Microsoft Lashes out at Massachusetts IT Decision

scoop writes "Infoweek is reporting that the plan to eliminate the use of Office by the Massachusetts state government (previously covered on Slashdot) has not gone over well with Microsoft. Microsoft's Yates said the company agrees with the adoption of XML but does not agree that the solution to "public records management is to force a single, less functional document format on all state agencies." Microsoft also states they will not support the OpenDocument format. Looks to me Microsoft is scared their biggest cash cow is in danger from a free alternative. Soon I'm sure we'll see a Microsoft funded comparison between Office and OpenOffice."

Comments

Flexibility?

[richie2000]

"It's this need for choice and flexibility that led Microsoft to design Office in a way that supports any XML schemas that a customer chooses"

And this customer chooses OpenDocument, an XML schema. So, it would appear that either MS Office or Microsoft is not flexible enough to actually "support any XML schemas that a customer chooses". Microsoft spokesman lying through his teeth, sun rises, sun sets, film at eleven.

Re:Flexibility?

[Bert64]

He also states:
"this proposal acknowledges that Open Document does not address pictures, audio, video, charts, maps, voice, voice-over-IP, and other kinds of data our customers are increasingly putting in documents and archiving."

how would you put voice-over-ip into a word processing document? if it's stored in a file then it's not exactly travelling over ip anymore.. it's merely a voice recording in a file, for which many formats already exist..
As for voice, audio, video, pictures etc, there are already documented open standards for such files, and opendocument will include these files in their original format inside the zip container.. what's the point of converting existing open formats into an xml representation of the same format?

Re:Flexibility?

[Kamiza Ikioi]

I agree 100%. And, you also have to understand MS mentality here. They see each individual user as a flower of creativity. Ok, that's BS, they don't see that at all.

What they fail to understand is that *shocker* governments should use a unified format for very specific reasons. Anyone from any branch can read any document from any other branch of the government. And, such format should be 100% open, so that should a future format come along that they want to change to, they can write up their own free utility to automatically update all documents.

Wow, that mean that governments can actually move away from the days when every department used its own forms/formats, and paper copies had to be made of everything because every system was proprietary, so the only way to transfer information was to print it out, hand it over, and re-type it in.

That would sound amazing if it had said it in 1995. Its about time that governments stepped up to the plate. Such changes are long overdue.

And, they obviously can't choose a patented/DMCA locked format by MS, which is what MS wants. With the MS Office suite looking to use DMCA to lock out their documents from open source solutions, governments will have high barrior costs to ask MS permission to unlock their documents for them.

MS on the other hand sees such as a way to lock in customers, and exact ultra-high fees to unlock the documents. Anything less, and MS will tell you you're a Commie bastard who's not open to "freedom of choice".

I think it's a given that we all know what MS's definition of "choice" is. Choice is only that which chooses (or by default) to use MS products. Everything else is obviously not choice, because it slaps MS's hand away from your wallet.

By the way, the political opposite of communism, is naziism. I think I'd MUCH rather be called a Commie.

Re:Flexibility?

[PoprocksCk]

This is just Microsoft stretching the truth to spread FUD.

For people who have never used a word processing program that supports OpenDocument (OpenOffice.org being the predominant contender here) -- they would read these claims as "OpenOffice.org cannot put pictures, audio, video, etc. into its documents" which is certainly not true.

Re:Flexibility?

[Trepalium]

In Microsoft's strange twisted world, this is almost true. I doubt the OpenDocument format has any support for compound OLE objects that make up pictures, charts, audio and video embedded into typical Microsoft Word documents. In this case, converting from MSWord to OpenDocument means that you lose the in-place editing of any embedded Excel charts or graphs, or any other editable COM/OLE object you might've inserted into your document.

I suspect the Microsoft spokesperson is well aware of the distinction between what he said and reality, though. What he said has the potential for perhaps someone to re-evaluate the decision. If he had properly represented the deficiency of the format, he would've been ignored because the people making the decision should've already realized they were giving up on the deep Microsoft integration features.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

It's about ideology not flexibility

[Ckwop]

I think they deliberately misunderstand the issue. The issue here is not functionality. Yes opendoc may actually be less functional than the word-format but guess what Microsoft? I haven't used any of this additional functionality since 1997 and neither has the US government.

The battle for features is over and what's replaced it is a lot more important. What we have today is a battle of ideology. Don't you think there's something a little perverse in a government investing huge amounts of tax payers money in creating all this intellectual property but having made this tremendous investment in time and resources they have to pay a private corporation to get the tools to access that investment?

To be fair, it's not just Microsoft who are perverse like this. Sage Line 50 is a great example of corporate greed. You pay £800 for the piece of software but lord if you want to insert or update information in a third-party program you need to pay around £1500 a year for the developer license. It was this that made me wake up to the reality of the situation: Our company is paying nearly a hundred thousand pounds a year in accountants who enter data in to your software package yet we have to pay you AGAIN to update that data? It's us that paid money to put the data in there in the first place, why should we have to pay you again just to use it from a homegrown program?

It's this greed that the US government is rejecting. In the early days everbody wanted software to help deliver the tremendous savings that computers can bring to a business. They would be a license from whatever vendor they would sacrifice much to get it. Now companies are starting to expect software to deliver a return on investment and they're not willing to tie themselves in to one company. Having many suppliers after your business drives down prices. This is as true with IT as it is with any other sector. The way to ensure you can get many suppliers knocking for your business is to make sure it's easy to switch. Open Office might be a pain at first but the opendoc standard will make it easier to switch. It's a good move in the long run.

Microsoft, Sage or any other company do not have the automatic right to make a profit. The lesson to Microsoft is simple: you were beaten here not because your product was inferior but because you failed to allow people to compete with you effectively. The role of a government in a capitalist society is to promote competition not subtract from it. In this case Massachusetts has done everyone a favour by telling Microsoft that it can cram its vendor-lockin into a bloody big pipe and smoke it.

Simon.

Re:Results are in early

[Freggy]

What have you been smoking?

I've been given OpenOffice.org trainings to people who had never used it before, and all of them were very impressed by the program. They think the interface is almost completely the same at first sight. There are just some small differences in the way you use it (related to styles etc), but it's only a matter of a few hours to explain these differences. After that, people are at least as productive with OOo as with MS Office. Some are even more productive, because during the training they learned things they did not even knew in MS Office!

I guess Microsoft did not know

[dyfet]

I guess Microsoft did not know the Government of Mass. worked for and must make choices on behalf of the PEOPLE of Mass., and not for or on behalf of Microsoft. Or maybe they still do not understand this. What is one to make of a vendor that publically demands someone choose its products, and on it's terms? Perhaps Halliburton should demand the government choose it to reconstruct New Orleans using Halliburton and demand it is done the Halluburton way, if another vendor is chosen? Perhaps when someone comes out of the "Apple" store, someone from Best Buy should come up to you and demand you purchase Dell PC's from them instead?

Threats

[connah0047]

Rumor has it that MA has been threatened with a chair...

I can't help but wonder...

[Eminence]

After the recent dicussion on their reaction to Google I can't help but wonder what Steve Balmer threw across his office this time.

But seriously, we are seeing what was predicted with Netscape in the late 90-ties slowly becoming real. When Netscape decided to open their source code many believed (including me) that the open bazaar of OS developers would wipe out then clunky and not to be taken seriously IE. It turned out we were wrong, but only about the timing. Look at the situation now - it's IE which has to catch up.

Back 6 years ago, when I tried Star Office for the first time it clearly wasn't a match for MS Office '97. It simply wasn't good. Now I'm using Open Office 2 beta and I must say it is closing very fast on Microsoft. It's not as polished and not as smooth to use, especially if you are accustomed to MS Office's way of doing things but it improved immensely since Open Office 1 - and that was pretty usable already. I think that now for most of your average office or home word processing or calculations etc. you just don't need MS Office anymore.

And, furthermore, we are dealing here with the same phenomenon that many other industries went through. Word processing and all the other components of office software are becoming common place, just like plumbing, transistor radios or cars. It's not high tech anymore, it's not a big deal, anyone can do it. It's commonplace. And for that you just don't pay premium prices, especially in the field that doesn't deal with material goods.

So the problem Microsoft has with Open Office is twofold. On one hand it's the normal evolution of the technology's acceptance in the society that makes them less and less indispensable. On the other it's the same problem they had with Mozilla - it's not a company, so they can't hurt them by throwing piles of money on the problem. Worse, it's not animated by greed. And, let's be frank, MS guys don't think beyond money - software is their tool for making money, not a way of making a difference. That is a cultural barrier that makes it hard for them to understand those who have different motivation.

Beware of Bribery

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many forms of bribery. Massachusetts is not known for having the most honorable bureaucrats and pols. Perhaps Microsoft is too slick to resort to some clumsy form of direct bribery to a politician (but then again . . .) .

However, don't be surprised if Massachusetts backpedals on their decision after Microsoft's promises free copies of XP for the schools, or a new computer lab for "underprivileged" children. Microsoft is a pro at getting their way by any means possible. Massachusetts pols will have to get up pretty early in the morning not to be out slicked by Microsoft's professional grifters and con-artists.

Massachusetts citizens need to let their elected officials know that this decision has popular grassroots support. By the way, RMS is a citizen of Massachusetts, isn't he?

So everbody

[MemoryDragon]

is supporting OpenDocument, Sun, IBM, Corel, KOffice, Adobe, pretty much every company which has something remotely office like, only Microsoft does not do it. Given that the US and EU government also had their hands in the specification of this format, you can expect more things like that to happen. Microsoft finally either has to adopt open standards (which is the usual situation outside of the software world, with government contracts, but Microsoft does not see that) or is shot out. I expect similar things to happen from the EU soon...

Re:Less functional document format

[benjcurry]

As far as I can tell, the main breakthrough all these Office suites have made in the last 20 years is to require a 2 GHz processor dedicated to typing.