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Microsoft Office Formats Not Really Being Opened
Contradicting this earlier article claiming otherwise, smith_barney writes "Contrary to reports, Microsoft is not opening up its proprietary Office XML schemas. Essentially, the state of Massachusetts is simply repositioning what it considers an 'open format.' According to a report in BetaNews, Microsoft told the state it would ease licensing restrictions, but only for 'end users who merely open and read government documents.' This hasn't stopped Microsoft from tooting its horn, but Jupiter Research senior analyst Joe Wilcox says, 'Buzz about so-called open formats is little more than PR FUD.'"
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along
That is probablly what your going to get when you try to work with one of these "open" formats from MS.
Microsoft not opening their formats!? Shocker!!! Is anyone in the least bit surprized by this?
Creative Demolition
Bush not really a Muslim.
Babies not really delivered by storks.
Bears do not actually have modern sanitation.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Looks like an 'open and shut' case to me...
Seriously, how many people need stuff in Office that isn't in OpenOffice.org?
The fun guns, once again.
Almost everyone uses Microsoft Office as opposed to the various flavors of OpenOffice, StarOffice, etc. Not speaking of its fairness, this is a very effective strategy from Microsoft and not at all surprising.
It's a blatant abuse of their virtual monopoly, but there hasn't really been an effective incentive for them to stop taking such actions in the past. Why would they refrain from continuing such behavior?
I'm a big tall mofo.
Why don't Slashdot editors do all their research before writing an article instead of posting a retraction the next day?
"open" is a four letter word, and to Mr. Gates, it is an obscene four letter word.
www.eFax.com are spammers
If this is their understanding of an open format, then what would a closed format be in Microsoft's book? A write-only one?
Man is a slave because freedom is difficult, whereas slavery is easy.
I would think that even the NEW Office will still be able to create good ol' .doc files, so wouldn't it burn their biscuits if people just continued to use that instead? (They'll make some minor feature .newdoc only -playing solitaire while working on a doc?- and everyone will use it, anyway, no wishful thinking here...)
Microsoft is joking with us again or we are joking with ourself on beliving this?
http://www.michel.eti.br
"..it is our expectation that the next iteration of the Open Format standard will include some Microsoft proprietary formats."
**TILT**
I guess Proprietary is Open and War is Peace?
Let us all hope that Massachusetts doesn't accept Microsoft's formats if they aren't completely open when it undertakes its review of the decision. If Microsoft are seen to have open office formats in the eye of the public when they are not really open, it can only be a bad thing for OpenDocument and other truly open efforts.
Everyone who lives in MA, go and write to your appropriate representative now!
One good turn - gets all the covers.
Bill said "Suprise! what did you expect fuckers?" :-) *bang goes my karma!*
Really, Microsoft always say they will do some things, to basically spread FUD, to make managers have an excuse for not jumping ship.
Why do they do this?
Hmmm, lets read my crystal ball, aaaah here is a M$ press release:
"Closed format is more secure! Plus it locks you into Office, which we have no bundled with Windows, which is now etched into the core of every processor! *stiffled manic laughter*"
Translation:
"We really don't want to allow people to easily leave Office behind and we want to make it harder for OpenOffice to import etc, because when people realise they don't need office, we will loose money
Also we don't want people to easily crack our DRM and embarrass us as we extort money from publishing companies and spread FUD amongst authors, so people can no longer read stuff without money coming to us
Plus world domination is fun!"
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
http://openoffice.org/
Isn't this like saying, "we wrote the English Dictionary so no one is allowed to read English without our approval?" To me, if you want to copyright an idea for a product, go ahead, if you want to protect intelluctual property, that's fine too, but formats for files? Come on! So what if my program can read and write files that your program reads and writes. As long as I didn't take your way of writing those files, I should be fine.
VD
Office can't open its own formats? Thats insane! ;)
Try like ctrl-o (or File->Open)
Might work
Fucking a fat girl is like riding a scooter... it's fun 'til someone sees you.
Could we all endeavor to remember that "FUD" is an acronym for "fear, uncertainty, and doubt" and not simply a synonym for "lying". There is little of the usual Microsoft "end of the world" blather here; it's just deceptive marketing.
In other words, business as usual.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I installed Open Office for a staff member of a customer's company. She had been using a computer with Microsoft Word before. She didn't notice that anything had changed.
Probably a lot of us on Slashdot are very sensitive to GUI design, but many people aren't.
Mr. Wilcox's criteria of openness seem to be unduly strict. His definition of "open" is something like "submitted to a standards body, and is public domain". If there's a license attached, however permissive, then (in his view) it's closed and proprietary. I can understand his position, but it's not the only one possible.
There is already a truly open office format developed by OASIS.
Microsoft can read the writing on the wall and is trying to combat a truly open standard with their patent encumbered version.
What we need is OASIS support everywhere, including M$ Office. We need to develop plug-ins with easy/friendly install and stick them on a website so that even a novice user will be able to get it on their system and be able to share OASIS docs.
1) crawl to the File menu
2) click on Open document
3) select a document
Voila... the document is now open. Yes it's THAT simple.
Home of Faramir Paint Shop Pro scripts
It's using open standards! They support open standards and they made a lot of people happy, just by claiming that. So now people can say, 'see, MS supports open standards'! The only problem is, that their file format is closed. It is in fact, if I remember correctly even patented.
... or just moronic.
Pretty much oxymoronic to me...
The Sig, the sig
<office>??????????????</office>
</xml>
The MS Office open XML file format consists of an XML branch, followed by an Office branch.
Unfortunately, due to the complexities of parsing this branch, it should be passed directly as a parameter into our improved Office ActiveX object.
We are currently developing an addin for firefox as well.
Thank you for looking at this documentation, that will be all.
liqbase
The Future Is Open: What OpenDocument Is And Why You Should Care ~ by Daniel Carrera
How do you verify the accuracy of Slashdot stories?
Boring, I know. But I live here so I get to have at least one pet peeve.
Clippy.
Whoever submitted that needs to look up what FUD means. It is not a cool leet internet word for dogma. It specifically refers to disinformation about a competing product or competitor intended to damage their business.
Have the children of slashdot learned nothing from their elders?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Also OpenOffice is lacking seriously in user friendlieness in 1 point (see http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=1 820)
It affects many users and has serious consequences for business. We tried and promoted OpenOffice to some of our customers but they decided to switch back to MS Excel because of the "Decimal point is seperator" option which is lacking in OO.
Seriously, if OO only fixed this bug first before anything else, I could go and install OO on about 100 computers easily.
The last version of Microsoft Word I used was in Office 2000. I got tired of it because it is so quirky with layout.
Open Office is a bit quirky, too, and they are different quirks. Many times people forget the many, many hours they spent learning to avoid the Office 2000 quirks. They want Open Office to be perfect, and they have forgotten how imperfect Microsoft Word is.
If you test Open Office, be sure you test the latest version, 1.1.4. Version 2.0 will be available in April or May of this year.
It's understandable that people who have invested hours in learning Microsoft Word don't want to invest hours again. They just want to get the job done. On the other hand, it would be crazy for the Open Office developers to implement the hundreds of ways Microsoft Office is quirky.
Generally, when you send documents outside your company, you should send PDF files. That guards against accidental changes. To do this in Open Office, just click the PDF icon in the toolbar. To do this in Microsoft Word, install an extra-cost package.
"...Massachusetts is simply repositioning what it considers an 'open format.' [...] This hasn't stopped Microsoft from tooting its horn [...]'Buzz about so-called open formats is little more than PR FUD.'"
Although the borg are doing something bad, this time they are doing it by making something bad of theirs sound good, instead of making something good of someone else's sound bad. Should there be a word which represents the contrapositive of "FUD"? Like LAC, for Lying About Crap, or something? (maybe it's the inverse, not the contrapositive, it's been a while, feel free to correct me)
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
Whilst the annoucement in yesterdays /. was a licence that was gpl-incompatible, it was (afaict) within the scope of existing open licences (it didn't read too disimilar to an old-style bsd licence) - I certainly didn't notice any restrictions on writing, and since that is still up on MS's page, i'm guessing that possibly the chap quoted here was speaking unaware of that announcement. either that or MS's site was hacked or maybe I've just misread something.
"Success is based on knowing how far to go in going too far"
Actually, it looks more like a shut-and-shut case...
Attack its weak point for massive damage!
Essentially, the state of Massachusetts is simply repositioning what it considers an 'open format.'
How does Bill Gates screw in a lightbulb?
He doesn't. He declares darkness the industry standard.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Cue all the "I really need [obscure function XYZZY] in {Word, Excel}" bots from Microsoft!
Not everybody who uses M$ Office is doing trivial work, some of the secretaries where I work use it's advanced features to save immense amounts of time. You can moan about people that need functions that OpenOffice doesn't have but it still won't make OpenOffice better than M$ Office. Tossing about pharses like: "Well then don't use that function" is not an option for a poweruser, he/she will bin OpenOffice and write it off. The day that OpenOffice supports all the advanced features in M$ Office that I use and does so without falling apart I'll switch. Until then M$ Office is a superior product, be it on Windows, Linux or my prefferred OS.X. So let's keep things in perspective. I'm hoping OpenOffice will be able to compete with M$ Office sooner rather than later but hyping OpenOffice up will only hurt it.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
It's clear that too many important people have had their heads up their arses for too long.
..... Mandate open data formats first, then guarantees of performance, then source code escrow to back up the performance guarantees and protect against vendor , then slowly tighten the screws on the escrow agencies and software companies till it's no longer economically viable to sell closed-source software.}
We need to have it made law that file formats are not secrets and not patentable, but form as much a part of the specification for interacting with the software as, say, the key bindings. {I personally would like to see it become law that software vendors must supply full annotated source code with their products, but let's take it one step at a time
It wouldn't surprise me if some software vendor had tried at some stage seriously to claim in an EULA that all the rights in any document created with their software belonged to them. I know that it used to be a breach of EULA to use a certain software company's programming languages to develop applications that competed directly with that company's offerings.
The good news is that EULAs aren't legally enforceable in any sane jurisdiction anyway, so you can go ahead and exercise your inalienable statutory right to reverse-engineer documents -- for the purposes of study, creation of interoperable software or just morbid curiosity -- to your heart's content. In fact, you can even refuse to accept the EULA at all. You can still quite legally use the software under your inalienable statutory right of Fair Dealing -- you just don't get any benefits that were only promised to you in the EULA.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
One reason people insist on having Microsoft Office is that they feel that having a less expensive office package means that they are lower on the company social scale.
There seem to be two ways that people relate to computers inside companies. One way is that the person talks about the computer they use as "mine". That kind of person admires every good quality they see. That kind of person takes support for their self-esteem from the computer they use, and maybe from the car they drive, and so on.
The other kind of person focuses on the job to be done, and not on the social value of the tools. That kind of person, I think, would find Open Office much nicer to use than Microsoft Office, because Open Office is simply better software.
Every Microsoft software package I've used has had the infamous Microsoft quirky low quality, from Microsoft Basic and Microsoft LogiCalc, that ran under the CP/M operating system, until now. Microsoft seems to calculate very closely how much abuse customers are willing to take, and the company always skates close to the edge. Abuse seems to be a way of life at Microsoft, as it is with so many individual people.
In contrast, Open Office is written by people who want to do a good job.
When you choose a software package, you are choosing business partners. That's because so much staff time is invested in becoming comfortable with software and in using it. Unless there is a compelling reason, it is sensible not to value the things that Microsoft Office can do that OO cannot do so highly. (There are many areas where OO is better than Microsoft Office.) It is sensible to value highly your company's association with the kinder and gentler and more idealistic people in the Open Office development team.
I figure if there's a license, it's not open enough for you. Then be prepared do throw away all your GNU/GPL/BSD/MPL/whatever stuff.
I'm no big fan of MS, but this is nothing more than good 'ol jump on the bandwagon MS bashing. This all comes from a letter from MS' XML guru explaining recent clarifications to the license to address concerns from MA. The exact quote is:
"We are acknowledging that end users who merely open and read government documents that are saved as Office XML files within software programs will not violate the license."
Here's the exact line from the license:
"By way of clarification of the foregoing, given the unique role of government institutions, end users will not violate this license by merely reading government documents that constitute files that comply with the Microsoft specifications for the Office Schemas, or by using (solely for the purpose of reading such files) any software that enables them to do so. The term "government documents" includes public records."
Does this statement preclude someone from using the file format for other purpose, such as say import/export from OpenOffice.org? Nope. It just gaurantees that open/reading government files will not violate the license.
Look before you leap...
From NPR...
y Id=4471963
"Morning Edition, January 31, 2005 The government of Brazil says it will switch 300,000 government computers from Microsoft's Windows operating system to open source software like Linux. Microsoft founder Bill Gates wants to meet with Brazil's president to discuss the change. Brazil is dropping all proprietary software."
Listen here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?stor
The Brazilians are just saying no!
GPL is closed. Glad we are coming to an agreement.
RTF and doc are just too complicated for them to be used by programs outside of Open Office and Microsoft products.
I would like a simpler format.
I would prefer to allow any program that is capable of printing a layout to export to some document format, and right now the only possibility is pdf and ps, both of which have no WYSIWG editors.
Anyone else feel that way?
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Does Bill Gates really say,"Certainly you can never under estimate the level of malicious people out there." [emphasis mine] I think they can underestimate because they did.
Anyone can use MS schemas too, and even distribute software that does so. Not without conditions, naturally. Where's the difference?
The license (two licenses, actually; one for the specification, and another for all MS patents that cover it) may not be GPL compatible, but it sure looks compatible with other open source licenses, including so-called viral licenses.
The catch with the GPL is the additional restrictions part. Microsoft adds two restrictions, both of which are more-or-less reasonable. The first is the obnoxious BSD-like advertising clause; that's irritating, but not a showstopper except for the GPL. The second restriction is that implementations must be conformant to be distributable. That is, reading and writing done by implementations based on the spec must read or write valid Office XML files. Since the format is a well-designed XML format, this is trivially easy to do. The requirement is to prevent forking of Office XML formats, which is obviously a concern of Microsoft's. Again, it would be nice for developers if this restriction was removed, but it would be detrimental to both Microsoft and Microsoft's customers.
Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult;
whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse.
--Proverbs 9:7
Or use pdf995. It's free as long as you will let it pull up an ad when you save the file...
.pdfs out of anything that you can print (note: it installs itself as a windows printer)
I find that, for free, it's an excellent way to make
I'll use PDF when there is a viewer that starts in under a forthnight *and* is actually usable. So far, no viewer fits that description, not Adobes, not XPDF, not the Koffice version, not anyone I know of at all.
Redundant? On 2nd post. Ha. Dumbass Mod. YES YOU!
...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
Now, there's a license that allows you to use these things. You can use the patents only to read and write MS files, but that's the only thing you need them for anyway. There's only one other slight problem, that of of required attribution. But it's mostly theoretical. You can't distribute your XSLTs under GPL, big deal. Sounds open enough for my purposes.
A file format which anyone could modify would not be "just" open, but really free. We don't expect MS to go that far.
whew! OK, my world makes sense again.
Follow the adventures of the new wandering jews
Or would that be Closed Open formats? I'm confused.
Let's leave "proprietary" and "free" out of it. Open usually means that you can use and build upon something. An "open" system. i.e. the IBM PC was open, while Mac was criticized for being "closed" (despite that you could get everything about the machine practically down to the schematics).
Open is a lot less confusing than "Free".
Closed is a lot less confusing than "Proprietary".
Microsoft Doublespeak(tm) at its best. In the great tradition of marketing doublesqueak.
New Free <stuff> for only a nominal fee.
New Used <stuff>!
Genuine Immitation <stuff>.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
A flood of e-mail notes will be ignored.
Microsoft has probably already sent someone a flood of notes. (green ones)
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
Straight from the horse's mouth:s px
http://www.microsoft.com/Office/xml/faq.m
Looks "open" enough to me..
I am the maverick of Slashdot
This is strickly a commerical question.
That would potentially include (again, we need to wait for the final designation of this by Microsoft) Word Processing ML, which is the wrapper around DOC files, Spreadsheet ML, which is the wrapper around XLS files, and the form template schemas.
Massachusetts residents, hold your state to that. Only if the formats "no longer have restrictions on their use" do they qualify as open formats.
In the old days, governments set the standards and the industry followed. Which government would be brave enough to set an office document standard and tell vendors to at least import and export standard documents?
Vendors used to try to subvert standards, for example, EBCDIC, for character encoding, but who uses that these days?
It sounds like a) the EU is very serious about having some type of truly open document format and b) they have a committee of people who really understand the issues who are making the decisions. These people won't be fooled and they will go along with OpenDocument, not with MS' closed format. This is a good thing because I basically don't trust MS with my data. That's why I don't use any of their products. Not because I don't like the company, I just don't trust them with my data and I want OpenDocument to gain critical mass, and this is helping OpenDocument do that.
I think it's more that most unix geeks aren't trained to evaluate user interaction, and typically their ill-informed evaluation of a person using a piece of desktop software only lasts for the first minute and a half after they've installed in on that person's machine. After which time they happily go back to watching star trek, coding something in vi, or playing nethack and not giving a damn about the experience of the person they've just "migrated".
I'd suspect that if we had an honest, long-term evaluation of OpenOffice by people who actually knew what we were doing (as opposed to Unix geeks), we'd probably see a lot more documents getting lost, a lot more mistakes being made, and a lot more confused, frustrated, and angry end users.
Sadly, such findings would probably not be regarded as indicative of usability problems that need to be fixed, but rather evidence of Microsoft's "brainwashing of the masses" with some evil FUD campaign.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Perhaps I am missing something obvious here, but what right has Microsoft to these formats? Copyrights? Since when can you copyright file formats? A format is not a work. A patent right? Since when is a file format a method or apparatus?
Sure, schemas could theoretically be copyrighted. But I doubt they would pass the originality test, especially in the US. In how many ways can you write a schema?
Just because Microsoft (through publishing "licenses") claims to own something does not make it true. Actually, in civilized countries this should give rise to criminal fraud investigations.
The FSF has repeatedly told us that words matter. "Free" versus "open" makes a difference because they don't mean the same thing and they don't have the same implications.
The open source movement's philosophy focuses on technical superiority in their aim to benefit businesses. This is an incredibly weak philosophy which means open source proponents end up sometimes stumping for software that doesn't qualify as "open source"--proprietary software, in particular (because there is proprietary software that does a job better than the "open source" equivalent). Free software proponents argue for software freedom for all computer users, and thus never end up in an ironic position of stumping for non-free software. This means that proprietary software is treated two different ways: for open source proponents, proprietary software is an acceptable, if less technically efficient, means to an end. For free software proponents, proprietary software is anti-social and wrong.
The state of Massachusetts will end up watering down their concepts in a similar way: they'll accept Microsoft's proprietary formats as "open formats", and they'll fall back to quibbling about the "terms of usage". Which means Microsoft has either exploited an extant weakness in "open formats" or blown a new one open. Will Massachusetts state government end up placing public documents in a proprietary format? Do they still care about OASIS' OpenDocument? It looks like interoperation for the purpose of helping to keep government documents readable and changeable without losing information is lower on the priority list than it was before.
Digital Citizen
Microsoft will never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever open any product they make. Everything else will be fud - i.e. this story.
MS Word doesn't support all the advanced features of MS Word without falling apart. Ever tried to change the style of one type of heading and had ALL the heading styles inexplicably change (even if they aren't, at least apparently, based on each other)? Ever copied a bit of text from one Word document to another, and had styles all through the document mysteriously change? Ever try to troubleshoot bullets & numbering issues in Word?
For every problem I've heard OO.o accused of, I've seen at least one problem in Word.
Sean
I read the license from Microsoft.com and it appears to be clearly open. It allows any developer to create programs (even open-source ones) that read and write in the format; and any patent claims are waived insofar as an attribution notice is included.
The only change has been a clarification that "end users will not violate this license...merely by reading files...constituted by Microsoft specifications." This does not overrule the prior (open) license in any way, or state that only end-users could read the files; it just frees end-users of the necessity of offering attribution.
In short, the format appears to be absolutely open, and this recent minor amendment does not alter the fact.
When Wilcox (the author of the parent linked article) read this minor amendment, he remarked "that's a far cry from open standard or really open format." It appears possible that he simply misunderstood the amendment to mean that only end-users were able to read files.
On the other hand, Kriss' comment is disturbing: "it is our expectation that the next iteration of the Open Format standard will include some Microsoft proprietary formats." Even if the current document format is open and remains open, that doesn't prevent Microsoft from replacing it with other formats ("future revisions") which aren't open. OS programs could continue to read and write in the open format, while Office will extend it with closed elements (in future versions) to write things OS programs cannot read. It doesn't seem that an open format guarantees that a vendor will stick with only that format. Unfortunately it appears the format is still "open" by the common definition of that term, even if a vendor does not promise to use only the open format in the future.
'Buzz about so-called open formats is little more than PR FUD.'
... but chrissakes, could people stop overusing this term? It's just become idiotic, and I've started to get this knee-jerk reaction to knock lots of credence off any argument that uses it.
Show me where Fear, Uncertaintity, and Doubt is being employed as a tactic there? Maybe a bit of uncertaintity, all right
"FUD" seems to have the same connotation and baggage as "counterrevolutionary" does in a banana republic.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
To make Acrobat 7 load faster, disable some of the plug-ins. I did that manually (and I can't find the instructions I used). However, try the free Acrobat reader tweaker from AcroPDF.
Microsoft's Office file formats can by no stretch of the imagination be called "open" in the sense in which that word is used in the software industry today, i.e. as a term of art as used in the terms "open source" or "open standards". The Office formats are proprietary formats, and Microsoft is retaining its proprietary rights to them. For that reason alone, the formats cannot be considered "open" in the above sense. This is what the Jupiter analyst, Joe Wilcox, is correctly pointing out.
OTOH, Microsoft has published detailed documentation about the Office file formats. This is a good thing for many people, as far as it goes, and by the ordinary English definition of the word "open", does indeed make the Office formats more open than they were previously.
The Microsoft PR is playing on the word "open", exploiting terminology confusion to implicitly claim greater openness than they have in fact provided.
At the same time, the Massachussetts government is apparently accepting Microsoft's definition of "open" as sufficient to qualify for its requirements regarding open standards.
Both Massachussetts and Microsoft should make it clear that they are using "open" in a much more restricted sense than the term is usually used in the software industry. The press releases and coverage certainly didn't make this clear, so once again, Joe Wilcox is correct to take them to task for that. To quote him:Once again, he is completely correct on this point, and correct to make a strong clarification about this. Actually, I fault both him and the linked article for not making the point clearly enough.
I don't have hours to write about Word 2000 quirks!!! If anyone has a serious request, send me a purchase order.
Here are two Microsoft Word quirks:
Squirrelly headers and footers: Sometimes headers and footers move around when they shouldn't.
Problem with Word trashing its own file? Use OO for repair. Word 2000 sometimes trashes its own files. You do an additional save after saving maybe 30 times previously and it says something like "invalid file format". This is particularly likely to happen after you have been working on a document for hours. Solution: Open the file in OO. Save the file in
The whole anti trust trial could have been adverted had the government simply told Microsoft it would only buy software that used a open and publically available, standardized file format. But, instead the government used the anti trust case as another opportunity to redistribute wealth.
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
It simply wasnt believable.
Ah, I love the smell of freedom nowadays, where people get to make choices for me.
How is it freedom to force people into a democracy? It is no more free than forcing people to be part of a communist government or tyranny.
How is it freedom to force people to provide their services for cash only? How about for food, fuel, or other services?
How is it freedom to force people to write code in a certain way? "Oops, the code police checked and your comments are too vague. You'll have to change it if you want to release your product. What? Oh, yes, if you decide to not charge for it, it can be as poorly written as you like." Not only is that a blatant double-standard, it still wouldn't solve the problem with IE, among others. They don't charge for it. Or would you require Red Hat to put all versions of Linux they provide through the same tests? After all, they charge for some of their Linux products, too.
For now, why don't you exercise your freedom and acquire software (free as in beer or otherwise) that meets your criteria, and let me acquire software that meets mine.
This is not to say that I'm against the government, or anyone else for that matter, demanding open document formats. I think this is especially true for the government, who has to provide documents to the public that should be viewable by anyone, with no software tax attached.
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
OpenDocument threatens to add a lot of competition (good) which will nullify standards (bad).
Office software RELIES on the fact that -everyone- is using the same damned software. Remember the browser wars? Just wait until you see spreadsheet wars.
This would all be hunky-dory if Standards preceded Innovation, but unfortunately what inevitably happens is company A releases cool feature Aa, that company B's A-reader cannot read, but Ba does the same thing. The standards do not get revised until ALL parties agree that feature Aa is what they will go with, but of course company B wants nothing to do with it and continues manufacturing Ba features. And yes, this all happened many times within the last decade.
Awful idea. We should have learned with the HTML "standardizations".
One is I've known people that used only WordPerfect and had never used MS-Word and never had it on their machines, but still insisted on refering to WordPerfect as "Word"
Another is a few months ago, I demostrated wireless networking / file sharing using two notebook computers to two well-educated, non-tech people who use computers daily. I had them open and edit the same file using both machines. However, I had AppleWorks on one and OpenOffice.org on the other. When it was finished, one bragged to the other about having used "Word" to edit a document using wireless.
Unless there are very specific features that the users are asking for, the name "Word" has fallen into the same category as Kleenex and Xerox. It now refers to something in general and not a specific brand, especially among non-English speakers.
I think the same can be said of "Windows", which for most just means a GUI or Windowing system. Every week I see people ranging in age from grade schoolers to retirees site down at Mandrake and Fedora stations running KDE, without really noticing. Some of the kids say something, but that's usually when they steer away from the remaining MS-Windows machine while commenting that it's not as fast as the other (Linux) machines, despite slightly better hardware.
Since people don't notice or don't care, and OOo actually supports open formats as well as a few closed, legacy ones, MA and others should reject both WordML and MSO and thus save taxpayer time and money.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Strict meanings of both irony and begging the question have been used for millennia--literally, for they both originated in ancient Greece--so I wouldn't exactly call them gray areas. But while the (re)definition of "irony" one is more familiar with might indeed be a question of whether one prefers texts written by Plato or Alanis Morissette, copyright infringement is a completely different matter. Copyright infringement is by definition a violation of copyright law which is not a property law. Violating copyright is not theft because duplicating data is not appropriation of any property, much less a dishonest appropriation of property belonging to someone else with the intention of permanently depriving the other of said property. The key word here is "depriving," for theft is wrong not because the thief gets something without paying (the real goal of any theft), but because the victim no longer has that something (a side effect of every theft)--this is crucial. Furthermore, the copyright law was meant to protect authors from publishers, not from readers so reading a book without paying for the right to read or listening to music without paying for the right to listen is not only not theft, but not even a copyright infringment. The "copy-" in "copyright" is rather unfortunate, and should it have been called "publishing rights" there would be much less confusion today when "copying" is something we must do in order to play any kind of digital media. So, copyright infringement is not theft by any stretch of imagination. Nor is it piracy, for that matter, because it has very little to do with robbing or plundering at sea without a commission from a recognised sovereign nation, and quite frankly I have no idea why has that word been chosen in the first place. I know that in the "Don't Copy That Floppy" era, writing "piracy is a crime"--which is true, even if copying floppies is not--on BSA propaganda posters must have had a strong influence on people, but why using piracy and not just theft? My point is that--unlike irony--copyright infringment, theft and piracy, as well as trade secrets and patents, are all very strictly defined by law in any given jurisdiction and it is impossible to confuse them without clear malicious intents. This is not a question of definition or preference, but a matter of fact. So I fully agree with your point, but I wouldn't use the same examples.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
so now the word open can be used to describe things that are not really open but purported to be open... good job ms...
Get your torrents...
The MS Office Ad in the article?
No methods..
Think about it..
ITs an all data format, it requires libraries to
create and to interpret.. Very easy to leverage a data format..
However and object (which is data with code)
is harder to leverage. Leveraging is a term used to describe the process by which a business corners clients into a monopoly, aka vendor lockin..
Data formats are very easy to leverage, objects are harder to leverage because the data can't be accessed, but through a method interface.. That means the data can change, but it can't become incompatible due to such changes because the data us not being interfaced with directly, the methods are.. So if you standardize the methods, the data can't influence changes in the software that uses the data, unless the method set changes..
If people adopt a object standard for documents instead of a data standard, you will find less and less vendors capable of leveraging formats in their favor.. Its the leveraging of these formats that keep them in business and encourage people to upgrade their software..
ITs the reason I believe Open Source applications should adopt objects as the framework for standards,
primarily for documents and movies and images.. That would make it really tough for vendors to lock people into unfair business relationships..
And is the reason Microsoft will not adopt a object based data format, it will only adopt stuff like XML which is a form of deception, its human readable, but if its encrypted/encoded with magic words and random ids, what does that matter?
Unless there is a basic understood, open source driven method interface to the many kinds of data, there will be no justice..
Just say no to license servers!!
Nothing for you to see here, move along.