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."

Comments

No GPL?

[Anonymous Coward]

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 ?

Re:Nope, too little, too late. :)

[crazy blade]

MS would have to compete on merits, not on their monopoly, from now on. That doesn't sound something MS would want to do.

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.

Re:Nope, too little, too late. :)

[SanityInAnarchy]

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.

Re:Nope, too little, too late. :)

[Jason Earl]

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.