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.
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.
But it has been already answered: The open standard is not a fixed one, but something consensuated. It is very easy to add this to the standard -if needed- and you do not loose the openess.
Err, try looking at what OpenDocument actually supports first (as opposed to what Microsoft claimed it supports).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument
"OpenDocument is designed to reuse existing open XML standards whenever they are available, and it creates new tags only where no existing standard can provide the needed functionality. So, OpenDocument uses DublinCore for metadata, MathML for formulae, SVG for vector graphics, SMIL for multimedia, etc."
Note the bit about multimedia, Microsoft?
... 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"!!!
"consensuated"
What the hell kind of word is that?
Do you mean "created by consensus?" "Consensual?" Those are words.
Gack. Verbing weirds language.
I will immediately soften my above rant by noting that you list a .es web site, and are thus not a native English speaker. So, now nicely and with a smile rather than a sneer, I also add that it is "lose," not "loose."
Apologies for being snarky. Que se vaya bien.
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.
"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!
The tag will be represented as something like this:
<draw:object-ole xlink:href="./Object 1" xlink:type="simple" xlink:show="embed" xlink:actuate="onLoad"/>
The OLE object's content would be in that "Object 1". This is obviously not XML, doesn't have to be. When OO starts, it instantiates the CLSID specified in the Object 1 file and streams its data into it via IStream or IStorage. Thus any OLE object is supported by the spec and by OO.
The object-ole tag is documented on page 300 of the OpenDocument 1.0 spec. Other mechanisms for embedding objects are also documented.
So it is supported by the Open Document spec.
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?
Sorry but how is this insightful? Microsoft's stated reason for not supporting an open document standard is very transparently not the actual reason.
The last time I checked it was entirely possible to read and write ascii text and Microsoft Works documents from within Word, neither of which allow you to embed Audio or Video (ok, I'm just guessing this is the case with Works. With ascii I'm pretty damm sure though).
Providing support for a format does not tie you to that format's limitations, it just means you can read and write it. If your users choose not to use that format all the features are still available to them.
Microsoft isn't going to support it for political reasons, not technical ones. They have a monopoly and a widely adopted open format would threaten that monopoly.
Never trust anyone with an id greater than 889388
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...
pre-2.0 builds of oo.org use opendocument (ods, ods etc) as a default format and these are able to contain all mentioned media.
also, od was based on oo.org file format, several oo.org participants were on oasis committee - i somehow doubt they would have developed a format that would be seriously limited.
as mentioned in this thread and here :
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/faq.p
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument
od uses existing technologies to support multimedia.
btw, in wikipedia entry i noticed this :
that's a pretty impressive list - and it is growing
Rich
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.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.
FWIW OpenDoc was an apple technology back in the 90s that was ultimately killed off by jobs. it was a pretty cool framework that would have destroyed everything out there at the time if most people had been able to wrap their heads around "one document, one interface, many applications"
I still have a developer release laying around somewhere.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
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.
That standard document format exists. It's called HTML.
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
Well, it was funny indeed. The mistake is due to the fact that there is a verb: "consensuar" in Spanish. I meant to create by consensus.
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!
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.
J.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
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
Let it be said that I hate Microsoft as much as the next guy. (Thanks to me, both my girlfriend [Ubuntu] and my mother [Debian Stable] effectively run linux.)
However, I don't believe that Microsoft should be forced out of business for refusing to add in a feature that we all know will cost them money. This is still business, whether we like it or not. No one has to use Windows/Office. What they should be punished for is lying about their reasoning. Anyone with common sense at all can see that "backwards compatability" is a bunch of crap. (Really, look at the previous posts...and this is Slashdot, where no one has common sense.)
Anyways. I'm going to go randomly talk about vendor lock-in while passing out professionally pressed Ubuntu CD's. (I'm not kidding.)
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...
Guess what? I'm getting slightly bored of people making verifiably false claims, and even more bored of clueless moderators modding them up for it.
If I may quote directly from the horse's mouth:So do pray enlighten me: exactly how is OpenDocument not the OpenOffice.org format?
Oh, the other guy who replied to you suggested that there's another format (called OpenDoc not OpenDocument), which may well be what you have in mind. In that case, you are completely off-topic, because the format Massachusetts are thinking of using is OpenDocument. Which is to say, the format which is used by new versions of OpenOffice.org.
The only thing in common with what Apple had visioned in the "90s" and the current technology is the concept of using an open format (business decision to use a common format). The technology behind what they had and what is currently proposed now are worlds apart and although it may have achieved the same goal of an open 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.
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
Have you ever seen Word "HTML". Perhaps it is a design feature after all.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
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.
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.
Maybe if you use HTML + CSS... HTML by itself is not versatile enough or efficient enough to represent complex documents.
$8.95/mo web hosting
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)
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?".
'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!
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
Oh, my bad. I thought we were still on topic. My moderator informs me otherwise.
Carry on.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
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.
Well, aside from the obvious but publically denied reasons ("we'll do everything we can with our current monopoly powers to keep from having to compete or losing our monopoly power."), Microsoft CLAIMS that, although they ARE an OASIS member, they refused to work with everyone else because, to put it simply, the OASIS format wasn't going to be designed specifically to store older Microsoft Office document data. Personally, I take that to imply that their "new" format is going to have a lot of "<CDATA>(insert binary data from Word 97 here)</CDATA>" sort of stuff in it when you convert to "Office 12" formats from older versions of "Microsoft Office", ruining the whole point of having portable, interoperable formats.
And if this is not going to be the case, what "special features" could they possibly need to store the converted documents in this supposedly "open" format of theirs?
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