Slashdot Mirror
Massachusetts Explains Legal Concerns for Open Documents
Tontoman writes "ZDNet is running a story that sheds new light on the decision by Massachusetts to switch to
open formats for the commonwealth's official documents. This issue has previously been discussed on Slashdot, first The Massachusetts Office Party and then
Microsoft Lashes out at Massachusetts IT Decision . From the
article: 'Eric Kriss, Secretary of Administration & Finance for
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, told CRN on Friday that
Massachusetts had concerns about the openness of Microsoft XML schemas
as well as with potential patent issues that could arise in the
future.' The article also quotes a Microsoft executive
on further reason that Microsoft's upcoming Office 12 will not support
OpenDocument."
ms office must support openoffice documents... it's just more reason not to use it
Microsoft said that Massachusetts decision is wrong because open document formats do not allow embedded video or audio in the document. I wonder, how many of us have ever used embedded audio/video feature in the .doc?!
Wait - I can't think of a reason not to support a "save as Open-Office format".
Surely, having create a document, you can save it out as an Open-Office document? Why are they talking about backwards compatibility - this is like save as text.
Just like save as text it does not support embedded video and Multimedia, and just like text, it's available to be read by anybody who has access to the standards.
Johns: Well, how does it look now? Riddick: Looks clear.
The article also quotes a Microsoft executive on further reason that Microsoft's upcoming Office 12 will not support OpenDocument.
Well, sort of. From the article:
Yates reiterated the Microsoft does not intend to natively support the OpenDocument format, which he said was very specific to the OpenOffice.org 2.0 open source productivity suite.
I don't recall Microsoft having any problems supporting say, WordPerfect documents, which after all were "very specific to the [WordPerfect] productivity suite." Of course, that was back when Microsoft were chasing WP down. It just wouldn't do to support a format that might help people not to use Office now would it?
MS Motto: Extend and embrace.
People also tend to use one office set. So Mas. switching to OO, could end up people downloading OO to be able to use the documents (Ok, there are PDF versions). MS will most likely counter that by releasing an update or a plugin to be able to read OO documents in some twisted destructive, or correct later on way, and not being able to save OO documents.
I just think that MS will support OO formats soon enough, because they would really not like to lose customers over such a simple thing as a document format, hey, they even might be able to sell the OO upgrade for MS office to these people!
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
Video, audio, javascript etc.. And just extend as you go.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
From the article:
"Microsoft will not support OpenDocument in its next version of Office 12 as it believed the format to be inferior"
If the format is 'inferior', then extend it! The X in XML (which is used by OpenDocument) stands for 'eXtensible'. XML is designed to allow document formats to be extended in a way which still allows portability and does not break compatibility.
Microsoft have make extensive use of XML for years, so they know this. This comment is simply pure FUD.
Let's say in the future that people find some value in electronic-format reading materials. EBooks is one idea that fits that category but hasn't quite taken off. Just assume for the moment that something suddenly became widely useful like that.
It would be beneficial to the device if it could play video/audio inline. A very rough parallel would be cutscenes in games. You'd read a passage, then there would be a video to take you deeper into the world of the narrative.
Something like this in textbooks would be extremely valuable. You could have the normal dry text followed by a well-done audio/visual presentation of the presented concepts.
Obviously these are totally off the top of my head, but there have to be more and better ideas out there for such a technology.
Now think of yourself as Microsoft, publisher of the biggest word processor of them all. Are you going to let yourself be hamstrung by "standards" which force your users to *not* use the full capabilities of the format? If you were really interested in progressing, you'd just keep throwing everything and the kitchen sink into the product and seeing what sticks and what can be shelved.
The best thing you can do is put those features in and let your users decide whether to use them or not. The worst thing to do is to think you are smarter than your users and artificially limit them in the name of standardization.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Office has been "good enough" for as long as I can remember. I don't need a single feature of word that wasn't present in word 6.
The only way Microsoft can generate new sales is by periodically extending the file format so that everyone has to upgrade in order to deal with customers/suppliers/business partners.
Supporting a genuinely open format would be suicide.
What??? MS Word can already load and save a large variety of formats, many of which have nothing whatsoever to do with any past version of Word. For example it loads and saves WordPerfect files. Presumably they did that so government and law could use their word processor. So what was the reason for not supporting OpenDocument format again? It certainly has nothing to writing another import / export filter since the APIs for that must be OLD HAT.
Why not just be honest and say the real reason. You don't want to support it since your own formats represent lock-in. But sooner or later they will have to though I reckon they'll do their utmost to sabotage it becoming the defacto standard.
Slightly OT: The quote reminds of the absurdities MS put out when saying why they wouldn't port MS Office to OS/2. At the time one of them said they wouldn't port it since it didn't support OLE2. Yes, and who wrote OLE2? Such ludicrous excuses emanate from MS when the real reason they don't want to do something would leave them open to accusations of monopoly.
... stick an "Exportfrom/import to OpenDoc" button somewhere in your Office product. They already do this with a bunch of other formats, including early versions of Word (which certainly don't contain VoIP, or whatever it was that MS was babbling about), so they have absolutely no excuse for not doing it with a proper standard.
Of course, they're still not gonna do it because that would provide people with an easy migration path away from cash-cow Office...
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
The article also quotes a Microsoft executive on further reason that Microsoft's upcoming Office 12 will not support OpenDocument.
..And will run in strict demo mode and only allow
SaveDocument functionality.
micro-soft allways got it backward.
Bob
Isn't there anybody who could program an appropriate converter to be loaded into MS Word?
I mean, if people can program an import filter, why not an export filter?
There certainly people who know how to do it.
Even if somebody has to sign an NDA agreement -- would it disallow to make such a filter?
I'm sure this would be more productive than waiting for MS to do it.
Massachusetts has a valid reason to worry. The worry about future readability of the data they are producing today. What if M$ went away in the next 30 years? What if, while going down hill, they decided to bleed their customers for the use of their XML "standard?" I don't doubt this could happen....
I also don't buy Microsoft's stance on the OpenDoc format. They can, and should, implement this format as an export/import at the least. Backwards compatability is a sorry excuse for not implementing open standards. They just don't want to give up the gold they find when they have locked their customers into a certain format.
This may turn out to be a problem for students and those of us that work at home. I had a similar problem when I was going to college for CS a few years back. My professor required our C++ to be created in a Windows-only compiler, commented and structured using that editors tools. I was only running Linux, just as I am now, and had to get an exception to policy in order to not have to live in the computer lab.
Now, working on my EE degree while in the Army, I am doing distance learning with a school that requires MS Office formats on papers. So far, it has been working out well but what if they 'upgrade' to a new office version that somehow corrupts or otherwise does not display a file created in OO well? There goes my GPA!
Same goes for my job in that Army. As an NCO I often times complete work at home and bring it to my work terminal (all MS, after the recent Solaris genocide) on a USB stick. Will all my work be for nothing? Will I be spending hours at the office instead of at home where I can at least be with my wife and kids? I guess the same can go for those that tele-commute and use Linux.
Man, I REALLY don't want to have to install Windows or use an emulator just to use Office.
From what I can tell (I have read the specification but didn't understand that much of it) OpenDoc is a fairly restrictive format in terms of what you can do with it. AFAICT it won't do video or audio. It will do charts and images, and I think there was some kind of scripting language in there.
This is perfect for the purposes of governmental organisations working with lots and lots of text. It's a *good* thing, especially if it stops MS playing the proprietary extensions card. It's just not the OO.o format, and I'm getting slightly bored of people getting the two confused.
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
OpenOffice format != OpenDoc format. The latter is a lot more restrictive in terms of what you can do with it (which is *good* if you want it to be a standard).
So Microsoft is right in this case - their format would do stuff that OpenDoc won't. Shame that the rest of their speech is unadulterated ***FLUSH***
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!
"the Office 12 formats pay special attention to compatibility with older document versions, [and] other formats do not concern themselves with this important issue."
ROTFL. Anyone that has had to distribute anything via Word knows this is beyond FUD. My best example is my CV. I wrote it in Mac Office 2004, and made sure it was compatible (using compatibility checker) all the way back to Word 97. It wasn't even close. In the end I was sending my CV out as Word 97, 2000, RTF and PDF just to make sure.
Backwards compatibility my arse. It nearly cost me a job, as when your in IT, and people think you can't even use word, it starts to look bad. I understand that its a word processor, not a desktop publisher, but is consistant handling of tables and pictures that much to ask?
I've had documents that would open in Word 2004 fine, but all the pictures would be rotated through 90 degrees on Word 2000. And thats before you start looking at the way it handles the difference between A4 and Letter.
The only way I can send a file and be certain that it looks the way it should is via PDF. But thats at the expense of other parties being able to edit it.
PDF isn't the solution, its a hack. I want/need the consistant typesetting of PDF, with the editting features of Word. Now I know there are other applications that let me do this (latex et al), I just wish other people did too so I could start using that instead of frigin office.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
Yep, MS is even a member of OASIS (Sic!). There really isn't any excuse for not implementing the "missing" functions into the standard...
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
I agree on your view of text documents. However, there is also a standard for presentation documents (ie PowerPoint). These have a dual target - bigscreen projectors and paper. For the first target, video really helps. I'm not sure what is included in the standard and not, but I really see the point in being able to include a piece of video in my keynote...
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
Brian Jones, is an Office PM at Microsoft. Here's his whining and lame attempt at lying^H^H^Hexplaining why their format is open and even "compatible" with the LGPL (only compatible in the way that a proprietary plugin could work with an LGPL-ed program). The comments on those two posts are pretty interesting though.
Microsoft is showing it's anticompetitive true colors on this one. Would be smart if they focused on compatibility as their customers aren't asking - they are saying we will not buy it if it does not meet our standards.
Forcing your standards on customers is dangerous - after all it's their data and their business, not yours.
-- $G
Moderators, parent clearly deserves some 'insightful' points here, since known cash cows for MS are Windows, and Office. But:
If users ditch Office for a free alternative, clearly MS's bottomline gets hurt. Not so with Firefox? I disagree: IE is a way to lock users into the Windows platform. If you need IE, you need Windows (in general). If you need Firefox, you need Windows OR (enter you favorite Firefox-capable OS here). So ditching IE in favor of Firefox, is one way to reduce your dependence on the Windows platform. And a good reason for MS to give away IE for free, I think.
So increased use of OO may eat directly into MS's bottomline, but increased use of Firefox makes it easier for MS's bottomline to get eaten into.
My view is that MS not supporting open standards is simply to make it harder to switch platforms, to increase the cost & effort of a switch. Another example: why doesn't MS itself provide support for Linux ext2 or BSD filesystems? It's technically feasible (others have done it), many dual-booting folks would like it, and there aren't any licensing problems that I can see (as long as MS would write their own, or build on BSD-licensed code). So why? Simple: without it, dual-booting folks have to look themselves for ext2/BSD filesystem drivers for Windows. More hassle, higher cost of moving to Linux/*BSD.
MS says it cares about interoperability, but it's actions often say otherwise. Not supporting OO document format in Office is just another example of that. Anyway, I think managers that decide between MS Office or OO, Firefox or IE, Windows, Linux or Mac OSX on company desktops, matter more here than home users...and Bam! no more crazy word/swriter stuff.
This could even be fast compared to the stoneage stuff we use nowdays and also compatible with everything out of the box.
We have cross platform PDF readers, time to add an edit tab/mode to those already ?
My first 2 dev cents.
Microsoft wasted no time writing in the ability to handle other word processor formats. Word Perfect format was a specific target. "Inferior" as it may be, they took special care to make their Word capable not only of handling Word Perfect documents, but also assisted users through software in the process.
It would be a nice change for MS to simply tell the plain truth -- there's not enough profit motive for them to cut their own throats by giving their customers the means to migrate away from their most profitable product and I doubt there ever will be.
When I was watching the MS antitrust stuff happening, I really thought that was the beginning of the end for Microsoft. I was both gleeful and a little scared. Taking a lesson from countless other businesses under government investigation, they bought their way out of it through donations to politicians who, in turn, would support MS's interests.
But now there is this... the gradual chipping away at Microsoft's hold on government data by not only Massachusetts, but other governmental bodies as well. (Other nations, local governments, etc.) Some suggest that these chips are merely attempts to get Microsoft to cut them a nicer deal. While the results of some of those deals show this effect, can you really claim that the result was the intent? It would be like throwing a dart and claiming that whatever it hit was the intended target. We can see were Microsoft's attempts to dissuade have failed. Without inside knowledge, no one can really know the intent. But even in those cases, these activities show that Microsoft is being weakened in some small way each and every time they have to deal with these situations. They either need to lower their prices or face becoming irrelevant... and that's the best case scenario! The worst is that there is nothing they can do to save their sinking ship.
This is what happens when you elect a government that would rather lie down with big business and creep toward facism rather than support democracy. This is a far more effective anti-trust arguement than the browser wars, but thanks to the current "fiddle-while-Rome-burns" president, this will never happen.
Captialism is the greatest economic force the world has known, but corporatism was exactly what led to Nazi Germany. I'm not trying to sound too alarmist here, but can anyone argue after seeing the events of the last week that the US is losing it's grip on democracy? Please view the documentary "The Corporation" for further background.
Let's get back to democracy and free enterprise and the values that America was founded to protect. Microsoft deserves to be put out of business over this refusal. Inferior format may ass. The are looking for revenue lock-in at the expense of democracy.
The more I read about this it seems that MA is more concerned about MS's propiretary schemas and patents that could affect the legal distribution and use of the states documents. The potential effects would be massive. State, county, local governments, schools and agencies, as well as private sector business's would have signifiacant concerns about the digital distribution and use of state documents, allowing the only workaround to be printing the material.
I also guess they will be dropping RTF, "Plain Text", "Web Page", and MS Works as valid formats, as these are clearly inferior to the basic MS Office format.
MS already allows users to "Save As" to reduced formats, even if Open Doc was reduced (which it certainly isn't in terms of multi-media) then Microsoft have already set the precedent of Load/Save from "inferior" formats.
Its not just FUD... its Stupid FUD
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
It behooves those who desire unrestricted interchange of information to help make proper support of OpenDocument become of interest to MS.
This move by MA is a step in the right direction, away from proprietary formats.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
First of all, I can be honest and true and yes, MS Office dominates, there is no doubt about that. However, I see *perfect legal* reasons to Massachusetts to choose open format. And Microsoft rethorics about 'how the real world deals with it' [tm] doesn't work.
It is nice to see goverment institutions which start to get it, that your IT infrastructure isn't video game - there should be REAL rules to follow. And there are no written in favor of some kind big business who wants it's format be main in goverment documentation.
For some reason, I'm really not surprised about reaction of Microsoft. What I am surprised about that they insist to their stubborness and stupidness in this topic. They just make their own grave in this situation.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
...open document formats do not allow embedded video or audio in the document
They can open their format to fix that problem.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
I do not undestand what the hell this decision has got to do with MS and why they are able to get all upset about it. What software and standards a government/department/whatever use is their business and has sweet fanny ann to do with software companies, whoever they are. Really Microsoft should just mind their own business and not kick up a fuss about things that are not their business, like a kid throwing their toys out of the pram when they don't get their way. If anything, MS's attitude to this makes me think worse of them.
Oh wait that was a Xtensible tag added by M$ called <makeAllDocumentsIllegible/>, and they are crying that the opendoc standard won't pick it up. Thats why they won't support it.
Does that mean it comes out in 2012? Or that it come out in the year 12,000?
Or that it came out in the year 12?
I'm so confused!
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
As a professional Office Automation Analyst, I can vouch for MS Office products not being 100% backward compatible, but whats worse, they are not 100% forward compatible either.
Case in point: I have several 1000's word 200o doc's with tables and indexes. Nothing spectacular. Yet, Office 2003 majorly screws with tabel alignment, and indexes are corrupt, and need to be set again.
Do I need to continue on MS Visio and MS Project? Same stuff. Most works, but often it also does not.
I have people saving thing with Project 2000 in Project 97 format, otherwise resources would dissapear and be un-editable in Project 2003.
MS is doing one, and only one thing: They are holding all our doc's hostage, and most of there profit is due to it, so they will stick to it no matter what.
since Massachusetts is MS's customer, I feel MS's response is unreasonable
You'd certainly think so, seeing how Microsoft is bending over backwards to help Newham Council do everything it requires.
Perhaps Newham should ask for Open Document support?
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
I think a major problem with MS Office is its lack of archive value. If you have thousands (or millions) of documents and someone misfiles something, you cannot simply search the contents of the documents for a known string. Ferinstance, "egrep 'John Doe' *.doc" doesn't work so well, but it works on Corel WordPerfect files, and adding gzip into a pipe works on OOo docs. In a law office for example, it is very useful to be able to find precedents on obscure subjects that are only handled once or twice in several years and searching a collection of MS documents just doesn't work. This has convinced many lawyers to rather stick with Corel and not move to MS Office.
Oh well, what the hell...
The article also quotes a Microsoft executive on further reason that Microsoft's upcoming Office 12 will not support OpenDocument.
That will be one of the fixes for .01. After all, nobody is going to buy a .0 release.
It's really slick, you should give the trial of 5.0 a try when it is released if you have ms office 2003 lying around.
I love Office XXIV, but what is the motto:
'apres nous, le deluge'
or
Long live the anti-Sun/OO King
Think global, act loco
The real problem isn't Open Office v MS Office and which standard is best. It is all irrelevant when you have to pony up to some private company to get the public documents in the first place. Just try to get something out of the court system of your choice. Access to public documents is VERY expensive, so what format the item is doesn't matter really as joe citizen can't aford it. Westlaw pretty much has a monopoly on public docs - so much so that often a state has to pay Westlaw to get copies of docs the state created in the first place! Yes Westal provides value in it's index, but there is no alternative and that is the problem I'd rather see the access problem solved first. Most people have access to MS Word or at least something that can open it, so IMO the real barrier to democracy isn't the file format.
I was quite sad when I heard it was killed - and I was just a kid at the time.
Actually, it is one thing I'd like to see on Linux... although I like OO.o, it is still a monstruously large application; a modular office app that would only load the tools it needed would be much faster and, for those 80% of the users that use 20% of the functions, infinitely more simple.
Now, if only I found someone with enough free time and coding knowledge... or had the time to learn coding myself...
Ignore this signature. By order.
This has nothing to do with backward compatability, forward compatibility, embedding objects etc.
It is all about controlling the end users document either through locked in formats, patents whatever. Maintaining a lock on the format means sustaining and maintaining on the monopoly. Loose that control
and the business is threatened.
The sleazy tactics of trying to exclude GPL by crafty licensing backfired on them in a enormous way. Had they loosened the grip a little they may
have still been a player. They played the wrong card this time and lost, but then again the customer chose freedom so they loose either way.
Got Code?
It's called a tarball
It's very important to have the ability to have executable content in documents, ...in order to create security holes ...in order to create public consent for Trusted Computing ...in order to enable Microsoft and its customers (not you, Microsoft's customers are media and computer companies) to put "your" computer under their control.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Reminds me of an incident we had at work where we were talking about OpenMosix and one of the sales guys says "Say what is this OpenMoses thing all about" - A friend pipes up and says it is all about letting my processes go!
Post to kill a some mis-moderation in this thread.
I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress -J Adams
Would be if a group of people got together and developed a module to convert from MS Word to/from OpenDoc format, and then released it as open source -- i.e. doing what MS claims is impossible or undesirable. Maybe it would be possible to extend the antiword project?
.doc files are converted into something more portable, open, human and computer-parseable, and stable, the better. The excuses MS is making are validating most of the reasons to make the "big switch" -- they are effectively admitting they have previously deployed multiple, flawed document formats that are difficult to support.
I love the rationale given by MS -- because MS software "pays special attention to compatibility with older documents". Here's a question: if that task is SO difficult, isn't it symptomatic of a serious problem with older MS Word document formats, because they are so difficult to accomodate? And is Office 12 any better? And who cares if OpenDocument is not compatible with older versions of Word? Files saved with newer versions of Word aren't compatible either (though things have gotten better since the 95/97/2000 days, after extensive user complaints).
To me, all of this sounds like one more reason to run away from such an inscrutable and version-fussy format, in order to preserve future compatibility. The sooner all those
So Microsoft won't support the OpenDocument format because it's inferior? Sounds like the same excuse they used for not supporting CSS, doesn't it? Seems to me that Microsoft wants to balkanize the web, heck, all of computing.
IMHO, ``inferior'' is merely a code word for ``isn't a format that we control''. Inferior my eye.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
We're talking about public record here. Considering Microsoft's dismal track record with DRM and wanting to control data that they have no business controlling, do you really want public records in their document formats? One of the things that Microsoft has been touting is the ability for their documents to have access lists and be traceable. This is really bad news for whistle blowers in the public sector. How else do you leak documents that SHOULD be leaked? In case anyone has forgotten, it's your government. They are YOUR servants, not your masters.
This should be a federal initiative. If our feds weren't so in bed with corporate America, this would be a no brainer. Proprietary document formats with DRM are a bad thing for public record. Don't even mention the fact that with each revision Microsoft has a tendency to break documents in older formats in new and horrendous ways. The idea of having embedded resources beyond text is also monumentally stupid. Embedding URLs for various resources that may shift or wind up being dead later is stupid. Embedding video and sound clips while "neat" stops working unless the media clip is actually made a part of the document. Most users aren't smart enough to do that, so the embedded clip stops working when the document and the media clip are separated. And in the event that the user DOES actually know how to embed the clip properly, then you wind up with a 250 Meg word document that's really nice to try and send via e-mail.
If government moved to an open document format and only kept the most important information (most government business is better conducted via text) in text with limited use of graphics and a complete ban on media clips, we'd be better off in the long run. As a sidenote, if a document seems to "need" media clips, then your not doing your job, or maybe you've been tasked with something that should have gone to PR and a proper media production outfit. My money is on the former in 99.9% of the cases.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I really just wish we could go back to Windows 98. I remember when everything worked back then. I never had problems with spam or viruses. I didn't need a firewall or updates. And wouldn't you know it, openoffice worked on it too. The only thing I'd add from XP is that whole autodetect thing.
Thats it, we should all, in protest, revert our XP installations back to 98. Viva la revolucion!
No doubt this move The Way Things Have Always Been (TM) will be rallied against by our blockhead of a governor, Mitt Romney, as to do otherwise might hurt his chances to become the next Republican president.
Doable? Yes. Desirable? No.
The thought of off-putting the task of saving my documents to a VBA macro...
Let's not talk about it.
One thing about Word Perfect was, all of their file formats were downward compatible as long as you didn't use a feature implemented in a later version. If you did, and you tried to open the document in an earlier version of WP, the functionality provided by that feature would simply be ignored and the document would still load and you could still use it. I think it would even retain the unusable codes so that if you then loaded the document after having used it in a lower version of WP, you got the functionality the earlier version couldn't use, back exactly as it was.
Why does Microsoft suddenly have this concern about backward compatibility of other formats when it never had it for its own? Sounds like the hypocritical comments of a company that is scared to death of people being able to break the chains of vendor lock-in.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
State and local government budgets have been severely strained for the past few years. Why would anyone want their government to waste money on an office package.
[Insert pithy quote here]
The article says:
Massachusetts agencies have until 1 January, 2007, to install applications that support the OpenDocument file formats and phase out other products.
From a Tobacco Settlement document
at the GAO, most state's fiscal years begin July 1, except Alabama and Michigan, where the fiscal year begins on October 1, and in New York, where the fiscal year begins on April 1.
I am having trouble figuring out from Google when the budget deadline is, but this would appear to imply that every Massachusetts agency will have to put in a budget request before this coming July for a related budget (i.e. hire some company to install it and train them), unless they can handle it in house (since OOo is free).
But government is not necessarily driven by a cost of $0. It seems to me that this means there is a great opportunity for open source software companies to get jobs from Massachusetts, and also for software developers.
There should be a big push to ensure that there are plenty of mature projects with easy to use GPL libraries supporting the OpenDocument format, and resources should be put into developing lots of different kinds of software that supports it. This will help ensure a diverse ecology including providers and users of these tools, open content, and increased momentum to buy into it. This could match what is called "Embrace and Extend". In Embrace and Extend [and Extinguish], as the Wiki notes, support of a given standard is announced, after the PR partial compatibility is provided, then proprietary functions get tacked on and finally widespread use of their mangled format in various products and tools makes it impossible to compete, and they own the (mangled) standard which they can then kill if they wish.
OpenOffice/OpenDocument can be marketed as superior to MS Office. It's just a matter of PR, isn't it Microsoft? And we don't even need any FUD, after all if we have SMIL in OpenDocument then we can integrate web-ready media, etc.
Perhaps a new brand could be created called "Office Plus".
Anyway, where M$ embraces and extends with proprietary and patented code, the free software community has the GPL.
And by putting more energy in to leveraging OpenOffice and OpenDocument format, including making it easy to do so, we can implement the Extend and Extinguish phase. If there are enough alternatives, including OpenOffice, reduced feature set but simpler to use software based on its code, tools such as database generated documents and fill-in forms, etc., we can build a suction to draw people away from M$ Office. There will be many alternatives even if M$ belatedly adds Import/Export for OpenDocument, by which time adding it will be even worse for Microsoft.
Personally I do contribute to debugging OOo as a user but have never gotten into its code or documentation though I should. Just imagining what it must be like has been too dauntin. But I certainly would like to be able to output reports in OOo format, and instead of CSV perhaps use OOo's Calc format for example.
As another example, I was working on workflow software that munges excel data, and thought about adding a spreadsheet input function (to wxPerl). This exists in WxWidgets, but it woul be nice if bits of OOo code found its way into there so that people could easily use OOo facilities, perhaps driven with some scripting from inside a document.
I just noticed as I was writing this that there are a bunch of perl modules on CPAN for OpenOffice for example, think I'll start there.
By the way I should note that I do use OOo when I get word or powerpoint documents to work on, but I don't make it my main editor when I'm writing notes because (well yes I like XEmacs but also because) it takes so much memory on my 128MB machine. A light text editor like Windows' Wordpad, which uses OpenDoc instead of outputting as .doc or .rtf, would be nice. Maybe it exists already?
..... either have to find a pirate copy of the latest version of Word, or *shudder* pay for it {which businesses actually are likely to do}. Adopting OpenDocument will mean .....
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Reading about Microsoft's "concern" about open formats not providing adequate support for legacy documents in old formats has me chuckling.
I started using StarOffice years ago, and started recommending it to others, solely because it was the only effective way to move MS Office documents between versions of MS Office.
Of course I'm strange-- I've stayed with MS Office 97 all these years for reasons that Microsoft apparently consider to be stupid:
I do like the interface on OpenOffice v2.0 (I've started using the beta, which seems to be at least as stable as the MS Office 97 workhorse). I think it is about time I upgraded to it.
Sure I was modded down for a troll for suggesting that firms and governments typically use this as a strategy for renegotiating T+C's with MS for deep discounts but the same thing is true here.
The only real weapon MS has, aside from tweaking their apps to use OO format by default, is to bargain with the price.
After all isn't that precisely what all the Libertarian free bitch slap of commerce fucktards have been telling us? Let the goddamn market decide. And if MS decides that deep discounts + service is a market they want to be in, and, Mass. decides that free software + their own support is a better deal, then they have a place from which to start negotiating.
And for the record, any government agency that willingly encodes all their documents in a proprietary commerical standard is probably by default guilty of collusion. Open standards has been around for a lot longer than Microsoft and seemingly the end of civilization hasn't arrived as of yet.
Last but not least, the reality of any government procurement bid is that that the government gets to make whatever spec they want and the vendors are free to meet it or sell their stuff to someone else.
You might want to look at this essay: Why OpenDocument Won (and Microsoft Office Open XML Didn't)
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
We need government policies that require a vendor-neutral web.
Open-source coders and OO.o can add one or two things to help MA apply egg to MS's face. Those things are light-weight, small plug-in viewers for various Web browsers on Windows that can be set up to be installed through the browser's standard plug-in/add-on installation interface. Make it easy, when people hit a Web page referring to OO.o documents on MA's sites, to get their browser set up to view, print and save the documents (editing isn't, I believe, too neccesary here). Have the viewer, when it's installed, add the appropriate hooks so that once OO.o documents are saved the browser and plug-in get used when you double-click on the document later. In short, make the viewing experience as seamless as possible so it's only MSOffice that seems to have problems with OO.o documents. We all know what the average Windows user is like, so make it Microsoft's problem to explain why MSOffice won't work when they get calls like "Word won't open this document! When I visit the MA web site I can see it just fine, but Word won't open it! Why's Word broken?". :)
MA can add to that by putting links to the OO.o downloads page on all the pages that link to OO.o documents. Make it easy for users to ask "But everybody else makes it so easy, why is Office the only thing that gives me problems?".
Bah I save my documents in rtf; it has everything I need bold, underline, even italics.
Funny how office supports it even though it is an inferior standard.
'Yates reiterated the Microsoft does not intend to natively support the OpenDocument format, which he said was very specific to the OpenOffice.org 2.0 open source productivity suite.
/. Microsoft shill - is to be believed.
Microsoft has since confirmed this view.
A Microsoft executive said last week, after the report was released, that Microsoft will not support OpenDocument in its next version of Office 12 as it believed the format to be inferior and said is not compatible with older versions of Office, , according to InformationWeek.
Alan Yates, general manager of Microsoft's Information Worker Business Strategy, told CRN last Friday that Office 12 would not support OpenDocument because "the Office 12 formats pay special attention to compatibility with older document versions, [and] other formats do not concern themselves with this important issue."'
Anybody knows that OpenOffice is adequately compatible with older Office formats, and that Microsoft's OWN suite is NOT. Also, OpenOffice 2.0 is specifically intended to be MORE compatible with Office for the obvious reason that it needs to be.
This is their "standard" excuse now for not supporting standards such as CSS: "The standard is 'inferior'."
To WHAT? THEIR "standard" - which doesn't even exist?
This is more proof that Microsoft personnel authorized to speak to the public are unmitigated LIARS. NOTHING that comes out of the mouth of a Microsoft employee - or a
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
what the hell is the world coming to? XML is a PLAIN TEXT FILE! How can you patent a format? It is like a recipe, you can't patent that?
Last time I checked, MS Word let you save in plain text (.txt) format. Are they going to stop supporting that inferior format as well?
I think you miss the point. This is not about open source applications or not. The only thing they require is that they are in full control of their own information.
By specifying an open free for all standard they give equal opportunity to all software houses. Nothing prevented Microsoft from supplying such solution, but Microsoft didn't. So, surprice, they don't get to sell their product.
From the governments point of wiew a open format is a good thing as their vender will have no protection sheild of vender lock in. This means that venders will have to offer other things to compete, e.g. low price, or better service. This makes good capitalistic sense in the long run from the buyers i.e. the tax payers perspective.
Your car example doesn't fit in. A more accurate car analogy would be that the govenment refuses to buy cars from GM that only can run on roads that are built by GM instead of cars tha can run on all roads. If that was the case I would strongly suspect tax payers to object very much and urge the government to buy the all road car.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
You mean you can patent an XML schema? Has that been tested in court?
"I forgot my mantra."
... makes you read it twice before you realize it is.
Hats off to you Sir or Madam.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
At moments in the past, I have felt as I imagine you do at present,(and at moments, I can still appreciate a significant resonance in that direction), but I am fairly certain that if MS squirms there will be an entire industry (and more) thrashing,... and if that industry is in pain, many others will suffer.
...
I would ask that, instead, you consider vigilance for your rights and compassion for others. If you fear that any compassion will limit your vigilance, than, I must bow to your self-knowledge. But don't watch them squirm either,... because, if you do, then you won't be watching **your own business**, and they're big enough that while you're watching one piece of them squirm, they'll grow a new head to swallow you while you're laughing at them.
I believe that's what happened to Judge Jackson. Gates suckered him into thinking he had been beaten and Jackson lost site of **his business** while subtly(?) celebrating to the press.
Linus has shown tremendous genius at focusing on *his* product/work/job,... and leaving other folks to work on theirs. His intelligence, enthusiasm, insight and sense of humor have made him a natural leader.
Do not expect MS to tell the entire truth. Most serious businesses would be committing corporate suicide for their employees and shareholders if they made a careful analysis of products in the field and told the whole truth, "Our product is pretty good, but ACME's is better." I have strong doubts that any significant truth can be expressed in serious prose.
The folks at MS are in the business of making money by selling software and related goods. They make *good enough* (and sometimes better) software and sell it at prices sufficient to support the enterprise Bill Gates envisioned. He has an exceedingly sharp (and broad) vision for the "way things work," in our market society,... and his ability to project and protect legally and marketwise his products and product areas should leave no one doubt of how incredibly capable he is. He loves to learn, and he loves to sell. He also cares about people,... though he seems to have a binary coded sense of follower or enemy. [It is probably valuable when one is small in a competitive world.]
He has manipulated things as many would if they had his intelligence, insight, energy/passion, and endurance. He has been unrelenting in his pursuit of gaining and maintaining an nearly unassailable position for his company and its products. That he has played rougher than others, may speak for his keen understanding of what the *powers* will accept.
He has walked on very thin ice (if not on water), and has made it to the other side [the anti-trust trial(s) and Internet/Netscape race].
Help make your own, and others', products the best they can be. Try and help teach Bill (and the bright and capable folks he employs) other/better ways to compete and create excellent products for the markets that our society allows. Do it by example.
I think it would be wise to learn as much as we can of the good stuff he has demonstrated. I believe there's much in him and his company to be admired and imitated if we would but embrace and extend... but in a direction of your choosing.
Gerry
Alan Yates, Microsoft's general manager of Information Worker business strategy, criticised the Massachusetts proposal, saying it was "confusing".
If a statement, "we don't want to use something that locks us in and presents possible legal problems," is confusing, I'd say Microsoft has reached a state of clueless nirvana.
what the hell is the world coming to? XML is a PLAIN TEXT FILE! How can you patent a format? It is like a recipe, you can't patent that?
If they can patent a menu, they can patent a recipe.
.
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Welcome to Soviet Amerika. Orwell was only off by twenty years.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
There's a small fortune to be made by the person/company that writes an import/export filter between MS Office and the OpenDocument format. Recent legal judgements against Microsoft required them to open their API, if not their file formats and protocols, correct?
Totally agree with this point.
Oddly enough, Brian Jones et al were all trumpeting about how "easy" it would be for anyone to convert documents from MS's "special" Almost-but-not-quite-OASIS format because it would be XML. And yet they then complain that they won't support the true OASIS standard? If it's that easy, why not? Is there ANY way this could be anything but petty "taking their ball and going home" behavior?
I still find it funny and sickening at the same time that their excuse for not using the OASIS standard really just boils down to "it wasn't designed to store 'Office 97' format documents"...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Many have said how important it is that our government use open standards, lest anyone be compelled to enrich a particular corporation in order to participate in review of governmental actions. This is most vertainly true!
On the issue of formats, it is proven that Microsoft Word formats can be incompatible with earlier/later ones, and there are problems a version of MS Office. Thus it make quite good sense to only have to endure this stress and change just once to open format!
I have two question about this. 1. Is OpenDocument an xml schema or not? And two, if Office supposedly supports xml schema then why aren't they supporting OpenDocument?
FalconShould there be a Law?
In Windows, open up a folder containing some Word .doc's, hit F3 to bring up Search, then type your string in the "Containing text" field.
It's beyond me why people find this complicated.
smattawichu
FTA:
"Alan Yates, general manager of Microsoft's Information Worker Business Strategy, told CRN last Friday that Office 12 would not support OpenDocument because "the Office 12 formats pay special attention to compatibility with older document versions, [and] other formats do not concern themselves with this important issue.""
Perhaps other office suites do not take into account prior office versions. Well to be blunt; MS you never opened up the formats; as to allow people to be concerned with this very issue.
Now if you open up previous formats; I am sure the OSS community would assist you in this particular issue.
Regards
UTF stands for Unicode Transformation Format
Generally speaking when we talk about Unicode in the Windows world, we're referring to UTF-16 and not UTF-7. Sorry you didn't understand that.
Word already shows a warning like this for any non-MS format such as RTF. Wait, they support RTF and it does not allow for multimedia content. And OpenOffice has support for multimedia, indeed!
Could MS be insincere about the reason for not support OpenOffice? Nah, not possible...
There's no 'on' position on the Slacker switch!
Anyway, and with less sarcasm: that company has made a big name in the industry by embracing, then corrupting file formats. IE-specific HTML is the textbook example. With the Office formats they just didn't have to embrace in the first place. The way OO docs are designed they absolutely have to maintain backwards usability, and any extension must rely on community consensus to get a foothold. This might just prevent SmallProgs (or whatzername) from eee:ing the OpenOffice doc standard. For that, lowest common denominator features is a price I am willing to pay.
Besides, we know 80% of Office users use only 20% of the features - and embedded multimedia is not among those.
There's no 'on' position on the Slacker switch!
Thanks for the correction and apologies for wasting everyone's time. I'd flipped through the spec but I missed that element, so I'd assumed that OpenDocument couldn't do weird stuff (video, audio etc).
For the love of God, please learn to spell "ridiculous"!!!