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Office + OpenDocument, Never Say Never
barryfreed writes "There's a blog entry by Andy Updegrove at ConsortiumInfo.org that says Microsoft has officially stated to him that support of OpenDocument in MS Office could happen. Microsoft sent the statement in a response to an article Updegrove wrote called Massachusetts and OpenDocument: A Brave New World?"
MS likes to embrace and extend, remember? I do believe that MS could make OpenDocument useless by over-supporting it.
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Yet, Microsoft must change; this old stance has not been working.
We expect the change; and there has been change.
First, the MS true type core fonts (that some think they later regretted)
the the WTL (template library) on source forge and their command line tools.
There may be something else.
MS are finding a new strategy that ensures financial success; Bill Gates is a businessman first.
This may be the next change coming up; finding that locked in=>locked out; and freedom=friends.
Sure MS office is good, but if its that good, why are they trying to MAKE you use it.
I understand your point but I think they will change and are changing.
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Yes, I suppose so, and they could relicense MS Office under GPL too, but it doesn't seem likely unless 100's more government and business organizations do as Mass. did....
It will be good to see the bull with a ring in its nose for a change, so to speak, but the more relevant down line consequences don't seem to be jumping out at me. If MS goes with ODF, then we are all back in the same mess, more or less, aren't we?
I have faith in people, open-minded people, to see a product, and when the value of the product is comparable to any other product of similar purpose, then choose the cheapest one, or the one with the most compatibility with present relevant investments.
The trouble is, so far as I have seen or understood (I could be wrong), when the products are equal or close, MS uses those 'politicians' they paid for to ensure that only MS products get sold to all but the very edgy techno-geeks. That would leave us right where we started (more or less) in respect of MS's domination of the OS and software world.... that means very little competitive product in circulation by comparison.
So, what would make this more of a move to open and competitive markets?
I don't see the bright future in this.
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That said, they are likely to make it difficult to use and screw up the rendering and printing to make it less desirable than their proprietary formats.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
I think Microsoft could actually take OpenDocument support in one of two directions:
1. Basically, how you put it. They would only support it enough so that it would be that extra bullet point at the bottom of the feature list "(blah blah, marketing drivel)...now with OpenDocument support!"
2. (Please don't correct me with a torch, I'm not an expert on this topic) but I don't doubt that MS would find some tiny loophole to sneak their own proprietary crap into OpenDocument formatted Office files which would have an adverse effect upon openning in any non-office program. I just wouldn't be surprised when I've seen two identical machines with identical software on the same network transfer a Word file from one computer to come out garbled on the other end.
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You mean like how Apple would NEVER go with x86 processors or how Intel would NEVER go with AMD's 64-bit extensions? Both of these were considered extremely unlikely in the past but are today's realities. These changes happened due to customer shifts, competition, and/or better technology. Believe me, if everyone starts eating MS for lunch because of this one sticking point, you can bet they'll support OpenDocument. In fact, much like Intel's 'skunk works' project with the 64-bit extensions, I'm certain they already have it working now.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Come on... this is ridiculous, MS would never support something that destroys lockin.
:D
Unless the lack of that feature would lock THEM out (this reminds me of the scooby-doo scene where Scooby and Shaggy lock the door to keep the monster out, but the monster was already behind them).
In other words: If Massachussets decides not to use Microsoft products, other states would follow. Microsoft CANNOT afford that, they could lose their entire govt market. So they have to adopt the OpenDocument format, and face the competition.
Now the stability, experience and ease-of-use of their software is what they'll begin promoting to stay ahead the competition.
From my point of view, Microsoft was cornered into giving up the crown. They tried to delay the unavoidable, but there's nothing they can do about it. We already won!
They will refuse to support OpenDocument just as long as there is a chance they can browbeat customers lime MA into sticking with Office. Then they will refuse to support it while they make all of their plans to switch to something else. Finally at the last minute they will offer to allow them to be a 'beta' site for their upcoming OpenDocument supporting version. Since the grunts at the keyboards hate change, tons of political pressure will be put on the people in charge to stick with MS, this offer will be accepted. Then after a couple of years of buggy and disfunctional betas we will get to the final decision. If others also demand OpenDocument it will finally go production. Otherwise they will just pull the plug on it, the current IT team in MA will have been quietly replaced by then and the whole thing will be forgotten.... except by anyone else who is thinking of taking a similar stand.
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*cough cough* ack! Have you EVER seen the ugliness inside MSWord produced html?
Anwyay, HTML is a markup language - just as OpenDocument. The difference is that HTML was meant to be read by web browsers. Printing and formatting is out of its scope.
Microsoft can stammer about all it wants with respect to OpenDocument, but what's interesting is that new features WON'T MATTER, if they can't be translated from/to the open format. One thing I think Bill & Co. tend to forget, which is something that Massachusetts insightfully realized, is that a government record should be no LESS open than the openness provided by traditional media - typically paper. Once you start using proprietary formats, you've closed pretty much imposed restricted access.
2. (Please don't correct me with a torch, I'm not an expert on this topic) but I don't doubt that MS would find some tiny loophole to sneak their own proprietary crap into OpenDocument formatted Office files which would have an adverse effect upon openning in any non-office program.
All they have to do is put the little balloon that says that "saving to OpenDocument may cause loss of formatting", which will cause 95% of the people out there to save to the proprietary file type.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
Support for reading, but only incomplete support for writing seems the most probable action for two reasons. First, it resembles how Microsoft beat other word processing competitors, Wordperfect in particular. Second, because there is no real competitor for MS Office, and Microsoft adds features based on customer demand. Supporting OpenDocument as an external, but less featured, format would be consistent with adding it as a customer demanded feature, but not letting the OpenDocument format guide the other features of MS Office.
Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult;
whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse.
--Proverbs 9:7
I suspect that MS support will be like that in Excel with CSV files. I choose "Save As", hit the drop down, scroll through the list for .csv, select that, hit save.
.csv file, change one value and resave it...not using any fancy features.
I then get a dialog box saying something like "This file may contain features that cannot be saved if you continue to save in this format. Are you sure you want to save in this format?" Well, yes. I scrolled through the list and picked that format.
This behavior occurs even if you open a
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MS Office isn't slipping at all. Maybe a little bit here and a little bit there, but it's still the big dog by a long shot.
The reason they try to "make" you use it is not because it sucks (although that could be argued), it's because it costs over $400 a license and new, virtually featureless versions come out every two years or less. It's a major cash cow and they're going to milk it for all its worth.
Personally I don't feel that any "standard" software package should cost half of what you paid for your computer. Software just goes obsolete too quickly. I often wonder what would happen if some of the big application packages were priced so that individuals could easily buy them (e.g. sub $100). Certainly they would sell considerably more units at first, but would it make up the difference? This is why I'm not a businessman.
you assert two things:
1: there are "good enough" alternatives
2: the existence of "good enough" alternatives destroys MS Office
I assert: MS Office is still the king of the hill. Unless you want to say that something like OpenOffice has even noticeable market-share, at least one of your premises are wrong.
MS Office has been making a bit less money than usual lately. Not because of competitors, but because fewer people see the need to upgrade to the newer version every 2 years.
Now, on the Mac side, yes, MS is losing marketshare... but not to OpenOffice...