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Microsoft Opening Office XML Formats
sriram_2001 writes "Microsoft has opened up the XML schemas for Office 2003, thereby silencing a lot of criticism. This could potentially open the way for several government contracts as certain governments have made open standards (and not open-source) a pre-requisite.
In their FAQ, Microsoft not only says that open source developers can distribute software built using them, but also that they'll make all future updates available using the same terms.
Here is the Official Microsoft Site and CRN
and Techworld have stories about it."
.. I'd have to look at the license before I rejoice about this news. If Microsoft really did open up it's document format that would be a big bonus for everyone..
But in the back of my mind, I've got a feeling this is "embrace and extend" all over again. They might well give the outward appearence of openness while in fact restricting the license in such a way that it really doesn't change the situation.
I don't know.. i just can't trust a convicted monopolist with this stuff.
Simon.
I was interested by this section :
"Q. Can I distribute a licensed program under an open source software license?
A.
Yes. There are many open source licenses available in the developer community. One useful place to review the various licenses that have been approved by the open source community is at Open Source Initiative.
The terms and conditions of these licenses differ in material respects. We believe you can distribute your program under many open source software licenses so long as you include the notices described in the licenses for the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas. On the other hand, some open source licenses may include specific constraints or restrictions that might preclude development under the Office 2003 XML Reference Schema licenses. You should check with your legal counsel if you have questions about a particular open source software license."
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesnt this preclude them being used in GPL works? Wasnt it something like this i.e. an advertising clause, which lead to the forking of XFree86 ?
The word is lose, first of all.
And I don't think Microsoft is really afraid of Open Office... I tried using Open Office, and after a day of trying to figure out how to do what I did in MSOffice, I just went back to using MSOffice. It does what I need it to do and how I need it done.
And your comment about the "road to switching" is pretty funny. That would be like saying "Installing and using eMule is "along the road to switching" because it's open source.
Maybe your IPs were banned for a reason?
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Do NOT underestimate the significance of this!
This is a major loss for Microsoft, as they have been coerced by Mass. (and others, probably) to loose one of their major lock-in mechanisms.
Sure, they have ot GPLed Window$, and Bill has not waved the white flag. But it's a big big move in the right direction.
The catch is that in the short term the States of Massachusettes will continue using Microsoft products, since the reason MS opened up their format was bcos to comply with the state's policy. But in the end, this is good for competition and overall a Good Thing (tm).
Now interoperatability will no longer be a problem, we'll start alot of alternatives to Office, including in other OS platform. So the effect of this move goes beyond Office alone, it also promotes the usage of altenative OS platforms! Nice one Bill, you finally did good this time round.
You can only use the 'patented and copyrighted' scheme when you 'include the notices described in the license for Office 2003'.
This makes it GPL incompatible. Period.
Next!
Yes indeed. But think about it: do they really have a choice?
Since governments are requiring use of open standards, it seems only reasonable that they would be forced to do that. Every corporation has transactions with government(s), so they would be forced to either support some other office format, or open up their own. Of the two options, opening up their own format is the smarter one: given their current dominance it is more likely that other office suites will employ it for reasons of compatibility, which removes the stress and cost of adding support for an open format from MS. In addition, MS can keep developing its format and let others play catch-up every time it rolls out some new version of it.
To err is human, but to forgive is beyond the scope of the Operating System...
I thought XML support in Office was limited to the Enterprise versions (and possibly the professional version). Can the cheaper home/academic versions of Office produce or read XML?
Go somewhere random
If it's not compatible with GPL, couldn't people then just write a non-GPL ms-XML plugin for a GPL package, which is downloaded seperate in order to circumvent incompatibility with the GPL?
The catch is they'll get the contracts signed, and they will release the schemas for the future versions of Word Documents, but after this revision they'll probably rename Word to something else to get out of their obligation.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
Where's the catch?
Remember the discussions a while back about MS patenting some of their XML encoding schemes? This could well be part of a nefarious plot. Sorta like what happened with the GIF format, y'know. We all start writing software that uses some of MS's XML, some of our software is widely used, and then 10 years from now, MS says "Oh, BTW, you're violating several of our patents. Yes, we said you could use the open parts of our XML, but we didn't say you could use the patented parts."
Legalities of such things can be very, very tricky. See also the various discussions here in which people confuse the various kinds of "IP", such as patent, copyright, and trade secret. Permission to use a copyrighted thing is not the same as permission to use a patented thing, and that's different from permission to use a trade secret.
Before doing anything with any MS "IP", it might be wise to consult a good IP lawyer.
Microsoft has been applying for patents at the rate of several per day. This costs time and money. Presumably there's a reason they're doing this.
In the case of giant corporations, paranoia is always in order. They can easily bankrupt the rest of us with legal fees.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
.. would be if they would be forced by market or legislative pressure to implement the OpenDocument standard, either as a default or optional export format.
As it is, they keep *their* format and anyone wishing to make interoperable software is forced to write to *their* format. It's me, me, me across the board.
Two steps forward (.doc->XML), three steps backwards(M$ proprietary XML), two steps forward (licensable M$ XML).
Apart from the fact that we now have probably a documented format and XML to ease support for it, we've reached the same status quo of a few years back.
I've seen two good "catches", but let me propose another one -- trusted computing. They can open the document format all they want, but even if they only use standard PGP encryption, they can still lock it down later by making certain "copy-protected" documents available only to a trusted copy of Word running on a trusted PC.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Mod this up. That's the most crucial question here: whether XML will be the default format. Currently, I don't think it is.
Microsoft taking advantage of people's ignorance has always been the lock-in mechanism, and that's not going to change unless the defaults change to be open.
The point that you are missing is that Microsoft isn't really competing with WordPerfect or OpenOffice.org in the office suite arena. When it comes to office suites Microsoft is primarily competing with old versions of MS Office. Most MS Office users are still using MS Office 2000 (or earlier) that don't read the fancy new XML formats. If Microsoft can get the U.S. (and other) governments to adopt their new XML formats then millions of MS Office users will have to upgrade to a new office suite that reads the new formats. Some of these folks might take advantage of OpenOffice.org or WordPerfect's ability to read these file formats (assuming that these programs do a fairly good job of reading and writing these formats), but most will simply purchase new copies of MS Office.
When Microsoft changed their MS Office formats in Office 97 lots of Microsoft customers were very very upset. This time around Microsoft knew that it couldn't force customers into a format change, and so it is doing everything in its power to convince folks to start using the new formats. Everyone deals with the government, and so making the XML formats a government standard actually works in Microsoft's best interests. The fact that the formats are open is basically a red herring. Microsoft knows that its competitors are going to reverse engineer their formats no matter what happens. Microsoft also knows that using the patents that they have offensively would be an expensive PR disaster. Lots of large organizations would get nervous about MS formats if Microsoft started suing people.
Microsoft wants people to use their XML formats. The fact that this also will help keep OpenOffice.org's formats out of the government sector is nothing more than a bonus. Microsoft is far more worried that people will continue to use Office 97 indefinitely than it is about OpenOffice.org taking over the world.
I don't see the magic words there like: sub-licensable, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable. Maybe they do this in the actual license, but it doesn't say that in the paragraph that you quoted. Without it being sub-licensable and irrevocable, it's no good for GPLed and other free software.
And I don't think Microsoft is really afraid of Open Office... I tried using Open Office, and after a day of trying to figure out how to do what I did in MSOffice, I just went back to using MSOffice. It does what I need it to do and how I need it done.
That's funny, because I prefer OO to MSO now for many things... the only thing I can't stand about OO Calc is how if I select an area and hit ^X for cut, the cursor stays at the bottom right of the selected block instead of the top left... I mean if I must want to move a block over a few places it's a royal pain in the ass with OO. But the other things -- ESPECIALLY database access -- are so much nicer with OO.
The storage model of Word/Excel/etc. is based around Structured Storage - the storage standard that MSFT includes with every god damn COM toolkit they distribute (including ATL7), and which they've been pushing really hard in the 90's for wider adoption. Nobody cared about it back then, and then XML came in and people started to care even less. The point is, the structure of Word files is not as closed as some would like to think. It's the OLE objects (which in turn use structured storage as well) that make things difficult. But putting their data as binary blobs within XML ain't gonna fix that.
BTW, the word on the street is, the next version of Office will save all its files in XML. Yep, that's right. XML will be default. Now whether or not it will be compatible with XML Office 2003 understands - that's another question.
we don't need a human-readable data format, we just need a format that is human readable with the correct viewing software. xml is a waste of resources: bandwidth, storage, processing.
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Sir, I am impressed, your legal prowess is surpassed only by your deductive reasoning.
The last time I looked it didn't look like Word could make the round trip between Word's internal representation and XML. You can import and XML file and you can export programmatically constructed bits but you CANNOT EDIT the document and then export the whole document as XML such that you can manipulate it and then reimport the XML and end up with what you started minus the changes. Without this "round-trip" capability Word's XML capability is basically useless for many apps.