Tim Bray on Implications of OpenDocument Format

Jure Cuhalev writes "In todays keynote, at the OpenOffice.org conference, Tim Bray focused on what OpenDocument format means for office suits. He compared the impact that OpenDocument will have on regular documents to kick-off of the web with selection of HTML as file format. You can watch the video or listen to audio track. Also check out the media page for more conference coverage."

Comments

What was the comparable cost for openoffice?

[johansalk]

He said it would've cost $1000 for MS office per desktop, I couldn't hear how much he said it would've cost per openoffice.

Re:What was the comparable cost for openoffice?

[oneandoneis2]

Well, when Mass. did their working out, the total cost of upgrading to Office 12 was estimated at $50 million, while the total cost of switching to OO was $5 million - that includes all the training, software, and hardware considerations. . .

Re:What was the comparable cost for openoffice?

[bobbuck]

And what will the costs be to the people outside of the government who need to download the documents produced with OpenOffice, and to the government in response to people having problems opening OpenOffice formats?

Yea! Especially that damn PDF export! Seriously, the cost to download OpenOffice is zero. If I have to buy MS Office, it's going to cost me hundreds. Why is it an unbearable burden to download a free program and not a burden to have to buy MS Office?

Microsoft techie appearing on the OOo con

[John Zero]

This (friday) morning we just had an encounter with a Microsoft techie, in the Q&A session of the keynote conference about migration to OpenOffice.

Of course, he just kept repeating the standard Microsoft ideas, saying the speaker (!!) seems Anti-American, anti-corporate, saying that the Microsoft DOC format (the new one) IS open for everyone, citing some EU decision on that. This Microsoft guy has also agressively offered to "help the speaker get the facts right" for his slides for next time.

Then, in the corridor, talking with him lead of course nowhere, but what else did you expect? He only could repeat the standart MS panel replies to every question raised...

Perfect.

[T-Ranger]

Neither the audio or video have the complete presentation. Nice. Very nice.

Is MS missing a trick?

[tree_frog]

Personally, i find the MS response to the OpenDocument format quite interesting, and I think it is rather short sighted.

MS currently seems to be going through a phase where it is lacking innovation and agility, and is trying to buy these concepts (see for example their aquisition of Groove).

By adopting the OpenDocument format, MS would make it a lot easier for 3rd parties to create applications that interwork easily with MS Office documents, in all sorts of ways that they don't at the moment. For example, MS Equation Editor is a dog, so even though at work I have to use Offie, I do all my equation editing in OpenOffice, because the equation editor is much nicer.

If there is a sea of 3rd party vendors offering applications which extend the functionality of MS Office (by working directly with OpenDocument files), then there is an awful lot of scope for MS to aquire the best of them - and MS has awfully deep pockets.

So is MS missing a trick here?

Best regards,
treefrog

Re:Is MS missing a trick?

[baxissimo]

For typing math in PowerPoint, TeXPoint is the biz.
I was lured away from PowerPoint a few times in the past by the OOo equation editor, but after trying TeXPoint, now editing equations in PowerPoint is so easy I'd rather do it there than with OOo's editor. OOo's syntax is kind of TeX-like, but TeXPoint is the full deal.

That said, you better like editing equations in TeX, because that's the only way to make an equation with TeXPoint. None of this fancy WYSIWYG editing crap.

Re:Propaganda

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried sending a word doc to a bunch of teachers in different schools. Horrible failure, apparently they all had different versions and mine was newer than any of theirs. PDF worked though!

The war begins

[ShaolinTiger]

It's going to be an interesting battle between Microsofts 'Open' Document format and the real ODT, I'm sure MS's format uses Open in a very very very loose way...

Open Office is getting stronger and stronger, the new interface looks great, let's hope this persuades more people to use a truly open format.

How "standard"?

[mklencke]

A little off-topic, but I was wondering about the standardization of OpenDocument. Several OpenOffice.org files have namespaces like "oooc:" in various sections (like formulas) and they are not imported correctly by KOffice. Any pointers to more information about this?

Microsoft can support OpenDocument easily

[Been on TV]

All this oposition from Microsoft is only play for the gallery. Fact is that it would be dead easy for them to wite a filter or plug-in to MS Office that could read or write files in the OpenDocument formats.

Such a move would of course also invalidate many of the claims and concerns about replacing software, including the ones voiced from a disabilites point of view.

Of course there will be massive costs in converting documents from older Win-Word formats to OpenDocument, but Microsoft is planning on slapping this cost on businesses and states anyway since they will be changing the default fileformats in Office 12 to MS XML. ... Which of course all current software out there is equally incompatible with as the OpenDocument format.

Re:Microsoft can support OpenDocument easily

[Planesdragon]

What do you base your "dead easy" analysis on?

I'd base it on the fact that numerous essentially charity-ware applications have already adapted OpenDocument. That, and the fairly simple fact that MS has already done a lot of the necessary work, in converting Office to a real XML format for Office 12.

Let's look at it another way; what do YOU base your arugment that it wouldn't be "dead easy" for the world's biggest software company to support a standard?

Re:Microsoft can support OpenDocument easily

[Been on TV]

Well, first of all, they have the source code both for MS Office, OpenOffice and the format spesification for the OpenDocument format, so there should not be any massive surprises there.

Secondly, OpenOffice has to a large extent done the job for them. The convertion code is in the open source code for OpenOffice. Add to that the work that they also have done for XML support in Office 12.

Finally, if there were technical obstacles, Microsoft is free to contribute to the OpenDocument format and other sourcecode, much in the same way that Apple did with WebKit.

Re:Microsoft can support OpenDocument easily

[Been on TV]

haha, we love America here at the border of the old USSR ;-)

I must admit that I have actually liked and used MS Office ever since the day I picked up Excel 1.0 for the Mac back in 1985. That software even changed my career.

But I have increasingly found the proliferation of the closed formats of MS Office to become unaccpetable - particularly from the standpoint of a sovereign state or country. Up to the point where I decided to work actively for a change and started my blog about it.

My email to fox news

[walterbyrd]

Unlike some posters on this board, I never hated fox news, until now.

FWIW: here is my email:

Subject: Where is the full disclosure on this biased article?
To: Comments@foxnews.com

In regards to your article:

Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument
Wednesday, September 28, 2005
By James Prendergast

Should you not, at the very least, have mentioned that the ATL is a Microsoft funded organization? And that the ATL has been caught in pro-Microsoft "astro-turfing" before?

Aside from that, the article was poorly reasoned, and full of outright lies.

I refer you to the following link:'

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200509291 34232923

Thank you,

Walter Byrd
An ex-Fox News viewer.

Re:Propaganda

[SpooForBrains]

Frequently, actually. When someone uses a spreadsheet continuously, for months and even years on end, and neglects to split the spreadsheet into more manageable chunks, you end up with files which are several megabytes in size, and suck up most of the system's memory just to keep open. Convert the same document to an SXC, and the problem goes away. Secondly, are you forgetting about the internet? Email? People email documents back and forth all the time, and every 100k extra makes a big difference.

Remember Word Perfect and AMI?

[HermanAB]

Many moons ago, word processor software was sufficiently cheap, that most corporations had two or three different word processor packages on each desktop and people used whichever one supported the file format.

If MS Word cost $50, then the same would happen again and people would have MS Word, OOo, WP, KOffice etc and nobody would bat an eye about compatibility issues, All this drivel about compatibility and retraining is just a stupid non-issue, caused by the inflated pricing of MS products.

It makes sense from Microsoft's point of view.

[khasim]

If anyone can write a word processor that has 100% compatibility with the format Microsoft uses ... then what's to keep people using MSOffice?

People don't buy MSOffice because they love it or because it's the best or because it's the cheapest. They buy it because everyone else uses it and that means that everyone else uses that document format.

Crack the format lock-in and you've cracked the office suite.

Crack the office suite and you've cracked the desktop monopoly.

Crack the desktop monopoly and you've cracked Microsoft.

For Microsoft, an open document format means one thing, the end of their era. Of course they're going to fight this any way they can. Their revenues are going to plummet.