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We're Open enough, Says Microsoft
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft Australia has come under fire from rival vendors and open-source advocates for keeping its Office document standards proprietary.
Greg Stone, Microsoft's national technology officer for Australia and New Zealand, faced criticism during his presentation at the Australian Unix User Group conference in Canberra yesterday. However, he stood firm on the company's policy of making the XML schemas for its Office 2003 document standard publicly available provided interested parties sign an agreement with the software heavyweight. "Why should I have to sign an agreement?" one audience member demanded to know."
Just look at IE.
Can one piece of software possibly be more open to exploits and viruses?
"Why should I have to sign an agreement?"
So Microsoft can own your soul, your offsprings' souls, their retroactive grandparents' souls, and the souls of everyone they come in contact with.
In the form of a nice law suit.
In reality there is no way MS will open up the .doc format. Lock-in for office file formats and the office products are central to MS's revenue scheme. The way to beat them is not to beg for them to open up their standard, but to create a better open standard backed by the community, one that is not layered in junk like the .doc standard is (why would you need to embed a video in a text document?). Then this standard could be supported by as many open source, and maybe even commercial projects as possible. With enough momentum we might be able to pull an adobe and create a format that is able to coexist popularly with the .doc format. It would be wonderful if MS would play nice; they don't have too, but we don't have to play their game either.
Philosophy.
And opposing every one of them? This is like the US saying that it "protects everybodys interests by sitting on the UN" - and then using its veto for say - The International Criminal Court.
Just too scary.
You are able to do so, despite MS best efforts. People had to reverse engineer the doc format to get this accomplished.
So I don't really see your point. Just because people make great efforts to accomplish something that would be trivial if MS released the specs or adhered to an open standard, doesn't mean that MS is in the right, does it?
With Open Office, I can read and export every major Microsoft file in and out of OO.
How much more open do you want?
I want to be confident when I read and export Microsoft files from Open Office, when they reach their intended destination they'll actually still look the way they looked when I exported them.
I want to be confident about this without having to keep a copy of Word around to check to make sure I didn't somehow accidentally trigger some minor incompatibility with the spec that OO committed because they don't have the spec itself.
Because you want something that they have. They developed the file formats, so they own the intellectual property. If you want them to spell out how they work for you, you'll have to play by their rules. If you don't like that, that's fine too. You don't have to know now their file formats work to use their product, and when it comes down to it you don't even have to use their product.
This seems to me a lot like the BitKeeper debacle. It's all about contracts: the people who have something of value get to dictate the terms of the contract. No matter how much you complain about it and say "but file formats should be free!", that's not going to change.
"I can read and export every major Microsoft file in and out of OO"
For now... wait until the next version of Office comes out... it isn't like formats can be reverse engineered overnight
While Microsoft is not going to fool a group of ol' beardy UNIX gurus, it can still fool the general public who aren't in key with how MS operates.
"Open Source" has become a bit of a buzzword these days. I figure that Microsoft reckons that it can ride on the open source wave by twisting the meaning to it's own benefit. Not too unlike their so-called "Open Licensing" or whatever-it-was initiative.
No MS. You can say it as many times as you like, but until you release Windows under an open source licence you will never be truly open. Charging money to see source code is not "open source".... so no, you can't play in our sandpit.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
our customers are also opened enough....we only have to give them a litle more vaseline to maximize the opening
Actually, OpenOffice's encoding for .doc doesn't work perfectly. And it's a downright bitch if you're trying to pass files between OpenOffice and Word. I was a freelance manual writer for a while, and my copy of Word self-destructed. (It wouldn't take the activation code that was printed ON THE DISK.)
.doc encoder based on intelligent guesswork. If the standards were open, they could get compatability spot on.
So I thought, time to switch to an open alternative. Bad idea. I couldn't pass edits to the engineer I was working with because every time I'd get back a file with corrupted layout and images about the size of Jupiter.
As far as I can tell, this is because they have to build their
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.
What would the agreement do? The standard is either open or not (specification is published or withheld). Does it mean that any program that reads the file in this "open" format is bound by this agreement? I can see someone writting "Here, I sent you a powerpoint presentation and I also had to attach the 3 page agreement that you have to sign and send to Microsoft along with your name, date of birth, social security # and all your bank information. Then you can open and use my file. If you don't Bill Gates will come in person and take your firsborn child. Have a nice day, -Your dearest friend Jojo"
The problem is that importing .doc files into OO.org is a bit of a craps shoot, sometimes the document imports perfectly, other times it's usable but ugly, and sometimes it's so garbled as to be nearly useless. Not that I'm discounting the work done by the folks at OO.org or the other F/OSS projects that import .doc files (KWord usually does a pretty good job in my experience, and abiword tends to be all or nothing, though I haven't use abiword in a logn while, so it might be better now). .doc format has been pretty stationary for a while, the new format will still require time to reverse engineer (assume the authors won't or can't agree to whatever MS wants them to sign). I suspect that there will be a decent amount of time where the new format is the preferred windows document format, but importing/exporting for Linux applications isn't quite good enough. .docs for seemingly no reason. It aggravates me to no end how often clients and peopel from school send out emails with the text of the email in an attatched .doc file, when the content of the file is nothing more than plain text that could have simply been put in the email, or at least a plaintext file. .swx files? The merits of each file format aside, I generally save office documents as .swx, and it's a pita when I have to open up the file and export it to a .doc everytime I want to send it to someone. Since OO.org is GPL (IIRC), would allowing Office to import OO.org files mean that it would have to be GPL as well, or is it just microsoft trying to fruther their monopoly?
Of course, support is always improving, but that's because the
Of course, the real problem, IMO, has little to do with the format itself, but with how often people send
A bit off topic, but also, why the heck won't MS Office import OO.org
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
Notice how Microsoft successfully ended all use of the word "innovation" anywhere in the late 90s by their repeated abuse of it.
"Open" is next.
They've found that if you don't want to do something, it's totally sufficient to not do it and then repeat to the press over and over that you did it.
So before I would sign, I would need to find a lawyer and pay a lot of money to find out what the implications of signing it would be. I would go through enormous hassle and a lot of money, just so I would have the honor and delight to look at MS' file format specification. But wait, I might go through all that hassle and expense and come up with some answers that I don't like, like finding out that the spec does contain trade secrets, or that I am agreeing to give MS injunctive relief, and if I find those thing out, I will have spent all that money and still I won't be able to look at the spec.
Or I could skip all of this nonsense and ignore whatever they are offering and just use one format which I know is truly open: OASIS. I don't need to sign anything, it doesn't contain any trade secrets, I don't need a lawyer, I don't need to spend any money, I am free to write whatever kind of software I want to based on it, I can do whatever I want with it, I don't have to pay, I don't have to worry about someone getting an injunction to shut me down if he thinks I did something wrong. Wow, when you look at it this way, what's there to even think about in making this decision?
What we really need is an OASIS plug-in for MS Office so that MS Office users can use the OASIS format without any hassles. That would be cool.
My wife is in College and has a lot of term papers to write and share with other student groups for her projects. She is able to do all of this with Open Office by converting to .doc formats without incidents.
The only problem she ran into was PDF. She was using it for her last semester and loved it's simplicity of use with OpenOffice. But then she ran into someone in her class who "couldn't open it in notepad". Avoiding my Nike Burns, Computer Guy, impressions I thought it best to just export to .doc format and leave it at that.
This is the third year that We've been using only OpenOffice on Linux. I've also shown a few others the use of OpenOffice on Windows and they have adopted it as well. As far as I'm concerned, at this point, Microsoft really doesn't have anything useful to add to a word processor. Wait, they might be able to add something, but it's not cost effective.
Dang. While Mr Microsoft was next door, I was sitting at the OpenOffice miniconf at LCA just 60 metres away. I wonder if he knew that the Forces For Good were gathered so close by.
I'm glad someone mentioned the NAA and the use of OOo. For the purposes of Digital Preservation, openly documented formats are essential. XML is good, but XML that you have to sign up for? C'mon Mr MS, who are you kidding?
At the NAA, we're about keeping records for long after we're all dead. Digital records *must* be stored in publicly documented formats. Your grandkids won't be keen to sign an agreement to use those records.
No.
From the GPL:If by "use" you mean "redistribute" then things are more complex, but since at the moment you are trying to compare the GPL to a contract which must be signed in order merely to read a certain document, there does not seem to be any reason to focus on redistribution unless you are trying to change the subject and/or create an aimless flamewar.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
They probably won't look the same, except in the most trivial cases. However you don't have that level of confidence if you use one version of Microsoft Office and send the document to a user with a different version of Microsoft Office, so you don't have much to lose by using OO.o instead.
Last time I checked, Microsoft are under no obligation to provide anyone with any details about their XML schema.
They're not, but then why not just stick with their binary format? Offering an XML-based file format (cabability) without supplying the schemas is not all that useful? You get the data, sure, but you could always export as plaintext for that.
Furthermore, it's certainly contrary to the basic idea and openess of the XML format, if you're gonna trap people with a patent license, trying to control how they parse the XML?
This is deceptive if you ask me.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
Root is safe, beta is gold, MS is open enough and MN2004 is coming back on a corrected trajectory. All makes sense.
without MS you have no web/html like we have today
And without ignorant guys like you MS wouldn't have so much revenue.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Free as in costs money
Advantage as in same thing later
We are proud to present
Open as in closed
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
If anything the extremists should be encouraging Microsoft to be as closed, proprietary and cumbersome as they can possibly get. They seem to be shooting themselves in the foot here by trying to cajole/convince Microsoft into playing along.
Seriously, if you're one of those folks who sees all proprietary software as a tool of Satan (says me, writing this in Opera), you don't want Satans reps on Earth to soften their image. You want them to instead impress people over and over again with their Black-Hatness so even the most clueless will eventually wake up and say "what the fuck?"
You *want* MS to lock people in - and then bend them over and ream them good and hard once the lock-in is established. That creates enormous ill-will, especially to the PHBs who don't like anyone messing with their kingdoms. When the next opportunity comes to jump ship, they'll be that much more inclined to do so (e.g., when the next full-scale upgrade and conversion takes place).
The harder they squeeze, the more star systems, er, customers, that'll slip through their grasp.
So fanatics, crusaders, and all you "information wants to be free" loons (who STILL won't send me your credit card numbers, you hypocrits), reevaluate your game plan here. You're doing your cause a disservice. Every time MS screws over a customer pat them on the back and say "good job!"
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Wasn't there talk recently about making the OOo format into a ISO standard? Perhaps this is the way to go:
:-)
1) Make a good XML based ISO standard for textprocessors.
2) Try to convince governments/companies to require their sofware to be compliant with this standard.
3) And this is very important: Demand a very high and continued compatibility with this format to receive the "ISO approved" label. Or else we have another "IGES" debacle on our hands.
Managers and administrators just _love_ ISO standards and will at least frown if we can say: "Well M$ is not even ISO compliant, you will be in trouble in the future if you use that! It's not even compatible with the only existing ISO standard!!". This way M$ will have to coorporate to satisfy the very people that decide about buying their software...
Just a thought. Wouldn't know where to start to make this happen. But perhaps someone else here does
If MS Word could import and export .SXW files natively, there would be no need for MS Word in the first place. It's only the fact that Word -- and nothing else -- can read .DOC files properly, that keeps Microsoft selling it. If Word could import and export .SXW files, an organisation could keep just one PC with a copy of Windows and Office {plus OO.o export}, all the rest using OpenOffice.org, and use just this one machine for translating legacy documents.
.SXW files .....
Now, MS Word has a macro language -- a bastardised dialect of BASIC -- and a document object model {though not quite like the W3C ECMAscript one} that allows the canny programmer access to every feature of a document. And the code to synthesise and analyse SXW files is open source. It ought to be very possible for some third party to write a Microsoft Word plugin to do absolutely seamless import and export of OO.o
If I had a copy of Windows and a copy of Office, I'd be having a go myself. As it is, I got clean three years ago and don't intend to relapse anytime soon. Someone else can have the glory.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I didn't read the license, but I'm sure it includes some sort of 'no reverse engineering' clause. Now here's the question: there are some countries out there where reverse engineering is allowed regardless of what the license says about it. Could someone from such a country possibly get the schema (legally), and then reverse engineer it to make a clean, Open re-implementation of it? And would it be legal to use it in e.g. US?
OOo Writer has an "Export to PDF" menu point in the "File" menu. It is ideal for preservation of the format -- unless the receiving party needs to edit it, that is. But in vast majority of cases, just sending over something for people to read, PDF is sufficient.
Sig erased via substitution of an identical one.
It's a fallacy to assume that Word can open .DOC files perfectly. It doesn't. Do you have any idea how many .DOC formats have been created over the years? There are rules governing what versions will open which version .DOC and when you're given a random floppy to open with a random version of Word - cross your fingers. Then there's the international incompatibilities... And don't get me started on Works!
.DOC isn't 'all that'. OASIS is a MUCH more open and stable format, and will be for years to come.
I wish a mainstream reporter would investigate this so that businesses can understand that
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
"I still don't see how were they illegaly forced out of the markets."
;). This was also illegal.
The marketplace success of MS Office had little to do with the performance of the product. It had everything to do with:
1. Withholding the Win32 programming interface from competitors as long as possible prior to the launch of Windows 95 (i.e until Office95 was nearly completed) so that they could advertise that only Office had 32-bit apps. This is a classic example of using a monopoly in one field (Windows) to obtain a monopoly in another field (office productivity software). This is unequivocally illegal under U.S. antitrust law.
2. Bundling agreements to get as many PCs as possible pre-loaded with Office, particularly for business use. These agreements contained strong financial incentives (in the form of discounts on Windows licensing) for offering consumers only Microsoft products and not any competing software (believe me, I know, sayeth the AC
3. Obfuscated and changing file formats that ensured that competing products would not be able to read the latest versions of Office files. Once MS killed off all of the competition, this tactic lost momentum, because MS was largely competing against older versions of their own software, and people became worried that upgrading to newer versions would make their older PCs (running Office 97, for example) unable to interchange files with newer computers. This tactic is not inherently illegal, as far as I know, but it could have been legitimately prohibited as part of a remedy after Microsoft's antitrust conviction, and (to get back on topic) is clearly something that could legitimately be prohibited in government specifications for acceptable software.
So, yes, my idea of "free and fair competition" allows one company to attempt to "outperform/outmarket" another, but only if they obey the law. Microsoft did not obey the law.
OpenDocument is being supported and encouraged within the EU. It will also be supported in OpenOffice 2.0, which is due out soon. The beta for OOo 2 is out already for testing.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
He didn't say it was the way to go. In fact, quite teh opposite, he advocated alternative open source software. What he said was that he didn't advocate reverse engineering closed source software. He went on to say that a company has a reason for closing the software down and it's no right to crack it just because we can. But he certainly never said he was in support of closed source software.
This is the part that really pisses me off about idiots who use computers and just assume that Microsoft == Computer. What if I CAN open your document, maybe I even have a copy of MS Office running in CrossOver, but what if I don't have your particular CAD software or proprietary mapping software or stupid fucking MS DRM CODEC for that video clip? Now I have a document with a bunch of stupid broken data in it!
My mother-in-law is famous for this. She downloads Neto-Keen PhotoGallery Maker (tm), sets up a photo album and sends it to everyone in the family. Everyone goes WTF is a .nkpg document?! She just assumes everyone can read it because she can. She also loves to send out .doc files. Why? 'Cause Pimply Face, the local guru, installed MS Stolen Office on her computer, furrthering the myth that "everyone uses Word"!
Where I work we are required by law to archive most of our official documents for a minimum of 80 years! WTF! I've already got archived documents in Works, ClarisWorks, WordPerfect, MS Word (all flavors), etc. I've tried to stress to management that we MUST choose an open standard (at least for archival copies) or we'll be in deep shit when, 30 years from now, we can't read any of the old formats. I've also stated that we pretty much have to have all of our archive ON LINE. Why? What format should we archive to that will be readable in 80 years (besides microfiche or paper?). We have a whole rack in a storage room of, what, those old 9660 reel-to-reel tapes? Hmmm... I don't have a reader for that. I don't even have a reader for 5.25 or 8-inch floppys any more! At least with all data online we can migrate it to the new drive arrays and have a chance at reading it with some archaic piece of software running in VMWare or something.
The "Information Age" only really kicked in about 10 years ago. We are still really new at all this 'Letrconic Data stuff. Already we are seeing valuable information lost because it's published to the web and then removed to make room for more content. Effectively (except for the way-back machine) it's lost forever. Do you think the person or company that posted that will give it to the local library or make their backup tapes available upon request? Of course not.
Back when people carved their data in stone or baked-clay tables, it lasted damn near forever. Then they moved to papyrus and it rotted easier, but still could be rolled and stored for thousands of years. We moved to paper and celluloid which maybe last a couple hundred years it properly stored. The future will be digital. I've got data at home on ZIP and Jazz discs I know I'll never be able to get off because my reader died and I'm not about to go buy another one just to get it off. Is that data critical? No. If that data was on paper, would I have kept it? Probably not for much longer, but if I had waned to, I could at least be able to save it and read it without having to hunt down a data archeologist with and archaic set of hardware and software to decode it.
DRM will cause even more problems in the future. Even if you were to archive everything on line in a format that is still supported, if it is DRM'd will you be able to read it? Will all future software be 100% backward compatible with all the previous DRM models? We should be thinking about this BEFORE we choose a file format.
I believe, in the long run, we will be doing more harm to the human race in the form of lost history and information by choosing closed standards as the way to store data now, than the burning of the Library in Alexandria ever did. We are turning information in to the tower of babel.
To get back on topi
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
without MS you have no web/html like we have today
You mean with developers not able to support a 7 year old standard, even though it would make the web a much better place, because IE still won't support all of CSS 1 much less CSS 2?
xml wouldn't get any attention if it wasn't "interwebby"
You mean if the W3C team (who were not MS employees) who developed XML hadn't thought ahead to its potential Internet use?
Or do you mean how IE is the only web browser that doesn't support XHTML, so that web developers still have to write tag-soup HTML 4 or break the standard and send XHTML as HTML in order to reach anyone using IE?
this whole XML thing is a passing phase without MS
You mean like the EU standardizing on an XML file format (OpenDocument), O'Riley and Associates publishing using an XML format (DocBook), the W3C moving EVERYTHING to XML including image formats (SVG) (yes MS is a W3C member, but they are far from the only)...
About the only thing I'll give MS credit for is breaking XSLT off from XSLFO, since the latter was taking way too long to standardize, so that now XSLT can be used independently of XSLFO, both in spec and tools. That's a good thing, I won't deny that. But given everything else they've done to hold back and stiffle the development of the "Interwebby", I'd definitely say that MS has been a net-negative on the XML-based-Internet world.
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
Just how would anyone think they could make this claim is beyond me. That would be like, say, Grumbacher claiming that someone's painting is a derived work because they used their paints and/or brushes.
Stop the insanity!
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