
We remember unilateral extensions to Kerberos that broke practically everything else using standard Kereberos.
We remember a company which knew so little about its own network protocols that it went to the Samba team for information - and today is working pretty much as hard as it can (without getting obviously unclean hands) to slow down development of that same Samba.
Odd. That's what most of the larger game developers said.
Hey, did the penny drop for you yet?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
In earnest, is anyone using Microsoft Office XML for anything?
Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH
SoftMaker Office for Windows|Linux|Android
Release all source code with no strings attached.
Maybe, we could make Windows 95 work better than they did.
Maybe, we could finally discover what a crappy piece of software internet explorer really is.
It would be interesting to see how much spaghetti code is in there.
It would also be interesting to see if they adhere to good programming ethic like commenting code, etc.
But my wager is they don't.
Actually, I've lost too much time with Microsoft problems (products) I may never like them.
Good post.
OO.o is generally less intuitive, and has less features (particularly in spreadsheets, but even the word processor lacks much advanced functionality).
IMHO, anyone with prior exposure to MS Office can't say whether or not OOo is less intuitive than MS Office. It can be less familiar if all you know is just MS Office. For either office suite to be less intuitive than the other, you'd have to test with people who have had zero exposure to said office suites.
Just a question here, what would Microsoft have to do for you to consider them to be a friendly corporation, rather than an evil and menacing corporate giant? I kind of like them already, but I know I'm unusual in that regard.
With regards to "opening up" formats, as with the MS Office XML schemas, they'd have to offer a true roalty-free license for access and use - no patent license traps. That would be a start.
Just my two cents.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
> I would INSTANTLY switch to "open source" operating systems and applications if I could find some that met my needs.
I did so years ago, and seldom if ever have a need to boot Windows due to applications that I need myself.. I do have a need for Windows due to customers using it tho.
> Who wouldn't?
Obviously many people.
There are applications to suit the needs of the average user in many cases, but the average user is not willing to invest the time in making those work and learning to use them. I did because I already had another need for open source software (well, actually for a Unix like system, and buying a sun/sgi/hp/ibm unix box was out of the question for me at that time)
What people often forget is that OSS software might be free as in beer, but you have to work a bit harder to use it for now.
Linux and FreeBSD and similar systems have come to a point where for a knowledgable user, they may be as easy or easier to install and use then Windows and even OS X, but that doesn't really help the average user. Fetting a machine with a reinstalled and preconfigured Linux desktop and modern installers for comemrcial software for Linux go a long way to making this a possibility, but as long as the default offer from your average computer shop is some x86 box with XP home, it will take a long time to get there.
Oh, and even for those who do know a bit about computers in general, a different system still takes a bit of time to get used to, and not all of them are prepared to put in that time.
Governments do not follow the same rules that a regular business does. Governments make the Laws.
To do business with a Government, the business must follow the Laws that that Government has written.
That is why Microsoft is so worried about this. If the Government mandates specific file formats, then the businesses working with/for that government will use those file formats.
And it cascades from there.
Linux and FreeBSD and similar systems have come to a point where for a knowledgable user, they may be as easy or easier to install and use then Windows and even OS X, but that doesn't really help the average user.
I sincerely hope that most government and corporate support techs are knowledgable users and that the average users have little or nothing to do with software installation.
As for day-to-day ease of use, there is almost no difference between Windows, Mac or Linux desktops. Even retraining is on the order of "You used to click the blue circle, now you click the orange star."
Of course there will be resistance to changing systems but, as long as you are on the MS treadmill, you get that every two to three years anyways. Assuming the users' apps are more or less the same, their stress should be no worse than the "acceptable" level produced by an MS-MS transition (for the average user there are more differences between '98 and XP than between XP and KDE).
> Why should they, if they can get away without taking the time?
Except for the few cases where such applications are actually better (asterisk comes to mind) or the comemrcial applications are very expensive (and the user does not want to pirate the software), none for the average user. The argument that the applications don't exist is usually not true however.
For some users having a lot more control over what their computer runs is a good argument either for technical or political or ideological reasons.
Whats wrong with this picture?
"Massachusetts Consumer Protection Litigation Case"
Plaintiffs allege that Microsoft unlawfully used anticompetitive means to maintain a monopoly in markets for certain software, and that as a result, it overcharged Massachusetts consumers who licensed its MS-DOS, Windows, Word, Excel and Office software. Microsoft denies Plaintiffs allegations and believes that it developed and sold high quality and innovative software products at fair and reasonable prices. The parties settled the case, and on June 28, 2004, the Court conditionally certified a Settlement Class (defined in the notice) and preliminarily approved the Settlement Agreement. The Court will decide whether to grant final approval of the Settlement at a hearing on December 3, 2004.
Ok, let me get this straight in my head. You're saying that because Microsoft et al were forced by the market to create some sort of workable (but still mostly proprietary) "standards" so that the market would buy their products, that makes them the good guys? If someone does something that approximates doing the right thing because they are forced to do so, that doesn't automatically make them deserving of any support or respect. Especially since, in almost every technology you look at, the "interoperability" that Microsoft came up with was only interoperable with other Microsoft products (to further their own advancement), and/or actively broke or destroyed the usefulness of other REAL standards developed by the community at large. That should not be acceptable behavior.
The so-called standards developed by Microsoft were always about winning more market share. You are a fool if you think Microsoft has ever cared about you as a customer having better interoperability with any non-Microsoft technology. Never has such a thing come to pass unless they literally had no choice. It has ALWAYS been about trying to keep you from using anything not owned by them. It's not even about money, it's about winning at any cost while crushing the competition by any means.
No, sir, your view of computing history has some rather large holes in it. Microsoft has done FAR more harm than good with regards to advancing the computing industry as a whole. The purpose of all their proprietary technologies like ActiveX was to attempt to take absolute control over the entire Internet, such that any person connecting to the general web would require an operating system and web browser created by Microsoft. The secondary purpose is always to thwart the development or continued use of open standards. Let us never forget either of these things.
Additionally, by refusing to support the real web standards like CSS 1/2, they have now held back the advancement of web development technology by years. A website that can be developed with web standards in 2 weeks to be compatible with all other web browsers will then take an additional 10 weeks to be modified to work around every broken standard and quirk and unsupported standard in Internet Explorer. Every company that has to pay even a single web developer should be mad as hell at Microsoft for all the money they have to pay out for extra development time. Go ahead, try coding to the standards and see how well your website works with IE compared to every other browser.
You say nearly anything will talk to nearly anything else at this point? That's funny, I don't see Microsoft Windows understanding AppleTalk networks, or ANY non-Windows filesystem, even though such things have been around for a minimum of 15 years. (Servers running Services for Mac don't count. The common Windows PC can't talk to a Mac or read any disk with a Mac filesystem, even though it's worked in the other direction for at least a decade.) I don't see any application that can claim reliable compatibility with any Microsoft Office file format.
Yeah, TCP/IP works, big whoop. That part was a basic necessity for the computing world at large to move forward back in 1990. It's also not a Microsoft-developed standard, it was developed by a consortium of companies back in the 80s when they decided they had no choice but to figure out some way to work together at a basic level. There were just too many low-level networking technologies in competition. Again, the market forced the creation of a standard way of doing things, but only at a low level.
At every layer on top of that, Microsoft continues to be basically incompatible in myriad ways with everyone else on the planet. Applications, file formats, filesystems, network protocols, etc. If they come from Microsoft, they are all based on the "screw you if you aren't using Microsoft" philosophy, unless they had no choice but to build in some compatibility. You are so wrong about the current compatibility level and where it came from, it's not even