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Microsoft to Open up Office Formats
Been on TV writes to tell us that Microsoft is expected to announce on Tuesday the opening of their Office file formats, according to Financial Times. From the article: "Microsoft will submit its Office file formats to Ecma International, the standards body, which will develop the documentation and make it available to the industry. The move is being supported by a number of organizations including Apple Computer, Barclays Capital, BP, Intel and Toshiba."
this could change everything!!
sigs are for fools and trolls. no signature is *always* appropriate. you should turn them off in your preferences.
And how much of your soul will you have to sign away in order to use this?
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
it's easier to hack them than read their docs.
Call it what you want. But I imagine that open source definately has had a major effect on the industry over its lifetime. It has definately been worth all the effort. Despite what some may think.
...It's a TRAP!
I wonder what kind of impact Microsoft hopes to achive by doing this. I would guess they belive that when more software can use their format they will create the standard. But the thing is, they allready do this sort of.
I for one don't see how opening a file format so engaraved in society that it has become a standard for non-geeks can make an additiona revenue.
Where's the catch? There must be one! As far as I know, MS hasn't been in trouble over their office suite w/the ftc, why would they do this?
Wow, we live in strange times. I just heard MS is offering free email hosting for your domains through live.com, and now this. MS may really begin a new corporate (for them) paradigm.
put the what in the where?
So.. Will they really open everything, or just wrap their proprietary implementation inside XML and therefore claim their format is "open"?
I hope they really open up the format. Otherwise it'd be as bad as RIAA promoting DRM "for freedom". Sigh.
I dislike MS as much as anybody, but it simply cannot be denied that this is a great thing, because it can have the same effect as ODF: it can allow 100% interoperability with other applications if (read below)...
My main worry is the licensing. WIll it be unencumbered?
The article doesn't address the patent issue at all and whether it will be possible to implement the standards in Free Software.
It seems odd that it will take 18 months to develop documentation for the file formats. Sure, the formats must be complex, but it seems like maybe this documentation organization might not be a truly independent standards body.
Ecma's wiki and site seems to be pretty much confirm that they're composed of manufacturer members. I wouldn't consider them the equivalent of ANSI or UL. 18 months of work by a collusive industry is more throwing those governments a bone than actually getting the work done right.
I guess there should be some applause for getting the ball rolling. Uphill?
From the customer line-up in the summary it looks like they had to listen to quite a few large customers.
I wonder what gave those customers the confidence and leverage to convince Microsoft.
Those who rate linux low must at least admit it keeps Microsoft honest.
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Allow me to present the following post ideas for your stealing pleasure:
1. How open is "open"? I mean, I don't trust M$
2. What does this mean for opendocument and OOo? It's the end of the world
3. I think we should boycott it anyway because M$ sucks
4. omg rumordot.org lol news for nerds stuff that's unconfirmed as yet wtf!
5. more reactionary bs from ms. they only ever do things when the world kicks them
6. copy-paste linux doom 3 install troll
It may be an ECMA standard, but it could still be patented. IIRC, the ECMA / patent issue affect Mono as well. From the Mono FAQ : "The core of the .NET Framework, and what has been patented by Microsoft falls under the ECMA/ISO submission"
MLT - simple and robust open source multimedia framework for Linux
If these files are opened - really opened, Microsoft will have to compete on the basis of quality, price and by innovation.
The thing is, it's humble OSS programmers that have a tendency to think up new uses for things. They can develop quicker and launch quicker.
If true, OpenOffice should quickly have perfect read write of MS files. The challenge now is to come up with more innovative features so that not only can OO read and write the files you need, but it will be the product you actually want to use.
See Internet Explorer/HTML...
Sigs are for the weak.
Somehow I expect Microsoft to enforce some sort of EULA for the formats, or perhaps patent the formats. I suspect that GNU software wanting to read/write the formats is somehow going to be left out in the cold. We are, after all, talking about Microsoft. Consider their "shared-source" initiative a while back.
Ogg Vorbis, Png, and Odt benefit everyone, even the people who have never used any of these three formats. Ogg Vorbis benefits everyone because it stops Thomson from taking any legal action against the free Lame mp3 encoder and XMMS mp3 playback library; Thomson knows that if they have their lawyers even look at the Lame web page, the entire Open Source community will perform a mass exodus to the Ogg format.
.doc file format.
The PNG format, in addition to being far superior to GIF, kept Unisys from taking too much legal action against GIF; the little legal action they took increased cross-browser PNG compatibility to the point that people can safely put non-transparent PNG images on their web pages today.
Odt will benefit everyone because this format gives Microsoft a clear message to open up their
Alright slashdotters, you have your mission. Now put a negative spin on this as quickly as possible.
So . . . they're planning to submit the XML standard for approval? Or are they just hoping somebody will write a free converter to port all of the crufty old MS-Office .DOCs over to a reasonably portable form of XML?
Oh, well - seems like they're trying to do the right thing. To the men and women of Redmond I say: keep up the good work! Oh, and adopt a motto, like "Don't be evil." ;^D
Assuming this is true (and that the format will be truly open, not just more marketing exageration), then this is good news. This is exactly what it should be like: competition leads to better products for consumers. Open-source software has forced MS to open up their format.
Now, I admit a part of me is unhappy about this, because it means that many organizations will now just say "let's stick with MS Office" instead of fully making the switch to FOSS... however, at the end of the day, this also means that FOSS compatibility for MS document standards will be much higher. If OpenOffice can flawlessly open and save in OpenDocument format AND the latest MS formats, then that whole "compatibility" reason for ignoring OpenOffice quickly disappears.
So I hope the news is real and true. However, I'm sure all of us are suspicious. It seems quite likely that there will be an "official" version of the standard, and then there will be the version that MS uses (which will use proprietary extensions and whatnot). Even though the official version is open, people will find compatibility issues. Hopefully the standards organizations in question will take this seriously and not let MS use any logos or branding without duly complying with their own standard!
I think Office is a fine product, but I always felt a little cheated that I couldn't read newer files on my older version.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
Look out the window! You can see pigs flying!
If MS had released adequate documentation for it's file formats to begin with this wouldn't be an issue. What's the catch? Why don't MS just support Open document?
Didn't these bastards apply for patents on office schema (=text documents)?
I would suspect that this move is in order to a) Halt Opendocument before it spreads too wide, thus bringing publicity to Microsofts stance, and b) secure a future for their Office product.
This seems like a great win for users everywhere in general and OSS in specific. The article is light on details - who exactly will have access to these open specs? How will licensing be applied? Is it patented - apparently you can patent everything these days.
I'll wait to see ALOT more details before becoming giddy with excitement...
I know the year has gone by fast, but I didn't realize it was April already.
Am I the only one who fears they will never implement OpenDocument support, but rather 'open' their proprietary formats?
I wonder what kind of impact Microsoft hopes to achive by doing this.
Fully documenting the Microsoft Office file formats and permissively licensing any essential patents could help dissuade governments from migrating to OASIS OpenDocument format, which happens to be the native format of a competing software package called OpenOffice.org 2.x.
What additional functionality could this give 3rd party applications that hasn't already been done? What are the factors behind Microsoft's sudden motivation to standardize their proprietary Office file formats?
Will this be a RAND deal where you can get the specs under a restrictive license after paying a "reasonable" fee, or will it be a true, open standard. From the ECMA website it says
To publish these Standards and Technical Reports in electronic and printed form; the publications can be freely copied by all interested parties without restrictions.
But I'm not sure that all the standards they adopt have to be so free. For instance MS can open up the spec, but outside of europe they might still be able to restrict access to Open Source projects based on software patents they hold. I really hope this means free, but somehow I'm not holding my breath.
P.S. There's also the issue that even Microsoft might not fully understand the Office file formats. I know that this is true with SMB, the Samba team members know more about the wire protocol then anyone currently working at MS.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Okay, this is offtopic for the most part, but I have to ask. I submitted a story about Texas sueing Sony about the rootkit on their CD, now I don't necassarily expect mine would be posted, but I kind of though at this point someone's story on it would be up, it's only been sitting on Yahoo's main page for like 2 hours now. How long does it normally take for stories to be posted?
Are they also going to drop the patent encumbrances and change the license so it can be used by open source including GPL'd works?
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
eom
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
But just what are they opening? The new XML formats? Or the binary sludge formats?
First, it's getting Microsoft to admit (tacitly) that their "case" for Office in public institutions is weak, at best, and their arguments are just so much hot air.
Second, they're giving up on at least some of the old "rules of the game." The file format has almost nothing to do with application functionality. Making the format proprietary serves little more than to justify the company lawyers' salaries.
This is the obvious Microsoft response to the threat of open source office suites and open document formats. We've already seen stories concerning Microsoft losing business because of closed document formats. The closed formats have been enough of a concern where municipalities and other organizations have said "We're not going to use Office anymore." If this trend were to continue, it would pose a significant threat to Microsoft's revenue, as a large portion comes from selling Office products. This is essentially what Microsoft needs to do in order to deny people a solid justification from adopting other solutions. I still can't see how they justify the price, but that's another issue all together.
"To lead the people, you must walk behind them"
Apple choosing Intel, Dell choosing AMD, MS openning up Office formats.
Dogs and cats, living together! MASS HYSTERIA!
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
My take on this is that they have caught a lot of flak for not supporting open document. This way, they don't have to make any changes, and they don't have to support open document, but they'll still be supporting a document format that is open.
Now, many of the reasons for switching to open document will be nullified, and if Microsoft's doc becomes the standard, the burden will be on the OSS community to make changes to their software rather than the other way around.
Basically, it's MS's way of waying, "You want openness? Fine, but if we're going to play, we're going to play with our ball."
I think it would be awesome to see MS support an open standard. This seems like kind of a petty way to go about it, but that's the Microsoft we all love to hate, right?
...a junker with a new coat of paint and a "standards compliant" banner across the windscreen will be no more economical or reliable than it was before the facelift.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
This is going expose only a way to write to these formats. It says absolutely nothing about how to read documents created by their proprietary packages. It's much easier to say "here's how to create a valid document" without giving away all of the keys to the kingdom than it is to explain fully "here's how to read any document created by our suite" (and you have to presume they'll intentionally leave out the good stuff).
As far as I can tell, this is a no-op.
somebody strongarms microsoft into doing something they don't want to do. if it weren't for a certain government office saying they would switch to open office because of the open file format issue, this would never have happened. now if only we can get the officials to say they will only view porn in mpg or avi or whatever and get microsoft to open up its video codecs for all
... Ultimately, we'll see software and computing industry shift into a business model based on service alone. This way, competition is no longer a race to market the latest and greatest features -- it becomes a competition based upon who best serves the customer ...
...
Thank you for restating the theory and hope behind OSS, now for reality
MS had previously published Word and Excel formats. They did so as they took over the market, as they destroyed the competition. The competitions support for Word and Excel formats further reinforced those proprams as the defacto standards.
so they just redefined the meaning of open, right?
new definition:
Open - good luck keeping up with changes to this spec, never mind the encrypted stuff, loser.
Finally, government, business, and home users around the world are allowed to know how to interpret the documents they've created!
Seriously, I think open file formats should be written into law.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
If it's still patent-encumbered, it doesn't do any more good than what they have out there now.
Ahhh, here we see stage one of microsoft's tried and true 'EEE' strategy.
(Embrace,Extend,Extinguish)
Since the MS .doc format is largely made up of binary memory dumps of the various word processors that use it, this anouncement is mostly pointless. It just might ease the process of reading them a little for those who do this allready.
Tell me when MS uses a format that is built around mutual reliable readability and not obfuscation. That would be news.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Right. I suppose the next thing you'll tell me is that Apple is dumping PowerPC for Intel (fat chance!) or that Dell is getting into bed with AMD.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Hopefully soon Open Office will have better support for Microsoft's Office formats.
google.slashdot
My first question, and likely that of many others, was: "Why are they doing this?"
Well, according to TFA, it's because of the European Commission has been urging companies to open up their document formats, and Microsoft feared the EC would stop using Microsoft's formats for the creation of public documents, and urge national governments to do the same.
So, thumbs up for the EU on this one!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
This is clearly a defensive response to the fact that people are getting tired of the Microsoft tax and Microsoft dependence caused by using de facto Microsoft "standards", e.g. the state of Massachusetts moving to ODF.
It's also clear that, while they may "open" the file formats, like other Microsoft "standards", the documentation will be incomplete enough and obscure enough that it will be virtually impossible to ensure Office compatibility by coding from spec. So Microsoft would get a PR win and a big bullet point in competing with ODF, without actually giving anything up.
Bargaining. :D
First, Paris Hilton moves to Open Source and now MS is opening its most precious format! What's becoming of the world?
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
Go read up on it on microsoft.com. This isn't about making .doc, .ppt or .xls standards; it's about giving over Office's XML to an int'l standards body, and then setting that format as the default format for Word, Powerpoint and Excel documents in the future.
My first impression is that this is in direct response to Massachusetts choosing OpenOffice.org for its support of open document formats. In otherwords, Open Source influenced Microsoft in this move so they could remain a contender. This, I would argue, is actually unfortunate. We do not want Open Source to be the stick with which we whack Microsoft because they, obviously being smarter than we give them credit for, will move to avoid being struck. In this event in particular, some people (namely people like us) will respond by thinking: “oh, we can use Microsoft Office now as Microsoft satisfied our complaint.” Wrong. We should not use Microsoft and they only answered one of many problems with their software and fundamental philosophy. Instead, the thinking should be: “Microsoft opened up their document format, so what?” Just because it is documented does not mean there is no vendor lock-in, insanely high-prices, or missing interoperability. Remember that Microsoft is a company which will always work to protect its so-called “Intellectual Property”. They will fight their competition with seedy legal maneuvers instead of obscurity in their file formats. To summarize: same scam, different approach. The only solution is to use Open Source regardless.
Join Tor today!
ECMA merely requires that companies disclose their patent interests, not that the formats are open and freely implementable. So, the ECMA submission really changes nothing: Microsoft's XML office formats are already publicly available; the concern about them is that Microsoft has patents on them.
.NET APIs and the patent on the MS Office formats. Then, they go to ECMA and make an "open" standard. Finally, they offer "free and non-discriminatory licensing", but in a non-transferable form.
.NET, all they are achieving is that the FOSS community is creating its own alternatives. Furthermore, you may simply see a not-for-profit being created that takes out the necessary free license once and then distributes licensed versions of implementations like Mono (and if Microsoft refuses such a license, their bluff is called). And in the case of the MS Office XML formats, some third party will take out one of those free licenses and then simply distribute the result.
Overall, Microsoft seems to use patents for FUD these days: they take out meaningless and probably unenforceable patents, like the patent on the
Microsoft knows full well that this is quite alright for companies like Apple--those companies will get a license for free and can then ship their own proprietary products--while it does not work for open source software. Open source software does not just require a format or API to be published and free-as-in-beer, it needs to be sublicenseable by the recipient.
What you see at work in that strategy is what billions of dollars can buy you in terms of business and legal strategy. Microsoft ought to be congratulated on this strategy.
Of course, brilliant as it is, it still won't work. In the case of
But Microsoft knows that they can't win in the long run. In the short run, every month that they delay the inevitable means a few more billion in their pockets, and that makes all the strategizing, FUD, and scheming that their highly-paid managers and lawyers engage in worth it.
I dislike MS as much as anybody, but it simply cannot be denied that this is a great thing, because it can have the same effect as ODF: it can allow 100% interoperability with other applications ...
It can be denied quite easily. MS used to publish word and excel formats. This helped to increase their grip on the "market". As competitors added support for word and excel formats it further reinforced that the MS programs were the standard. This is MS' clever tactic to defuse the open doc issue.
Does anyone believe that M$ is willingly going to do this without some subtle sabatoge plan?
Anyone want to speculate how they plan on making this worthless?
wow microsoft must be far more scared of the recent successes and news for open office and the open document format. I thought they weren't paying enough attention to those projects. I have been 100% MS office free on my home systems for 3 years using open office and getting on open office 2.0 just made that much nicer (i still had many complaints about the old open office). Yeah M$ office still has it beat on many levels, but I would say 90% with newer machines that can handle the large overhead of Open Office would be completely satisfied and hardle ever run into a feature which they miss. (yes i know the officail name is OpenOffice.org, but that is long and i personally think the .org being in part of the name is LAME.)
Dan Mayer: my blog, essays, art, etc
However, the license is non-transferable.
In any case, it may not matter for open source.
First of all, it's unclear that you even need a license. It seems unlikely that the patent would actually hold up if seriously challenged.
But I suspect nobody will want to waste the time and money proving that. More likely, you'll see an entity (not for profit) formally established whose sole purpose in life is to take out one of these licenses and ensure distribution of an import/export tool that can then be used with a wide variety of other open source tools.
Hopefully, Microsoft will figure out sooner or later that they just shouldn't bother with all this legal hair splitting and bogus patents.
It will be interesting to see how "open" it really will be. The funny thing is I swear I've heard this before. Wasn't the big deal supposed to be how they were going to use XML and how this was going to allow them to place nicely with others?
I get the sense that Microsoft may take a security through obscurity approach with this. Make it a pain in the butt for somebody else to implement. Then keep adding new stuff to it so that there's always subtle incompatibilities with older software. A "open" format is of minimal value if third parties have to struggle to keep up with the standard.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
With so much support behind an open document they had to do this. The choice was to either support ODF and give up control, or create their own open document format, keeping control over it.
This move is good for non-MS office products as it allows for better interoperability with MS-Office. But for the OpenDocument this can be detrimental since it undermines the main point of it — open document formats. Now the MS-Office document formats will be opened and will have a much larger installed userbase, and will grow to full compliance on non-MS office products as well. And MS seems very reluctant on adding support for OpenDocument on MS-Office so OpenDocument will have grave difficulties expanding the userbase into MS-Office territory.
So instead of clean open document formats we might get stuck with (presumably) relatively cludgy open document formats.
while true; do eject; eject -t; done
Let me ask... are you just looking for something to bitch about? I have a feeling that is Bill Gates personally chiseled the standards into gold tablets and delivered them to your front door that you people would bitch about them being too heavy.
Just my 2 cents.
According to one Microsoft guy, Microsoft is removing the royalty-free license requirment and instead is issuing an irrevocable commitment not to suethat says they won't ever sue you.
/ 21/495466.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2005/11
Lets see.. 18 months.
.. who is to say they simply won't migrate away from their own standard and back to a propietary version once perhaps StarOffice stops being developed (the optimal choice for businesses)?
We have OpenOffice 2.0 just recently released that hasn't quite reached a stride and Office 12 scheduled for release sometime next year.. So umm.. this is just a checkbox item. If MS says they will open the format, it satisfies the new checkbox criteria for government purchases.
Get customers migrated to Office 12 with its new fangled interface and follow up with smaller, incremental updates and it starts to make OpenOffice 2.0 look umm..outdated.
By the time this open format gets published in 2007 or 2008 or whenever (didn't they say Vista would be released in 2003/4??), who knows if it will be complete or even if MS fully complies with the published standard (they haven't complied with standards in the past..).
Even IF they comply for the short-term
Sounds like POSIX compliance in NT..
I know they tried this with a lot of stuff .. Java, HTML etc. but what have they successfully extinguished?
HTML is going strong (and thank microsoft for making Ajax possible by the way). Java is going strong. Mac OS X still exists.
What have they extinguished?
I wonder what kind of impact Microsoft hopes to achive by doing this.
Ensuring that M$ will remain the dominant developer of office productivity software.
Interesting prognostication, but I totally fail to see how this "shift" follows from the opening of the document formats. Not all software is best done by a bunch of hackers working in their spare time, as just a casual look around SourceForge will demonstrate. With such a huge number of failed and abandoned projects, and only a relatively few high-profile success stories (LAMP), I don't believe the FOSS model is a poster child for the end-all and be-all of success.
IMHO, there's still plenty of room for dedicated teams of developers putting their jobs on the line to create great, commercial-grade software for (you can shudder now) profit.
And as far as models go, I can see an equally likely future based not solely on service and support, but subscriptions...
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
The 18 months is to string along all those who had OpenOffice.org migrations in the works. This way, they will sell more copies of next year's version of MS Office because those OpenOffice migrations will be cancelled.
Did you expect any less?
More
Where's my AJAX page to an OpenOffice.org server that read/writes Word/Excel docs?
--
make install -not war
Lets put this PR spin through the reality filter.
1. Microsoft promising something 18 months down the road is meaningless. Hell, ANY tech company promising something 18 montsh out is meaningless.
2. This announcement is for Europe, without software patents.... for now. Of course if in 18 months there just HAPPEN to be software patents and said patents are licensed under their no-GNU terms... oh well, who wants to support smelly hippies anyway.
3. The only promised the ability to write, kida curious since most of the EU objections are about random folk being able to READ their government's output.
4. There is no committment to continue using this 'standardized' format in any future product. So there is nothing to provent them from releasing a future Office that uses an 'embraced and extended' version and either not documenting the changes at all or another 18 months after it ships.
Democrat delenda est
MS says it will go to ECMA first with the Office 12 XML format. They say that once Office 12 XML is recognized by ECMA, they will go to ISO. See News.com story.
Penny - plain text accounting
This surrender on such an essential MS competitive strategy, format lockin, shows how powerful governments can be when they "just say no". The Danes cracked the MS proprietary format policy first, though MS even played chicken with them by threatening to pull out. Now, faced with a united EU, states like Massachussetts, and other representatives of the people actually protecting the people's interests, MS will show that its customers are more important than its total dominance is. And MS will continue to profit and grow - though along with a more freely growing IT industry to serve people. These giant closed camps always look unbeatable right until the end, but people united are stronger than even the biggest software monopoly on the planet.
--
make install -not war
The 1980s called and they want their IT'S ABOUT FUCKIN' TIME back.
None: they just redefine Darkness as the standard...
What is their motiviation for this? My guess is that it's so that they're compliant with the Mass standard, and without using another format. That way, Office stays the industry standard. I'm not sure that documenting the format is going to allow OOo to be any more compatible than it is now. And that way Microsoft doesn't lose mindshare to a new format that is not intimately associated with them.
After all, we call it the Microsoft Office format. That alone is worth not moving to OASIS for them.
Linux IT Consulting and Domino Development in Michigan
Yep, we all know M$'s idea of "open".
Don't be fooled. People don't change that quickly. Even less so for a MegaCorp.
"The move is being supported by a number of organizations including Apple Computer, Barclays Capital, BP, Intel and Toshiba."
Since when is BP included with the likes of Apple and Intel?
Seems strange that BP's opinion matters in this subject.
I'm a little concerned, maybe someone can clarify this.
Once MS opens up their file formats. Will OpenOffice, et al then be required to sign an agreement with MS to use their formats, or else they could be sued?
It'd be nice if someone in Redmond realized that this whole closed document format thing is costing them too much in ill will, though. That would be smart... funny how we're all skeptical about this here. We'll see...
They are fully and openly specifying how to write all of the Office formats. While this is good, it does nothing for the other important half which is reading. They clearly don't want all applications to perfectly files generated by some software. This tatic seems to guarentees that at least one product will "clean" as well as special Office formats: Office itself.
I suppose people can take the information on how to write a valid "clean" Office format to make better format translators but we are still hosed for various random files that will be generated and only readible in sanctioned applications.
The response set here is typical of slashdot. Scream for open formats from Microsoft, and then find a dozen other things to bitch about when they concede and open it to the benefit of all.
You guys are never happy with what you get. Microsoft could change it's whole business model to opensource, and you'd still be bitching.
In 18 months, Vista will have shipped, most corporate desktops will be running it, and Office documents will be unreadable without the keys from the Microsoft Rights Management Server having been provided to the Fritz chip. The formats will be open, and it'll be a DMCA violation to read them.
I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
I don't trust MSFT and never will and don't believe anything Bush says anymore. Bully and lie to people long enough and your credibility is hosed permanently.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
"It's a trick. Get an ax."
--Army of Darkness
Is it just me, or does this sound like an underhanded attempt to try and make sure Massachusetts doesn't happen all over again? They might open the format, but that still doesn't mean people won't fork over the large sum of money for Office.
space is pretty cool.
MS Office XML? The one that almost NO data is in? Big deal.
What about the formats for all the billions of existing documents: Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Project/Visio 97/2000/XP? How about older formats, like Office 95 or MS Works?
THOSE are the ones I'd like to see opened up. Being able to get all that data read in without glitches or hitches would be fantastic. All that effort that is needlessly wasted in trying to reverse-engineer these formats could be beter directed elsewhere.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
i find it really hard to believe MS doesnt have existing internal documentation on the format. sounds like a rotten carrot to me...
MOOOOOHAAAAHAAA!
They forgot to mention Google!
This whole office issue is a very chess like, microsoft being the last piece (the queen) on the board while the other team has a whole pile of rooks and bishops trying to take ms out.
Microsoft has finally realized that they can no longer hold most of the world hostage to their file formats. There are legitimate options availiable. Staroffice and Openoffice provide fairly good translation, thanks to the hard efforts of the developers to reverse engineer those file formats. Now that open document format is becoming a requirement by governments Microsoft is being forced into this action. This is being driven by the marketing group, they needed to be able to check off that they support open file formats. Now that their particular file formats can be declared open they can fight the onslaught of the open document format using other tricks.
Hopefully this will be to little to late. Microsoft is not embracing the open document format, they are just trying to have a counter response when the question is raised by customers. Let's hope that most customers realize this and still consider other alternatives to getting locked into the Microsoft way.
I'll be looking forward to Duke Nukem Forever releasing soon. :)
Each processor would proceed sequentially as if it had been better for them not to rise against Saul.
To me this doesn't make sense -- Microsoft decides to open up their Office formats and at the same time wants to develop an ad-based version of Windows and/or Windows components. Is it just me, or are they trying to dig their own grave?
That's pretty good salvo, but I wonder how DRM will play into this?
Heck, they are defining how DRM will be used in the software industry (not media in all cases).
From the license:
"Microsoft may have patents and/or patent applications that are necessary for you to license in order to make, sell, or distribute software programs that read or write files that comply with the Microsoft specifications for the Office Schemas."
and that's why this has never been acceptable to the open-source community.
Steven
Begin? It's been running for five years.
Don't mind that little patent attached. Just look somewhere else. See, no bother!
Red Leader Standing By!
My take is that Microsoft will take 18 months to provide the format (it says so in the original link), during this time the adoption of alternative formats will stall because governments will think "hey, MS is going to be open Real Soon Now (tm) so why bother with changing over to other formats? We'll stay with MS format and MS Office". After a while these bodies will notice that "Oops, MS Office runs only on Windows, ah.. never mind, so we'll stay with Windows". By then (over 18 months from now, maybe two years) OpenOffice.Org and friends will fully and officially support the ECMA format but that wouldn't be quite relevant because the bodies still stick to "the original". After a while interest in alternatives will whane and the efforts will close shops.
(It's history repeating itself - MS also "supported" HTML/HTTP and the web but managed to make its browser so pervasive that the competition (Netscape) just dried up and died, by which time MS could impose their own closed "standard" of the web and "close" the market to competition. It's true that Mozilla eventually got off life support and startted kicking IE's butt at last but:
1. MS stopped updating IE 6 years ago, which eventually allowed the competition to catch up, especially when this market has relativelly respected and loud standards body.
2. Do you want to wait another ten years for another round for OpenOffice?.)
In short - it's another manifestation of stalling tactic.
Who wants to bet how long it will be, before someone finds exploits in the existing formats?
I'm being serious here.
From ST:6 - The Undiscovered Country:
"Don't believe them - don't trust them!"
"renegades and pirates and thieves, oh my!"
when
1) MS adopts the Sun license for ODF and applies to:
a) Current Word (doc), Excel (xls), PowerPoint (ppt), Access (???) format
b) Their new XML format
2) Documents changes before putting them into production via Service Packs or patches for Office or any other product.
3) Give people and corporations a choice of software (desktop or server; protocols included) and allows the market to choose the best product for their needs. Products should compete on price and features; not file formats.
4) When MS believes that vendor lock in is not an acceptable marketing strategy.
The data that exists in file formats should not be encumbered with patents. Yes, its MS program but its your data.
Besides, file formats talk about the data - order of fields, permitted values in fields, etc., not about how to program the process which writes or reads the fields, this part is up to the implementor. For examples just go to the W3C site and look for the specs of HTML, XML, CSS etc.
(As another, although not direct, example - see the native NTFS support in Linux - it can ready pretty well for years now, while writing comes along much more slowly).
get an axe...
I think this is a clever ruse on part of Miscrosft:
1) MS won't loose anything because these document formats are being phased out in favour of XML with proprietary keys in newer versions of Office.
2) I suspect (but I'm not certain) that old MS Office formats still require some license from MS, possibly for patents, thus enabling them to keep Open Source software at bay
3) It knocks the single most dangerous argument against MS Office software out of their opponents hands.
This creates a level playing field. May the best suite win. In the words of the immortal MK3 announcer.
.... Fight.
MS Office, Star Office, Openoffice
Enjoy.
It's just the normal noises in here.
Open Orifice.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Microsoft has historically "embraced" open industry standards by adding proprietary extensions, making its user's data worthless outside of the MS world.
In this case, I suspect they'll end up releasing, but still maintaining control over the office formats. If not there already, they'll make sure there's the ability to store proprietary objects (or meta-data, or whatever the current popular nomenclature is) in the now "open" format. They'll then simply move on to placing more and more document content in these proprietary closed objects, while claiming they're using an "open format."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
If they don't follow this standard, then what value will it be?
:0
If they open a specification, and you implement the spec, do you really think this is going to account for all of the legacy documents? I bet there's some warts in the way they handle things that may not exactly fit the spec.
It would be curious, given a working validator, to see how compliant they would be internally. And I bet older versions would get progressively uglier.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I had to create some diagrams for a uni proyect i'm working on these days, and resorted to Microsoft Visio (part of the Office suite, which is used to create diagrams, flowcharts, etc). The program was ok, but what floored me was to see, among the exporting options, SVG files.
.VSD format (Visio) is, of course, undisclosed, but i can't recall the last time i used a MS product that worked well with third party file formats. Kudos to them.
Not only it worked wonderfully; they actually rendered much better than WMF files created with the same software (looking exactly the same as they did on the software, which is of course what i needed). The
Dogs and cats, living together!
Not that there's anything wrong with that!
Massachusetts did not go OSS. Massachussetts went open format (this also explains why PDF is an acceptable format too). The advantage is that vendors can compete with both closed and open solutions as long as the data they produce is in the open format.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Would you like your gobernment used a closed source OS made in (let say) Cuba/Russia/Saudi Arabia? How could you know if there was a backdoor? or even if there's a wall on the back? The same goes for anything that comes from Microsoft (for it's closed source, nothing political). And when you have some "national pride" telling they won't hurt you... it may be fine. But if you're not the US Gobernment, why do you have to trust Microsoft on such a delicate thing as all citizens data gathered by the social security, the postoffices or any gobernment entity?
I'm taking donations to send relief suppies to hell as it's obviously frozen over.
You can bet that Microsoft has a strong business plan for this back in Redmond to show this helps crush OpenOffice somehow. It would not surprise me if Microsoft filed for a slew of patents in the next 18 months. Or perhaps they're going to open up the Office 12 file format, but the earlier binary file format that probably 95% of customers are using will remain lock away to be reverse engineered.
That way when a government body wants to start using a "open" file format, Microsoft will happily sell them some software assurance program that gives them Office 12 at a good price, but locks them in for another 5 years or so.
Trust me, there is a good business plan back in Redmond on the table showing how this is going to work best for Microsoft in the long run.
The sad part is that, Microsoft owns the desktop for now. They could open source Office and Windows and they would STILL own the desktop.
Metaphorically, its the same story here, no fear.
Say hello to my little sig.
It's like a Million Microsoft Trolls had been shouting all over the comments for like 5-6 years and were suddenly silenced.
If this is really happening it's like open source Christmas.
Wow, this is like... wow.
Well I guess we're going to have a ton of ubiquotous formats may the best format win!
(Preferably not the ones that store 45k in a blank document!)
Aw Microsoft after this news I can't stay mad at you!
IBM opened their 3270 gateway standards. I tried using a third party package to connect to an AS/400, using 3270 emulation. It turns out that the standards could be interpered several different ways, and of course Unisys did it wrong. The end result is that these "open standards" will be used against third party packages with Microsoft's FUD. IBM did it in the 80's. Nothing new here, move on.
not that i know this (NDA), but microsoft has mentioned in the beta test of office 12, that the new compressed xml formats may change during the beta. given this, it is forseeable that upon recommendation for change by standards bodies, microsoft would actually change something ...then again, this is microsoft we're talking about
Fortunately there is a fix available. What you do is start another open standard. Use your influence in the industry to promote this standard for all you are worth. Claim that you have seen the error of your ways. Get a bunch of pet suppliers and/or dominant players in related industries together and form a "Industry Association". Go to conferences. Give speeches. Actually support this new standard with your new products. Complete interoperability is just around the corner and you don't even have to switch suppliers if you don't want.
Inevitably the momentum will swing towards your open standard. Timing is critical here. You have to anticipate. Just as it seems clear to everyone which way to go suddenly back off on your support of your open standard. If it seems like you were a bit late simply start supporting and promoting the other open standard. The key here is balance. Keep both standards relevant for as long as it takes.
The effects on your customers will be grave. They will end up having to support 3 or more standards because they will still have a lot of the old stuff you made. Your customers deserve all this of course. They were disloyal. Eventually everyone will yearn for the old days of single source contracts. The open standards effort will eventually die on its own and the industry will have learned that open standards just don't work. There are just too many of them.
Repeat as needed and remember that this isn't just for things like the computer industry. It works for more traditional businesses as well. Microsoft didn't invent this stuff. They are just good at applying it
The Real Question is: Will Microsoft be compatable with the Microsoft Published Standard?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Surely you jest; that day has come and gone long ago. It's also not the point of this thread, which probably explains your disbelief.
Now Microsoft could decide to standardize just a subset of their internal format.
Oh, no, you don't think they'd actually do that, do you? Really?
But then their own documents would violate the XML schema and they would be in violation of the specification.
First, that's simply not true, because they won't give the "real" schema. If TFA hadn't explicitly mentioned "create" documents this whole thread would be meaningless, but it did. Good old MS will tell you how to create a valid document, but they won't necessarily tell you how to validate one of theirs. Yes, it's possible; yes, it's a big difference; and no, it's not paranoia to take them at their exact word, especially when they are very well known for this particular business practice (certainly you've heard of "embrace and extend").
An openly documented office file format is a step in the right direction.
But I think the bigger problem with MS Office is that the file format itself is horrid. From what I can gather, it's a cross between a raw object dump and a virtual memory cache.
This would explain why even MS Office can't reliably read its own documents, and why reverse engineering has been so slow and difficult.
In Microsoft Word 2.0, if you were editing a file on a floppy disk, and you swapped the floppy for another one (e.g. to copy text out of another file) without closing Word, then Word crashed and your doc file was trashed. I reckon the reason the file was trashed is that Word was using it as a swap file.
The same bug exists in Word 2002, released 10 years later. It happened to me when a network drive disconnected.
The fact that so many people rely on such a fragile file format is holding a lot of things back. How can anyone build on shifting sand? The sooner its replaced with something decent the better.
Imagine if digital cameras all used a closed image file format. A lossy format like JPEG, except that instead of discarding details humans don't notice, the format loses information that humans really care about. And instead of compressing data, it expands it.
I think a lot fewer people would enjoy using digital cameras if they worked that way.
Of course the file format is only the tip of the iceberg. There are substantial features in Word that are so broken that users quickly learn it's not worth using them. Other features are so unpredictable that they effectively discourage editing and experimentation. Expert users subconciously avoid features that cause problems.
I reckon the overall productive uptime with Word is about 90% - 95%, depending on the job at hand and the user. That's not too bad until you multiply 5% downtime by several hundred million daily users.
The quandry is that people won't be motivated to switch until something comes along that is both compatible and yet significantly improved. It's hard to be compatible with a dodgy file format, and projects like OpenOffice.org seem to be more of the same but open. It reminds me of the ponderous Mozilla browser. Mozilla and OOo are excellent projects, but what's needed is something like Firefox that strips off the barnacles, is open source so people can build on it, works roughly the way that people are used to, and yet simpler, faster and more reliable.
There are 5 billion literate people in the world. Isn't it time we had a writing tool that doesn't suck?
If you believe reading is the easy bit then look at Html. As "specified" as W3 has made Html no two browsers render many pieces of data the same way.
As I said before, it is interesting they are specifying how to write out proper Office Xml but it is somewhat meaningless for everyone but Office to understand how to read it properly. We can understand the heck out of how to write files and still end up with a lot of tinkering on how to read it in where two implementations interpt the format differently.
I was going to buy my wife a Mac, it's not free, but more free than Windows. If Apple can't decide who's side they're on I'll decide who's side I'm on and vote with my wallet.
I am really uncomfortable in being put in a position of appearing to defend Microsoft. However, it occurs to me that some of the "secret extension" hackery you reference is, at least in part, a reflection of how hard it is to write open-ended, extensible file formats that work in a multitude of circumstances. On the flip side: when you're coding against a deadline set by marketing (we _need_ office 2007 _before_ 2008, guys!) a few corners gotta be cut. Hard to embed multimedia in a spreadsheet? Just hack together an ActiveX control to do it for you and stuff it in the file format. Oh, only works on Windows? Well that works for 95% of the population. Need to save a complex data relationship to disc? Why bother serializing? Just blop the object out of memory to disc wrapped in a tag. Don't you think defining and _adhering_ to a complex file format is one or two orders of magnitude harder that just getting something something put together that kinda works for us and the guys in the Poser Point group? Don't you think that the Office code base is a bit of a mess at this point in time?
Two non-Office examples:
1) It seems like its easier for someone to pull together some hackery-quackery using frontpage/VB or flash than to put together some custom cross-platform DHTML for a cool web effect. Is exclusion of browsers on minority platforms a primary goal, or only an unintended consequence?
2) In 1997 a lot of "open source" code wouldn't compile on a 64 bit linux machine (DEC Alpha). Were the 32-bit processor folks conspiring against the nascent 64 bit folks?
Malice? Not necessarily. The rhetoric will whip up the already-converted, but I think it will fall flat on the ears of the undecided. While I agree that it would seem that being opaque and/or incomprehensible has been a really strong aspect the Microsoft business strategy, I think we'll have a better chance of being taken seriously if we stick to technical considerations (including so-called "IP" entanglements).
Fermat's other theorem: "I have a simple proof, but I can't write it down as I fear it's a DMCA violation to discuss it"
This is FUD of the most insidious nature. This is especially true when you consider that if the ECMA accepts these doc formats as standards, we'll only see a solid standard emerge 18 months from now?
How long after that before OpenOffice officially supports it?
This will potentially preempt the planned OASIS switch by MA and other government agencies. At the same time, as others have pointed out, eventually we might still end up with embraced or extended formats.
---
It's your fault for believing me when I said I don't lie. You *know* I lie.
If they start trying to support Open Document, it would be a huge pain for them, because they would have to adapt or change their document's structure and DOM, which would probably mean re-doing a good amount of their work on Office. So, instead, they just throw their "open" standard on the table and say "How about you support our format". All of this makes perfect sense in M$'s strategy because they still leverage their complete dominance in this market by forcing their competitors to re-build to their standards, instead of the other way around.
It is very unlikely that M$ will ever release their format in a way that is truly "open" (i.e. usable in open source software). The simple reason is that Microsoft consider's their documents to be their intellectual property. They will always seek some sort of royalties or benefits because they consider them part of their company's assets. The healthy number of patents they apply for each week (what is it, like 30, right?) supports the fact that IP is an emerging part of their business model.
The other downside to this whole thing is that M$ is the last company who should be defining implementations for the rest of the market. The protocols they define in house have always been a huge source of pain for anybody else trying to understand them. At times it almost seems like their protocol is simply defined by how the current version of their software decides to spit out bits. SMB is a good example, and there are probably others. This isn't even particularly bad behavior when you consider that these protocols/formats were never meant to work with anybody else's software; however, when M$ begins dictating that the rest of the world adopt their proprietary formats, you end up with a bunch of buggy software that works about 98% of the time. All the documentation in the world will never create a stable format which is well designed to work with a multitude of implementations. Sadly, this move will probably work well for M$, and we will end up with a situation similiar to SMB, except that it is even more difficult for business's to work around.
Unless the licence microsoft uses is "compatible" in its terms with the OSI Open Source definition, this means nothing.
Specifically term 3:
3. Derived Works
The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.
If the microsoft licence does not permit someone who has aggreed to it to relicence the information to anyone else under the same terms, its useless and a trick by microsoft to make everyone think they are "open" when they really are not.
Haven't RTFA but if it only covers how to write a legal file then it likely does not include rendering (how to draw it on the screen / to a printer) nor how to read / write efficiently, either.
It may well be that only MS Office 5.0 or whatever is opened. And let's not talk about Excel cells, or those line drawings in Word that never seem to come out right in OOo.
Only if MS promises to now and forever provide immediately, online a fully open reference implementation and spec for all the formats used throughout Office, including the interfaces for embedding, publishing, accessing etc.. then can it be called open. Of course it will still be to their advantage even if they made a 100% total commitment to this, the question is only how little do they have to do to meet EU regulator approval. I have little faith in regulators, a bit more perhaps for Boston and other municipalities/countries that are requiring use of a non-MS open standard.
The most useful thing for companies right now would be for MS to provide an open source tool that lets them read their tons of old word documents into a database. That isn't going to happen while MS is in a war with Google. And that's why it is only about writing files, and also why as long as Google aims at the desktop there will only be a bare minimum of the way Office really works being implemented.
And how about a tool to convert heavily VB scripted tools into OOo or perl? No, these massive investments are the momentum that keeps the corporate world firmly in MS' pants. Not this decade.
TV Newsman to Weatherguy: "So satan, whats the weather like in Hell?" Weatherguy (Satan): "Well, Hell will experience record lows and a 100% chance of pigs flying", back to you Bob.
They are loosing market because governments want open document format. So they'll document 90% of the standards, "forget" about the 10% most important, pretend that it is open and keep changing it and making "mistakes" in the document.
When will we finally stop to believing in good will of M$?
Suppose that we have some proprietary format which we will call the Hypothetical Text Markup Language (HTML, for short). We submit a spec for writing conforming HTML to a standards body which reads:
So, we have a spec that allows our competitors to generate conforming HTML documents but without any of the fancy bells and whistles that we get to use in the HTML documents we generate from our own programs (such as styled text, lists, tables, images, anchors, etc.). Our competitors are reduced to being input-only clients to our programs, unable to read any but the most rudimentary documents produced by our programs.
Microsoft's submitting a write-only spec standard to ECMA for Office documents is exactly analogous to this toy example I have just presented. We don't even need to pre-suppose Microsoft's malign intent to know that they are going to hold back all kinds of precious details in the write-only spec: if they weren't going to hold all the good stuff back they would be submitting a real spec that tells you how to both write and read any Office format document, not just a conforming subset.
just a ghost in the machine.
With Microsoft it's:
"Fool me once, shame on you,
Fool me 109+E909 times, shame on me."
The only software that implements OpenDocument right now happens to be FOSS, but it doesn't have to be: Microsoft, Apppe or anyone else can implement the format without having to publish their source code under the GPL or give it away freely.
This is all about interoperability. Software vendors can still sell licenses, but they will have to give people a good reason to buy them (and not just Microsoft locking people in to its proprietary file formats). OpenDocument will probably be good for software companies that aren't Microsoft, provided they're working on a niche type of document that isn't already covered by the standard (free or MS) office suite.
who cares anymore ?
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
There's also a larger problem with this approach - it sucks for small companies trying to become bigger.
If you are only able to profit off of service contracts, you can't 'write once, reach many' like you can with COTS software. Moreover, companies like IBM and Novell which have large established sales and service teams will win all the larger contracts.
I am not sure about that. Most of the viable small software companies write vertically targetted COTS. These are small markets that the bug guys can't effectively touch for the reason that they only support businesses up to a certain size.
With FOSS, what you tend to sell are service contracts and development time. Sort of the "You need feature X? Sure, but it will cost you $Y and it will be released in the next version though you get it backported first and get to beta test it." In the end it allows you to develop software in directions you *know* your customers are willing to pay for...
The question is not write once reach many. The question is whether you are paid through licensing fees or directly for the development time it takes to impliment the in-demand features.
If you write a great peice of software, and then have to sell, educate the customer AND hire/train all the workforce, how much time are you going to have to devote to Rev. 2 of your world beating product?
Wait a minute. You mean most COTS companies don't offer support? All these services are what a good COTS software shop should be providing anyway.
Now with FOSS, you get paid for all of the above. You get paid directly for support contracts/service level agreements, training/education, and you get paid by your customers for working on Rev 2 before Rev 2 is even released.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I've just run into another company who is following the Microsoft model to the teeth.
A certain audio hardware maker who I won't name, but it's Mackie, makes a line of control surfaces for digital audio workstations. They are really well-engineered hardware devices, by anyone's standards.
However, the company advertises the communication protocol they use as "Univeral", and claims that they are open and anybody's software can support them.
Naturally, I got excited about this, and decided it might be a good project for me, to create the driver layer for Linux/ALSA/JACK systems, and maybe give Ardour support for Mackie's HUI.
So I investigated, and contacted the company. Boy, did I get a harsh, hostile response. Turns out their protocol is not open at all. Specs may be available under NDA, at the company's discretion, and I know from another developer that the NDA contains language that binds you into a partnership with the company far beyond a mere release of the specs.
Needless to say, I was shocked (SHOCKED!) that a company would advertise the openness and universal compatability of their hardware, while ALSO failing (REFUSING!) to make documentation available even to the people who buy the hardware.
It put the company, who I will not name, but it's Mackie, on my personal blacklist forever. Other people may have less radical policies, but mine is "corporate deathlist forever banned, period, the first time they are openly hostile to an open source developer."
Since they aren't Microsoft and don't have a billion users and since their users don't include governments, etc., there's not much hope for them to come around.
At least with Microsoft there's a chance...
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
In case you haven't figured it out, we already found a way to make these file formats using OpenOffice and KOffice.
Besides, why is BP on the list of companies that approve? They aren't even in this industry!
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
I think the most interesting aspect of this announcement is that the presense of OSS and open standards in this case seem to have been a much more efficient anti-trust measure than any of the legal processes both the EU and the US DoJ has run against Microsoft -- the combination of OSS and the buying power of Government.
(It was really interesting to watch the activity when I translated the Norwegian government's hearing documents on the use of open source and open standards and placed them in the agenda section of my blog. For a period of almost two months, a certain company did one RSS lookup per minute on that section. It slowed down only after the deadline for submitting comments to the hearing.)
The future is in beta
Microsoft (and please let's stop with the M$ already, it's not funny) exploits closed formats. Slashdot response, boo-hoo, they're not playing fair, let's diss them.
/.) The UK government (amongst others) is gradually eroding civil liberties as a defense to terrorism.
Microsoft opens previously closed format. Slashdot response, er, they're still evil. Let's diss them.
Large corporation acting to serve its bottom line and bring profit to shareholders. Film at eleven, etc. It's capitalism, get over it already. Other companies acts similarly. Just because MS happen to be in your line of sight as a geek because they produce software doesn't make them uniquely evil. Yes, there have been anti-competitive lawsuits. And, shock, these happen elsewhere too. MS is high profile and attracts attention. Let's move on.
There are other causes you know. A large part of the world has no access to clean drinking water. (As yet a link between this and MS has yet to be proved on
The high street in every town and city in the UK (and elsewhere) looks the same because large organisations are pushing out local businesses. Countries like the UK are ever more reliant on services and have every diminishing industries.
If there's any validity to global warming a generation in the not too distant future will have more to blame us for than having taken the opportunity to pea-shoot at MS.
This reminds me of a futurama episode :
Zoidberg: Strange. Why would Nixon, an awkward, uncomfortabble man suddenly throw a party? One of the most social events imaginable. It's a trap is why! They're going to deactivate all the robots!
Reference is from Ghostbusters, FYI.
Killer, killer movie.
Closed source programs stay dead if/when they die.
Opensource software becomes zombies!
i misread the above post to have refernced this, which is what my pose was actually refering to.
c e+formats/2100-1012_3-5965443.html?tag=nefd.top
The technical committee is also being sponsored by Intel, Apple Computer, NextPage and some European customers, including British Petroleum and the British Library.
second sentance in the body of the article at
http://news.com.com/Microsoft+to+standardize+Offi
Duh? HTML isn't meant to be rendered the same everywhere. That's up to the browser. Deliberately.
Three words:
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish
Never mind that it's an inferior format...
At least that's what they've been claiming. They do this once a year or so, so please move along. Nothing to see here.
Microsoft knows their monopoly status is a consequence of them owning the Office formats, not the Windows code, so they will not be open in any meaningful sense anytime soon.
history tells us that we should not trust microsoft.
look at all their past actions with java, the halloween document etc etc I could go on and on.
they aren't working with the industry - look at their so called partners - do you see another software vendor in there no - you see hardware and some financial firms - that should tell you something.
this is nothing but some playground bullies getting their own gang
together and saying we are doing our way or else.
we have to tell microsoft that we will do it our way or else.
so nice try microsoft - but we learned from java and all your other antics.
I'll be the first to say that I never saw this one coming.
Maybe Microsoft is realizing that it's monopoly is starting to end and that they should play nice in the sandbox or get kicked out. With increasing competition from both linux and apple I'd be willing to bet they are starting to feel the pinch.
Oh well, whatever the reasons, I think it's a good move on their part.
OSS = Open Source Solution
Not me, that's for sure. Smelly people because they are pathologically inconsiderate and a public health hazard.
For those too lazy or scared for their wimpy browser to click through, here's the relevant dope on Bill Gates:
The photo [a mug shot] also unintentionally captures classic Gates: completely wrecked hair, terrible looking clothes, generally slovenly appearance, and two glazed eyes staring out past thick glasses. This image changed very little over the bulk of Gates' career, with the shower taps running at much less frequency than the money taps. It should also be noted that this isn't some heaping of sour grapes from the gutter staring up at Bill's mountain of success; throughout the time he has been known in public, Bill's dedication to all-nighters and in-the-trenches energy ensured a number of high-profile press conferences and demonstrations where his lack of hygiene became as breathtaking as the product being demonstrated.
"Breathtaking", that's a nice way to say both he and his wares stink.
I'm going to take my daily bath now. That, brushing my teeth and applying anti-perspirent takes less than half an hour a day. It's also very cheap. I do it for the children and everyone else.
Come to think of it, I've never met a Linux user who did smell. Can we please bury this silly stereotype that Bill Gates has projected onto his enemies? It's almost as bad as a MSWord attachment to email.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
This might be just the thing to bring MS Office to the masses. A real boost in sales to make it a contender in the workplace.
I think I'll stay with OO.org until They promise something evil instead.
On a side note, AFAICT, This changes nothing in Mass. They decided on .ODT and friends + .pdf. Although MS probably can re-submit the new "Open" offce formats (Sounds strange using MS and open in the same sentence.)
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
NGSCB and Trusted Computing can be used to intentionally and arbitrarily lock certain users out from use of certain files, products and services, for example to lock out users of a competing product, potentially leading to severe vendor lock-in. This is analogous to a contemporary problem in which many businesses feel compelled to purchase and use Microsoft Word in order to be compatible with associates who use that software. Today this problem is partially solved by products such as OpenOffice.org which provide limited compatibility with Microsoft Word file formats. Under NGSCB, if Microsoft Word were to encrypt documents it produced, no other application would be able to decrypt them, regardless of its ability to read the underlying file format.
NGSCB and Trusted Computing are ineffectual at solving the majority of contemporary security problems, for example computer viruses and trojans. Despite this fact, Microsoft has in the past claimed that NGSCB was necessary to combat the threat of future virus outbreaks against Microsoft Windows users[3]. Microsoft is no longer making claims that NGSCB will solve these virus problems[4].
So there's no risk to Microsoft opening up the format, they'll just DRM the document in VISTA. -goro-
It really isn't in their best interests to do that. Changing formats is as painful for them as it is for everyone else. That's why the default format in Office hasn't changed since Office 97. At least they've learned from that experience and are not repeating the same mistakes - keeping the same extension and not releasing plugins for older versions of Office. They plan on releasing .docx plugins for Office 2000 - Office 2003 near the Office 12 ship date.
Source
It's a markup language. It gives meaning to the text, how a particular browser then renders the markup is up to the developers.
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http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2005/11/ 21/495466.aspx
Great news... they are opening up something (XML format to be used in Office 12) which is in future. Bravo.
How about the legacy Office formats? I'll say, "Well... hmm... ar... We are going to drop those anyway and it's not worth doing that."
Sorry, Doc. Shoulda picked "flamebait".
You are a submarine troll. Know what that means? You post to Slashdot for a week looking for karma and then burn it all off on blatantly offensive comments. Remember that whole flaming tree you posted about a gay governor a few months ago? How about that whole unfounded Griffin critcism?
That's *MR.* Self-Righteous Asshat.
Mods, don't feed this guy. Maybe without a karma stash he won't go on these trolling runs.
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Trolling all trolls since 2001.
Wow, Anonymous Coward, are you an idiot. Let's see - all the posts you don't mind, that I submit out of my interest in Slashdot stories, they're just a way to earn karma to offend you on some fraction of my posts. I'm certain my offensive posts are blatant, otherwise what's the point of responding to instigators with their offensive posts with offensive ones of my own? Hmm, I do kinda recall posting about a gay NJ governor, but I don't remember posting all the posts in the tree - that seems impossible, isn't it my trembling Anonymous Coward? And I'm sure I didn't offend anyone but maybe homophobes, rightwingers and maybe cheating politicians. And I guess you were so scared of replying to any messages in the thread where I argued that Griffin spent years helping steer NASA into its current limbo, while basking in the glow of the neverending ripoff Star Wars scam. It's easy to be selfrighteous when I'm right.
So now that all your terrified gibberish amounts to nothing, I ask: what the hell does any of that have to do with open formats? NOTHING. As usual, you're just a Troll, accusing me of being a troll to set off a predictable response that adds nothing to the discussion. That is what "Troll" means, Anonymous scaredy cat Coward, Not just posts like mine that scare you when you're forced to face the real world outside your teeny little box. The box where you strike back at big bad Doc Ruby by TrollMod'ing a perfectly good little post as "Redundant" for no reason except your pathetic little private vendetta. Where you waste mod points attacking my posts anonymously, rather than debating them like a real person. Of course you reconsider only long enough to regret not choosing another non-sequitur mod like "Flamebait". You sad little worm. Without me, what would give your empty, synthetic life any meaning at all? You're welcome - now spank yourself and go to your room. You'll have plenty of time to fantasize about your next big strike on my posts with your puny mod points.
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make install -not war