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A Look At MS's MA Talking Points

Posted by Zonk on from the deconstruction dept.

tbray writes "It may not be a Halloween Document, but one of the lobby groups in the thick of the Massachusetts office-doc standardization fray passed me 'The Other Side's Talking Points', so I've published (and slightly deconstructed) them with a barnyard-animal picture." From the article: "The direction toward interoperability using XML data standards is clearly a good one. However, limiting the document formats to the OpenOffice format is unnecessary, unfair and gives preferential treatment for specific vendor products, and prohibits others. The proposed approach and process for use of XML data is quite open to multiple standards, yet the proposed standard for documents is quite narrow, preferential, and may not enable optimal use of the data-centric standards."

18 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. Omission? by theRhinoceros · · Score: 5, Funny

    There are less costly, less limiting, non-preferential policy options to achieve the same goals.

    However, Microsoft is as unsure as you what these options are; they certainly aren't their products.

  2. narrow? preferential? by soma_0806 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The fact is that choosing ANY file type narrows the field somewhat and whatever type is selected will give preference to someone. It makes the most sense to pick the type that does the least amount of "damage" in both fields.

    Using an "open" format allows the docs to be read by users of pretty much any OS. Also, it gives preference to the open source community, not some corporation looking for nothing beyond profit. Finally, anyone that wants OpenOffice can get it, and for free. No other possiblity would be less narrow or preferential!

  3. Hmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Microsoft Employees themselves are saying that open office formats (at least partially, or for old versions) are a good thing. Others are saying they want to quit soon. Note that this open revolt against their management is being spearheaded by the mysterious Mini-Microsoft.

    Will these attitudes finally change MSFT from the bottom up, or just get these guys fired? I suspect the latter, but hey, we live in interesting times...

  4. duh by gyratedotorg · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "limiting the document formats to the OpenOffice format is unnecessary, unfair and gives preferential treatment for specific vendor products, and prohibits others."

    prohibits others? i know this is obvious to everyone here, but the fact that the oasis format is open and fully documented invalidates this argument. there is absolutely no reason why any vendor cant implement the oasis format.

    --
    Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
    1. Re:duh by rm69990 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not only that, but a reason MS gave for not supporting the format is that it doesn't support all of the features of the MS Office XML formats. So they won't add write or read support for OpenDocument.

      I find that really strange, considering MS Office currently has read and write support for plain text and rich text documents. Are they really trying to tell us that plain text documents support more features than OpenDocument documents?

      I call bullshit on that statement. It is an utterly stupid reason for them to give. No one is asking Microsoft to make OpenDocument the default format for Office, but to simply support it, just like they do RTF and TXT files.

      This is simply a case of Microsoft kicking and screaming and throwing a tantrum because someone is telling them to take their lockin schemes and shove it up their ass.

  5. FUD, Lies, and More FUD by Pensacola+Tiger · · Score: 5, Informative

    First, the format is called Open Document, not Open Office. Open Office is the program. Second, Massachusetts is not specifying any particular software, only that any software must read/write Open Document format. Everything, and I mean everything, that Microsoft claims in their so-called talking points is self-serving rubbish. Remember that reaching a compromise with Microsoft is like reaching a compromise with cannibals that they will only eat your right arm.

  6. OpenDocument format by Stevyn · · Score: 5, Informative

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but Massachusetts isn't using OpenOffice's format, it's using OpenDocument. This is an open format that OOo just happens to use as well. I understand OOo had a hand in creating it, but it's not "their" format. Here's the wiki link explaining it a little further

  7. Re:Open Office by JMZorko · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... but if it's going to hurt now, won't it hurt even _more_ later? These sorts of arguments don't make sense to me. If changes need to be made, better to make them _sooner_ and minimize the headaches, then make them _later_ and have to deal with even more pain. Anyone who has done software engineering knows that it's easier to refactor earlier than later.

    So, congrats to MA for attempting to refactor, and boo / hiss to MS for trying to stop it.

    Regards,

    John

    --
    Falling You - beautiful
  8. Re:Well, guess what by jhfry · · Score: 5, Informative

    IT'S NOT OPENOFFICE.ORG'S FORMAT

    It's simply an open XML format for storing data that the developers of OpenOffice.org developed and utilize. It would be simple to modify other word processing applications to use this format... or if they stick with MS (who claims an open format in the future) I'm sure OO.o will migrate to that format.

    Just because they are considering moving to OO.o doesn't mean that they are giving unfair or preferential treatment to a specific vendor... you could be their vendor if you bid low enough! All they have done is researched and chose the best open format for storing thier data that has a usable application that utilizes it.

    I would bet if MS moved to an open format, they would use that instead... their objective is to have readable documents in 50 years... not to get away from MS (yet).

    --
    Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
  9. cost of mass conversion could be 10ish clicks by totro2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Openoffice comes with a wizard to do mass conversions. It can recursively sweep through a file structure, creating a .sxw file every time a .doc file is encountered (keeping the same name). So this strengthens the point made by the author of the article:

    "Unless the cost of conversion right now is awfully damn high, this sounds like a good investment."

    To find this insanely under-hyped feature:

    File -> AutoPilot -> Document Converter

    If your file server has enough room for a bunch of new .sxw files for every .doc file, why not give give it a test on some smaller portion of your folder tree.

    Then you can all easily see how good OpenOffice is in it's conversions on your existing data RIGHT NOW, and everyone can learn firsthand how realistic a switch to OpenOffice REALLY is.

    Aren't you dying to know first hand if it's actually just that easy and we can all quit theorizing about how viable this whole thing is?

  10. Re:Well, guess what by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    MA is using the OpenDocument format, not OpenOffice's format.

    OpenDocument is not vendor-specific. Anyone can use it. The only reason MS doesn't want to support it in Word is because they know that allowing people to use a non-Word format would make it easy for people to switch away from Word.

  11. Re:Hidden costs by RatBastard · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've been doing Customer Support for various sized organizations through the releases of Office 97, Office 2000, Office XP (2002) and Office 2003, and every time there is a new release there are documents that break. Excel spreadsheets and Access databases (hahahahaha!) are the worst offenders, breaking with almost every release. A lot of employee time gets eaten up fixing these corrupted files every cycle. Does MS reimburse us for the time wasted? Nope. We PAY Microsoft for the priviledge of dealing with broken documents.

    Moving to an open document format would stop most of this from happenning. It would also remove the only barrier keeping WordPerfect, or the Mac or Linux, out of the office environment: document interchange.

    --
    Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
  12. Re:Gee, MS Hypocrites? by strcmp · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Maybe someone should remind Microsoft that they sponsored the development of OpenDocument.

    --
    "Yields falsehood when preceded by its own quotation" yields falsehood when preceded by its own quotation.
  13. Someone needs to Insert the Chair-Throwing Joke by putko · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ballmer: Just tell me it's not Open Office. It's not Open Office, is it?

    Commonwealth of Massachusetts: Yes.

    (chair flies through air) CRASH....

    Ballmer: I WILL KILL MOTHERFUCING OPEN OFFICE! WordPerfect tried to get me, but I fucked them one good. I will fucking kill Open Office.

    --
    http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_s tone_your_children/dt21_18a.html
  14. Re:Open Office by Guppy06 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Let's face it, do you want to be the one who has to train all these government employees how to use OpenOffice."

    The point of the switch isn't to save money but to support the freedom of information. If commonwealth employees have to be retrained in order to ensure that commonwealth citizens will be able to have access to commonwealth-published documents without being locked into vendor-specific software (or worse, a specific version of said software), so be it.

    The commonwealth is there to to serve the citizenry, not sell software from an out-of-state vendor for the sake of saving a few bucks.

  15. David Wheeler on Why OpenDoc Won by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    David Wheeler on why opendoc won: link

  16. Re:Well, guess what by theid0 · · Score: 5, Informative

    You might want to read that again. According to the Wiki, OO.o was in fact a participator in standardization of the specification, and both the latest 1.1rc and 2.0 beta OpenOffice releases support the format. I don't know if the stable releases support it, but if not it's only a matter of time, and government moves slow enough to wait. It helps that there are already other (stable) programs that support it, like Koffice.

  17. I'm confused... by Kamiza+Ikioi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "The direction toward interoperability using XML data standards is clearly a good one. However, limiting the document formats to the OpenOffice format is unnecessary, unfair and gives preferential treatment for specific vendor products, and prohibits others. The proposed approach and process for use of XML data is quite open to multiple standards, yet the proposed standard for documents is quite narrow, preferential, and may not enable optimal use of the data-centric standards."

    I had to re-read that line twice. I thought they were talking about Microsoft being preferential, narrow, etc, etc... not OpenOffice.

    Can someone actually Orwellian-like bend their mind so that 2+2=5 for me, and explain the logic behind that statement where choosing an open standard over a closed-patented-licensed-EULA'd-sign with blood-give up your first born is a bad choice?

    Or is this just what I think it is, one of Microsoft's "A Few Good Men" speeches:

    "I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very OS that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said "thank you" and went on your way. Otherwise I suggest you pick up a keyboard and start writing code. Either way, I don't give a damn what open standards you think you are entitled to."

    --
    I8-D