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
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.
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?
Well, that's unfortunate.
I don't just think embedding of video/audio in documents isn't necessary, I think it's very stupid. A document should be able to be printed out!!! Clearly, these things cannot be printed out and held on paper; ergo they do not belong in documents. The same goes for anything else that cannot be printed out and held on paper.
If you want those things, put them in some other computer format, but don't warp the meaning of 'document' to mean 'anything you can hold and represent on a computer, mushed into one file', because that's just silly.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
"consensuated"
What the hell kind of word is that?
Do you mean "created by consensus?" "Consensual?" Those are words.
Gack. Verbing weirds language.
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
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
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.
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.
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!
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.
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 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.
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