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Microsoft Open Document Standard Not So Open
avik42 wrote to mention an EWeek article discussing Microsoft's attempts at an Open Document Standard. From the article: "According to a Microsoft representative, 'The covenant language is what was referred to as the updated license for the Open XML formats that will be submitted to ECMA International for the standardization process.' The only difference between Microsoft's November 2003 open and royalty-free license for the Office 2003 Reference Schemas and today's Office 2003 license, according to the company, is that 'Microsoft is offering a covenant not to sue for the Office 2003 Reference Schemas.'" We reported on this initiative when it was first announced.
Water is wet, and the sky is blue.
Haven't we been through this before? Quite a while ago Microsoft bragged about using XML as its new Office format. It turned out to be XML with some proprietary additions and such. Is this the very same format, only now Microsoft is claiming it to be open again?
Clever signature text goes here.
Imagine that, I look through the entire site and can't find a single executable or document format that doesn't require me to buy a Microsoft Windows OS and Office Suite. Lets all give Microsoft a big round of applause for their open XML format!
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
As usual groklaw has a very thorough analysis of this subject. From their web page here are some of the potential problems.
"1. Patent protection is contingent on a conformant implementation. "Conformant" is not defined, meaning there is uncertainty needing legal advice.
2. There is no provision for partial implementation, meaning true community-based development is not covered until complete.
3. It may well mean that implementation of just a word processor is impossible -- it implies that you have to implement everything (spreadsheets & all) to reach the bar.
4. It is specific to the version currently existing, meaning I can be hooked into supporting it now, but when Office 12 or Office 13 comes out & I update to be compatible with the format in that I can get sued. The covenant Sun uses creates ongoing protection.
5. It does not grant patents to the ECMA standard as it only applies to Office 11 XML. This means a new covenant will be needed for the ECMA work.
6. If the same form of words were used for a contribution to ECMA, then those prototyping the ongoing evolution of the standard as ECMA changed it would lose protection the instant any change was made. It applies only to Microsoft's input, not to ECMA's output. Or maybe they would rather ECMA didn't change anything?"
If you ask me #1 should be "Ms lies all the time, they are probably lying now, they don't really care about anybody except themseves, they have always stabbed their partners in the back, they don't play nice with anybody, anytime, anywhere".
evil is as evil does
I agree with Stallman, who says:
"designed to prohibit all free software. It covers only code that implements, precisely, the Microsoft formats, which means that a program under this license does not permit modification."
This control that Microsoft wants to maintain has two problems. One, programmers are not free to modify the document format to suit their particular needs. This limits freedom and innovation in many ways.
Two, it means that the future direction of the standard is not truly free or open. Only MS can decide what the next incarnation will be like? Only MS can control the future directions of our document format? That is just another form of control. It still means that our data is locked into a format that we don't really own or control. Yes, being somewhat open, it would be easier, in the future, to migrate to another standard, but ultimately the user still gets screwed. It should be obvious that it's better to have a format that is decided upon in a more transparent and communal way. If new features are needed, they can be debated and possibly added to future versions. If someone doesn't like the trend that the format is taking, they can fork it and create a derivative format (that will presumably not have the blessing of the official versions' name, since it's not incompatible... but that's okay). In the long run, perhaps this variant becomes the "next big thing." With an MS-style control, that innovation cannot happen, and the future of the document standard is weakened.
In short, Microsoft doesn't understand what we mean when we say "we want an open standard."
Can a covenant not to sue even be considered to be some kind of license?
I think a covenant not to sue is basically a promise, nothing more.
In contrast, a license grants certain rights to the licensee.
In what way does Microsoft's covenant actually grant any kind of rights to a licensee?
This really isn't all that suprising. In fact when Microsoft first mentioned the possiblity of opening up their XML schema, a lot of people automatically looked at how they were going to do it, and they came to the same conclusion as has been found here.
I have nothing clever to put here...
From an AC developer in a linked article in TFA: "In English, that means if an open-source group agreed to use the license (never gonna happen) and built an application with it, they can NOT provide the source code for it with the license. If you write code with a license, you can NOT share that code with me unless I go get a license, too. Pretty much against everything open source is about," the developer said.
MS: The ceiling is blue.
Me: Obviously, it is not. It is chartreuse. You said you'd make it blue, but it is still chartreuse. Maybe a slightly different shade of chartreuse, but chartreuse.
MS: No, it's blue. It says it right here in our marketing materials. That color you see is now called blue.
Me: Screw this, I'm going outside, where the sky is really blue, and everyone calls it blue. Whatever you're selling isn't the same as what you're calling it.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
In a stunning turn of events, Massachusetts state secretary of administration and finance Thomas Trimarco has revealed that Microsoft's recent efforts to make Office XML a ratified ECMA standard may indeed make the format acceptable to the government. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts had previously rejected Office XML in favor of OpenDocument and PDF formats.
Covenant language?
So that's what the religious war was about in Halo! The Aliens using OpenOffice against the heretic humans using Microsoft Office. Or possibly the other way around.
I always wondered why both sides hated each other so much.
Time to call in the Arbiter!
M$ will never make their documents standards open because the Office apps represent an enormous amount of their income. The other app is Windows. Everything else they do is either a loss or a drop in the bucket. M$ knows that once they open up their doc formats, competitors would drive them out of that business.
gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/Even if it were really open, the other question is how to deal with embedded vector graphics? Right now, the only formats that MS supports are .emf & .wmf. These are MS proprietary formats and they only display reliably if you're working on a Windows machine. If you're stuck with documents with significant embedded emf graphics and you don't want to use Windows, you're currently S.O.L. Of course, the ultimate answer would be for MS to support .svg in its Office products, but it's not clear that they will ever want to give up this subtle little lock that ties Office to Windows.
After all, the MS Office XML format is so hideous that I doubt any programmer would want to modify an application that dares touch the thing!
:)
Thank you, Microsoft!
Not only do MS not promise to extend the covenant past Office 11, but they limit the covenant to "patent claims necessary to conform" without defining what constitures conformance or necessity in this context.
This means that they can still sue if they allege that there was another way you could have implemented the spec without infringing on their patents (since it wasn't necessary) or they can sue if you don't implement every last detail on the spec (since your implementation isn't conformant).
Between those two, and the fact that MS have not committed not to change the spec at some future time, they can sue just about anyone they like.
PJ also points out that the EMCA doesn't require a free licence, just Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory (RAND). However they explicity decline to offer a definition of RAND and simply presume that all submissions will be offered under RAND terms. Which means MS can pretty much do as they see fit.
All in all, typical Microsoft smoke and mirrors.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
This has nothing to do with source code. This is about open file formats, for dealing with government documents. Other parties must be completely free to implement support for these formats without royalty, without patent infringement, and without restrictions on licensing.
Lie to me, force me to write hot checks, but please, please Microsoft, respect me in the morning...
I lost my sig...
People believed they were the good guys. What a relief that BMP is open, with it we can avoid all the legal issues with GIF.
[sig]
that it might fool a political figure or high level state govenment functionary into thinking it was open.
Cross Bill's heart and hope to die, stick a needle in Balmer's eye, promise they won't sue. It must be true, Redmond's lawyers say so! (Anyone else flashing back to Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown by any chance?) Too bad Johnny Cochran kicked the bucket, we might need to employ the "Liar, liar, pants on fire defense" if this goes bad!
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
I'm guessing some marketers and engineers in MS got excited about open format and made a splash. For example, Mr. Brian Jones looked genuinely interested in doing so in his blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/). The executives learned about it later, and said "Oh, no, we can't let them open the format ... we'll lose the lock-in!" and they overruled them. Happens all the time in corporations.
Personally I don't give a damn one way or the other about open source software. What I do care about is open source document/data formats and open source protocol formats. Miscrosoft, Apple, Adobe, who ever can write their own software, keep the source well hidden and do what they like, however the DATA that is created is created by ME, not them, so I believe that I own that data and have the right to access it via what ever means I require. Instead of anyone protecting their marketshare by consumer lock-in methods such as proprietry formats, they should be keeping their customers happy by having the best products. It is ONLY through this method that we will see software improvements, better interface designs, better (useable/needed) functionality, better speed, wider platform acceptance. Lets face it, how much more needs to be jammed into a wordprocessor, being able to put in multimedia is crap as the ultimate goal of a WP is the printed format/document, if you need a multimedia presentation then there are other formats (acrobat is one option). Bottom line is if it can not be printed it is not part of a WP. So I guess we can almost safely assume that the WP has been done to death and the only thing keeping it there as a revenue stream is changes in file/data formats. The same applies to protocols, Microsoft can keep Exchange proprietry as hell, however the data and the protocols must be open, that way someone can create a functionally equal (better?) product. if MS has the best product (useability,support,functionality,etc) and they charge for it and have the most customers then more power to them, if someone can create a better product client side or server side the again more power to them. To see if this works, well just look at POP servers, Webservers,NNTP, etc etc etc. There are both open source and commercial softwares accross a variety of platforms, and it seems to me that this system has proven its worth over time.
Why does Microsoft insist on proposing a new "open" document format when there is already an established one accepted by several official standards bodies as well as endorsed by practically every other office suite producer? Why can't Microsoft for ONCE accept someone else's standard and stick to it? I know there's the whole "it's not from here" ego thing, but sheesh.
If Microsoft learned to play well with others, they'd not have a black eye right now. Microsoft is like the kid who was bigger than everyone else in 3rd grade and a bit of a bully, only everyone else has caught up to them in size and are now starting to fight back and hit the punk where it hurts. Linux on the server end and the OOo suite on the deskop are really hurting, and with several Linux distros' being ready for prime time - for real now - they're scared shitless.
Microsoft could continue to dominate the market through offering integration services plus value-added development and extension of open source projects, but again, it's the whole "it's not from here" thing getting in the way.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
pfff... notepad's fairly proprietary. It only understands the MS-DOS new line, which is two characters (carriage return + new line)... so opening unix style text files results in everything being truncated into a single line. This means that I find myself unable to use notepad sometimes for even the most simple editing of remote files on a *nix server.
My ongoing post about Microsoft, MS Office, and the XML Format.
I post it every time this topic comes up and people keep forgetting it.
The last time was Nov. 21:
They're opening their file formats because they still has a trump card (the XML Format Patent). Or has everone forgotten about this?
A quick patch or two to Microsoft Office (now one of their biggest or the biggest ca$h cow - 1/3 of their profits?) and MS Office suddenly reads|writes XML format only. They aren't about castrating themselves voluntarily. They still have shareholders to keep happy, but more importantly, they want to be the trendsetters, no matter what.[1]
How does this impact Open Office? Open Office can then read the XML Format because it's declared in the patent. But what O^2 won't be able to do is write the MS Office XML Format [except to violate the patent]. This means: no interoperability and any business which wants to migrate away from a closed system (MS Office) to Open Office can do so only as a one-way trip, burning the bridge behind them. And the company can't communicate both directions, so that forces a move en masse. Corporations do not do this.
They may not be making the right decisions, but Billy G has it covered:
"Success is a lousy teacher. It convinces smart people they can't lose."
p.s.
Remember, Office Live is still coming down the road and it's going to play a role in this as well.
______________________________________________
[1] They don't want to become what IBM became: an also-ran. They keep stopping to catch their breath, thinking they've got time to rest and the rest of the world keeps moving forward. They haven't learned their lesson. Their first online work was with Compu$erve because they didn't know anything about the Internet (this was up to the release of Win95). They did official support on Compu$erve of all things because of unfamliarity and it wasn't until Bill's "Annual Two Week Summer Sabbatical" he realized they were about to be dealt out of the future. Eventually, he learned eough to say, "I don't care what the Information Superhighway looks like as long as I have a tollbooth on it." Over time, they've attempted to grow from desktops and rise up to the Internet. Google has started at the Internet and spread out. This week's BusinessWeek cover: "Googling for Gold: A market cap over $120B. $8B in cash. Plus 5 billionaires. 1'000 millionaires. No wonder dealmakers, VCs, and brokers are clamoring for a piece of the action." When was the last time you heard this much buzz about Microsoft? Microsoft would love to think Google is a fad. Just as IBM used to have corporate singalongs, I think Microsoft has a ritual. The inner circle gets together every morning and they collectively put skid marks in their shorts. And if at any time during the day they stop, pause & loose their focus, that squishy feel and smell yanks them back to reality and reminds them they may think they're #1, but it's only because they had a head start and it's not doing them much good very much longer. Another thing I've said before: listen to Ballmer when he speaks or look for quotes when it's in print. You will hear him refer to Google in one way and one way only: search engine . This is intentional. Remember, marketing is Microsoft's strongest advantage in the business world. He wants all of the suits^w decision makers in the business world to adopt this mantra: "Why pay so much attention and money to a search engine? There are lots of search engines on the market and any day now, someone's going to come along with a better search engine than Google and we'll have spent time, effort, and money on an also-ran." You don't hear about him spending money, just Bill & Paul (Allen). Steve's got billions himself, but he's in it for the ego rush. He also knows if he slips, even a little, he'll be known in Trivial Pursuit, the Internet Edition, as the guy who let Microsoft slide from #1.
The whole thing is a farce. Microsoft aren't going to implement open formats because if they did their business would take a monster hit. At the same time, they aren't going to tell the truth and say so because they daren't risk alienating yet more people and, besides, they know which way the popular wind is blowing. What is it with these guys that no matter what happens, they simply cannot tell anything straight?
So we are subjected to this grim charade, which might just be enough to put Massachusetts and others back in their box and prevent a domino effect. Meanwhile, behind closed doors, the dirty work of persuasion continues with (metaphorically speaking, of course) a sap in one hand a a wad of $100 bills in the other.
Really, if Microsoft were Pinocchio, they'd be having to employ a train of footmen to carry their nose in front of them, and give ten minutes' warning of a sneeze so that a team could struggle down the line with a kerchief the size of a parachute. I know it's unreasonable to treat every Microsoft proposal as suspect. Alas, though, experience suggests that it usually is.
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I'm not sure that you get the problem. I haven't looked through everything on the site you linked, but I did find the document from MS on EMF; it's in the form of a Microsoft help file. This makes me suspect that these documents focus on how to format an emf graphic for display on a Windows box and how to call the Windows emf rendering engine from your program on a Windows box. If so, I'm sure that there's plenty of documentation on how to do that. The problem is the reverse. As far as I know, the only effective emf rendering engine out there is the one embedded into the Windows OS. Getting reliable emf files to render on other OS's is not so easy. Take Office for Mac for example. MS supplies an emf rendering engine, but half the time the results are complete garbage.
I work for a company that provides research to the government. Many of our documents contain plots of data. In order to keep file sizes manageable, these are embedded as vector graphics. Yes, we could use Postscript with a low-res bitmapped preview and they would print nicely on a Postscript printer. However, our customers typically want WYSISYG performance and they don't necessarily want to be locked into Postscript printers. Furthermore, you can't put Postscript graphics into Powerpoint. (Well, you can, but all you see is the low-res bitmapped preview.) Therefore, if much of this work is to be viewed correctly, the government is locked into Windows. To make matters worse, this lock-in is being supported with your tax dollars. (Assuming that you're an American; if not, your government probably has the same problem anyhow.) What we need as part of an open document standard is an embedded vector graphics standard that will display on Windows boxes running Office and *nix boxes running alternative software. In order for that to happen, MS will need to provide WYSIWYG support for something besides EMF in its Office applications.
It may be compatible with some FOSS licenses (Apache License, for example) but it may not be compatible with the GPL. I.e. the covenant places an additional restriction that the party using the patented inventions not sue Microsoft or any affiliate (read: anybody) over patent violations in these schemas. RMS has said that similar language in the Apache license makes it incompatible with the GPL v2, so maybe Microsoft is trying to select against the GPL in terms of its formats?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP