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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)
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.
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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?
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
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
Long answer: Is this question just another move to ask rhetorical but inflammatory questions on the front page?
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.
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.
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
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.
The problem for Microsoft is the domino effect.
OpenOffice.org 2.0 will make it even more difficult for them. I currently use the development versions and I must tell you, they are a giant leap. The advantage of MS-Office melts away. Governments now know that they have to consider using OpenOffice to get discounts for MS-Office. But soon OpenOffice will be a superiour choice.
MS responds here, it does not set the agenda, it does not embrace it reacts to a policy drift out of their control.
> 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.
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.