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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?"
Extend and embrace. (tm)
Microsoft must have doing that type of thing, they love to keep everything to themselves. They even copy writted the tabbing process, ah well, what can be done
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.
Will it be possible for openoffice to *read* (not write) these files under the new licensing restrictions. If not, then they are not open enough for exchangability. Write support I can understand MS wanting to keep proprietary. The old non-XML format is used as the lowest common denominator between nearly all word processors/spreadsheat applications. However, I would like to see this MS-XML fail due to OOo's XML, and eventually force MS to include support.
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
I did RTFA and it's a little unclear as to whether this is what's actually happening or not, but I can certainly hope.
"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.
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PJ at groklaw has a good read on this at1 8070774.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050114
The devil is in the licensing details, but maybe Microsoft has [decided|been forced] to play nice in order to not be excluded.
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.
Bribes.
... so what are the terms of this new licensing model?
Is the new license only available in Massachusetts, or did the State work on Microsoft to get them to open the formats for everyone?
If it's a state-only thing, then Microsoft knows it already lost, and is just doing damage control, no?
Microsoft is no longer the monopoly. They can't enforce their ideas, "either you do it our way or not at all"
I'd disagree with that. Microsoft is still the monopoly insofar as relatively few large installations of Windows/Office have seriously contemplated switching. But I reckon MS have seen the future, and have deduced that unless they tread very carefully, they're not in it.
Monopoly or not, this amounts to the same thing - they're suddenly forced to compete. Not something Microsoft is terribly experienced or indeed good at, so it'll be interesting to see if (how?) they adapt.
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.
If the state was able to eliminate spending completely on software, the state IT department's budget would be considerably lessened. In a bureaucracy like the Mass State government, the larger your budget, the more power you have. So when faced with the option of suddenly cutting their budget requirements by a large amount, of course the suits jumped at an offer that allowed them to maintain the prestige of spending massive amounts.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
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.
Even the big guys have to compete sometimes. About 1988 or 1989, IBM was making the PS/2 line, which was 3.5 floppy only. You could get an external 5.25 floppy (low density), but it was expensive and a PITA.
A lot of people wanted 5.25 internal at that time and IBM said 'NO'. Our way or the Highway.
All of the sudden a large number of major corporations and *Government* agencies were buying computers with a specification that said 'Internal 5.25 HD FDD'. I was actually at a event where an IBM rep was trying to tell a major customer that they didn't really need this. One of the effects of this was to automatically remove IBM from the bid process.
Sometime in 1989 or 1990, IBM introduced a 5.25 internal HD FDD for the model 80.
The Moral of this Story?
If enough people wave enough money that someone can't touch, it get's their attention. Even Microsoft.
eric
from the link in CRN that TFA referes to : "[Microsoft] has made representation to us recently [that] they're planning to modify that license, and if they're to do so, ..."
For those that were fooled by the language of the story and TFA to think that this is done
Microsoft is losing customers, particularly European and American state governments, because they don't like Microsoft. Microsoft really does have the best office suite in a technical sense. OO.o is generally less intuitive, and has less features (particularly in spreadsheets, but even the word processor lacks much advanced functionality). Costs are hard to judge, but most studies suggest that using a free office suite instead of MS Office won't pay off over the time periods that corporations and governments make long range financial plans. Switching to OO.o is about politics, not technical or financial superiority.
It's also difficult to switch right now, partially because of proprietary lock-in to the file format. That's one of the things that makes switching so expensive (although probably not the major one, with OO.o import filters being somewhat decent). Customers want to be free to switch. They also want to be free to generate documents from sources other than MS Office and import them natively, and they want to be able to process documents using their own custom tools. Open file formats help all of those things, and so customers are happy.
Microsoft really wants to make customers happy. Opening file formats helps, so Microsoft is doing that. There are risks; if customers continue to hate Microsoft, and Microsoft makes it easier to switch away from them, the obvious result is losing customers. The upside is that they may make customers happy, convincing more to stay. Being a nice guy is directly connected to making customers happy.
From an open-source community view, opening file formats is good. It makes interoperability easier. By itself, though, it's not enough to make customers happy, or to make Microsoft a friend to the OSS community. More moves are necessary, and what they are and when (if ever) the will come is still a big question.
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.
Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult;
whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse.
--Proverbs 9:7
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
Oh, you can't do that?
Well, I'm sure you can at least get Firefox pre-installed.
Oh, not that either?
What this is is Microsoft attempting to prevent a State from breaking away from the Microsoft monopoly.
The proprietary, binary extensions in MS's version of XML are patented. That gives MS a lot of power when agreeing to a deal like this.
Just look at MS's work to "extend" SPF and how their license was determined not to be Free enough.
The list of approved formats include
If it passes with MS's formats allowed, then it won't.
I hate how much effort it is to even pull plain text out of Word and Powerpoint documents.
:-) of advice for organizations who must use Microsoft office: OpenOffice.org has a batch processing option to recursively search nested directories for Word documents and write out fairly equivalent OpenOffice.org Writer documents (that use a very nice XML format). If I had a company with thousands of Word documents on my servers, I would have an automatic "save to OpenOffice.org, then archive" backup strategy and not have my long term Document store backups in native Word format.
I just finished up work on a commercial Java text mining package and I spent far too long on code to read Word and Powerpoint files while handling PDF, OpenOffice.org, and AbiWord was fairly simple.
I do have a word (no pun intended
It is not going to happen, but I would love to see pressure from user groups and governments force Microsoft to use the OASIS open XML based document formats. If Microsoft really wanted to give maximum value to their customers, then they would do this on their own (yes, just wishful thinking).
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.
Gee, it's almost as if Microsoft were a business, and the market is forcing them to change their practices to stay profitable...
Imagine that.
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
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
What are you talking about? I realize this is a visceral reaction and probably won't do anything for my karma...
.DOC format. Despite the ubiquity of the software, there's no guarantee that anything other than MS Office will be able to read those files in the future.
Of course this isn't any positive sign that MS wants to kill F/OSS projects; they've put it out in black and white. It should never be forgotten, though, that what is really a threat to the MS business model is the whole ideology behind F/OSS. It's much classier to knock Linux as a program than to knock the idea of open-source as evil. Freedom is supposed to be treasured in the US, and MS has a harder job arguing freedom-supporting programmers are communisits than they do arguing Linux is an inferior product with remarkably higher TCO.
Notice that this is MS being willing to open up a file format that is (already? or going to be) obsoleted by their Office production cycle in no time at all. They're talking here about handing out specs to a file format they're ready to break, anyway. Not much magnanimity to be had there, eh?
It's important for end users of MS Office to understand the works they create therein are essentially co-opted by Microsoft into its latest, obfusticated
It's a mealymouth argument, but a couple good slogans would really help... Something like "[OpenOffice, Gnumeric, AbiWord]: Becuase they're your documents."
This is actually what the EU commission thinks is an open standard:
It's a very strict definition. For example, PDF doesn't qualify as an Open Standards, because it's controlled by Adobe and doesn't have an open decision-making procedure
I think Microsoft is pretty scared about this, because most EU member states are going to use this definition, together with previous or future decisions to move to Open Standards. That would mean that MS Office either has to support these Open Standards or it will just be replaced by software that does.
Otherwise, this is just a scam to
Massachusetts should insist on *open* formats, not PR gimmicks. If that one company can take the keys to unlocking public data to its grave, where will that leave MA after all that investment? Not to mention, what are the privacy ramifactions of a format that phones home for every read, write, open, close, save, copy, print, and mail?
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
> 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.
-- 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.
Why should they, if they can get away without taking the time?
Information wants to be free.
Entertainment wants to be paid.
You just want to be cheap.
I am the paying customer who has made you rich.
You shall have no other priorities before me.
You shall not make for yourself a priority in the form of monopoly or world domination. You shall not seek them; for I, the paying customer, am a demanding customer, punishing the bottom line for the sin of management to the third and fourth product lines of those who are greedy, but showing love to a thousand product lines of those who love me and keep my commandments.
You shall not lock-in the customer, for the customer will not hold anyone guiltless who locks him in.
Remember the law by keeping it holy. Within the law you shall labor and do all your work, but outside the law you shall do no business. Outside the law you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your employee, nor your contractor, nor your family. For the customer is a citizen who has taken part in creating and maintaing the law, but he despises criminals. Therefore the customer blessed the law and made it holy.
Honor the open standards, so that you may live long in the profits the customer is giving you.
You shall not make buggy, insecure, or generally bad products.
You shall not conspire with or attack other businesses.
You shall not steal.
You shall not deceive anyone.
You shall not covet the paying customer's remaining cash. You shall not overcharge him, obsolete his product, break his systems, or covet anything that belongs to your paying customer.
Do to others as you would have them do to you, for this sums up my commandments.
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.
Case #1. Microsoft fails to get their file formats approved. No problem.
Case #2. Microsoft succeeds in getting their file formats approved.
a. We will need a clean TEST IMPLEMENTATION of
1a. Reader
2a. Writer
b. We will need a way to document any variations between Microsoft's output/input and the Test Implementation.
I don't trust Microsoft NOT to break the published "standard" in small, but important ways.
If Microsoft gets this included, then their program's output must be validated against the standard. If it doesn't meet the standard, then it isn't an option for the government.
And with every Hotfix and ServicePack, Microsoft has the option to introducing irregularities to their output/input.
Learn from the past. Microsoft did similar crap with the beta of Windows 3.0 and DR-DOS.
The REAL problem is that Microsoft will get their file formats approved, get their software into use, then start changing the format they save in. Just a little with each "update".
Eventually, the "open" format is just as proprietary as their closed format is now.
How can anybody trust a company that desperately begs you not to use open formats?
Why doesn't Microsoft open its formats, and remove all restrictions?
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
> 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