Two Open Document Standards Better Than One?

tsa writes "Microsoft says that the consumers should have the choice between multiple open standards for documents." From the article: "Microsoft's Yates said that OpenDocument and Open XML come from very different design points. 'In the future at some point there will be convergence,' he said. In the near term, the transition period from proprietary document formats to Open XML-based ones will be 'messy and complex,' he added. 'Competition between standards we believe is a very good thing.'"

Comments

Divide and conquer

[timeOday]

We might not be able to beat one good format, but we can easily defeat two.

Re:Divide and conquer

[grasshoppa]

Ha! I never thought I'd hear from Microlimp that competition is good.

That's not precisely what they are saying. They are saying that competition on standards is good, which is a far cry from saying competition based on implementation is good.

Honestly, we should not have to deal with competition with standards. What's their to compete on if everyone agrees this is a standard? This is only a concept that is big because MS likes to fuck with standards ( embrace and extend ).

What they are trying to do is create an enviroment where PHB feel they have to go with the safe option. And no one ever got fired for going with MS.

Re:Divide and conquer

[timeOday]

Does anybody have a good handle on whether or not it will be easy to convert between the two formats?

Sure, just like you can convert back and forth between C code and assembler automatically. Just try editing that C code after one round trip though!

Complex document format conversion is lossy. Imagine converting a MS Word document to a TIFF image. OK, you'd lose some things (like page breaks) but you could do it. Now imagine trying to convert back to .doc from TIFF. You could sort of do it with OCR, maybe you could automatically recognize noncharacter regions and convert them back to images, but there's no way it would reclaim the structure of the document not to mention change tracking, comments, self-updating cross references, links to embedded spreadsheets, document-specific word lists for the spellchecker...

Two word processor formats will be much more similar than .doc and TIFF, but the same problem exists to a lesser degree. Document formats are not supersets of each other! At some level there are basic incompatibilities.

Re:Divide and conquer

[ThePhilips]

One was giving short insight into ODF v. M$' DOCX. (*)

ODF is flow based a-la HTML.
DOCX is record based a-la files generated by Write (.wri) & WinWord' text changes stream.

Application of styles is very different. Even if conversion of text can be made, conversion of styles is almost impossible. In DOCX styles are more or less inlined - ODF was redesigned by OASIS with styles to be more like HTML+CSS.

Basicly, M$'s concept boils down to "anything can occur anywhere in document". ODF hence standard is more strict.

Additionally M$ has special support for ActiveX: embedded objects will be stored as binary dump in middle of XML documents. (E.g. all pictures and files inserted from outside in M$ universe are ActiveX objects.) I'm not sure who ODF pares with embedded content, I can only hope OASIS - unlike M$ - have put XML to good use. After all, unlike M$, ODF includes vector and raster graphics too.

(*) http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200511251 44611543

Re:Divide and conquer

[carguy84]

That's not working out too well on the Linux desktop front. How well would it really work out here?

Re:Divide and conquer

[Anonymous Coward]

Get it yourself.

-Jesus

Re:Divide and conquer

[theCoder]

Actually, this is pretty standard for Microsoft. They always say that choice is good when it allows someone to choose Microsoft (i.e., if there was no choice they wouldn't get business) and that choice is bad when it allows someone to choose someone other than Microsoft (i.e., Linux, OpenOffice where ODF isn't a big push). Microsoft is all about choice in the areas that it doesn't have a monopoly.

And while it's somewhat hypocrical, it does make sense from the "we want all the money" point of view.

Re:Divide and conquer

[ThosLives]

I just had an interesting thought that your comment about HTML+CSS prompted. There seems to be an interesting idea surrounding the concept of "separation of content and presentation". The interesting idea is this: What if the presentation is the content? For instance, a screenplay of a book - take Lord of the Rings. The story is more or less the same between the two, but there is no amount of "common" format that will allow you to describe the same story in the book form or the movie form simply by "changing the presentation." (Okay, perhaps not the best example, but hopefully it will get the thought process going).

Incidentally, I think the only time "content+presentation" paradigms work well is when you have lots of similar data to present in a standard manner. For instance, records in a forum. Here, the content and presentation are only loosely related. This is vastly different than, say, certain documents where the arrangement of the elements on the page actually uniquely defines the content. Consider as an example the Periodic Table of Elements - here the arrangement is content.

Re:Divide and conquer

[CastrTroy]

This is where I think MS went wrong with ASP.Net. They are trying to get you to remove the presentation from the code. In the end, the code creates the presentation. All the good projects already had the non-presentation code separated from the prestation code. Now they are trying to remove the presentation code from the presentation. This was a little bit too much removed, and now we can't write HTML in loops, but we have to put all our HTML into constant strings, with no code highlighting.

Re:Divide and conquer

[electroniceric]

Multiple open standards are good as long as they're really open. That way, the market can sort out which one is really best, and it will end up as the reference standard. But Microsoft isn't really looking like they're making OpenXML truly open. And that's the worst of all worlds.

Hopefully one of the things that comes out of this is that large IT-consumers, like the State of Massachusetts, will learn how the process of developing and open standard really works, and what's open and what's not open. Hopefully this will obligate many or most vendors to support open standards.

Re:Divide and conquer

[Canthros]

The content of a screenplay is the screenplay. A screenplay contains much information that is not in a book, even obliquely. That is why books are adapted to the screen.

Re:Divide and conquer

[Hognoxious]

Yebbut Microsoft is long, and MS could be confused with multiple sclerosis.

Re:Divide and conquer

[Hognoxious]

All the good projects already had the non-presentation code separated from the prestation code.

I always thought prestation was a town in Wales.

Re:Divide and conquer

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like they're pushing some FUD here (surprised???) in response to the criticism put forth so far over their proposed standard. They're basically saying, you don't like it? Come up with something better, and we'll let the market decide...

Don't forget, though, that there are many MS-proprietary blobs of binary data in office documents. Any competing document standard will not have that someone tries to implement to compete with MS's implementation will most likely lack support for all these things, and the end result will be shoddy for the user.

Re:Divide and conquer

[Nacnude]

We have two great open standards: TXT & HTML! Leave it at that.....

Re:Divide and conquer

[capnchicken]

Had to be done

Re:Divide and conquer

[NickFortune]

You act as if Microsoft is so anti competition but then you have all heard of macs and linux so apparently they aren't perfect because most the world now at least knows there is an alternative...

So you're suggesting that we should infer goodwill from Microsoft's imperfections? That they could have destroyed Linux and Apple any time they liked, but they withheld their hand becuase they're nice people?

I have to say that doesn't sound like the Microsoft I've come to know and loathe. Should we also infer that they put all those bugs in on purpose so other OSes won't feel bad abut themselves?

Seriously if people continue to just bash microsoft hear then it shows they are no better then the funded surveys that microsoft does to prove they are better except you guys

So like, if I criticise Microsoft, I'm just as bad as they are, yeah? So if I say, Microsoft are untrustworthy hypocritical greedy grasping anti-competitive and morally bankrupt, that means that I am also untrustworthy hypocritical greedy grasping anti-competitive and morally bankrupt, made so purely by the act of saying so. Is that right?

Wow.

So, presumably, if I say the Pope is a catholic, that would make me a catholic too.

Maybe I should stop using the toiletary habits of bears for emphatic confirmation. I mean, it's not as if there's a decent sized wood anywhere near where I live. Talk about getting caught short...

Re:Divide and conquer

[Just Some Guy]

Sure, just like you can convert back and forth between C code and assembler automatically. Just try editing that C code after one round trip though!

I thought you were the guy in the next cube. What's up, Jeff? Did you ever figure out why all the functions in that library all had two-letter names?

Re:Divide and conquer

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Well you are half right. "M$" is an accurate and derogatory term for the company. It has less to do with feelings than historical fact. It is descriptive. You seem to be taking offense to its use, but I'd suggest that says more about you than the poster.

Re:Divide and conquer

[Da_Weasel]

"Governments should be open to both [Open XML and OpenDocument] and whatever else is rolling down the street. Choosing both is really wise."

Yea and smoking crack is wise too!

So if the government chooses both then how do they implement that?
Do they create each and every document in both formats, and the when a new one come "rolling down the street" produce everything in three different formats and four, five, and so on?

Or maybe they could put some documents in one format, and others in another format.

What a fucking idiot!

*sings* "Hold ya head up high and blow your brains out!" *sings*

Re:Divide and conquer

[Sathias]

Different standards are nothing new though... VHS vs Betamax? HD-DVD vs Blu-ray?

Re:Divide and conquer

[jambarama]

The funny thing is, if theirs was the only standard being considered, you wouldn't hear them looking for competition. They only want competition when they are on the outs. Which is fine, but lets call this what it is. M$ lost in an area, and they are trying to win it back.

Re:Divide and conquer

[denmarkw00t]

...the market can sort out which one is really best, and it will end up as the reference standard


That seems good but what happens when two companies develope two pieces of software with identical functionality but one supports OpenStandardA and the other OpenStandardB? To the user, it appears to work and function the same, but then when said user moves from ProductA to ProductB or, lets say, sends a co-worker who uses ProductB an OpenStandardA document, what happens?

You hit a brick wall.

Instead of the two companies working together to develope a standard for their formats, they've put up a nasty roadblock for their users. Yes, competition in creating the standard is good, but the community should pick one and then everyone should drop the other, even its own creators in favor of whats best for the users.

Re:Divide and conquer

[StikyPad]

It's not the market's job to sort out standards, it's the developers/engineers. Markets do a horrible job at picking standards when they're forced to (because they're subject to marketing) and unnessecary choices just steer people away from the technology entirely.

Re:Divide and conquer

[MacJedi]

Sure, but if OpenStandardA and OpenStandardB are both truly open standards, then both products could support both standards and naught is lost.

Re:Divide and conquer

[Bun]

Sure, just like you can convert back and forth between C code and assembler automatically. Just try editing that C code after one round trip though!

Well, the word processor formats in discussion here are all markup languages, so it would be more like the sort of thing that goes on in latex2html. I'm sure the document translation can be worked out pretty well.

Re:Divide and conquer

[WilliamSChips]

It's the same thing in Latin, so it doesn't matter. (Latin doesn't have articles)

Re:Divide and conquer

[rtb61]

Multiple standards make no sence at all, t is jus marketing. Microsoft is trying to create a new marketing illusion, of competiting standards. A standard is a uniform publicly available method that everyone can access. Your have one standard for every one to follow if they choose, allowing for every one to gain knowledge of that standard and to be able to apply it, if the standard proves issufiecient more is added to it.

If they start spouting nonsence about two standards for the same function, why stop lets have a hundred standards, even more competition and with a hundred different standards surely only the best one will survive, bullshit, when you have more than one standard you have no standard at all.

This is yet another attempt by microsoft to flood an important development in the future use of computers with lies and misdirections to maintain their preffered status quo where they have majority control of the market. There is no excuse for any government to not use what is already a freely available open document standard.

Everybody must surely realise by now the inherent futility of involving microsoft in any discussion of standards as they will only ever focus on their on greed and lies and will never work in the general interests of the greater community. Do the oppostie of what the microsofties say to do and you are bound to succeed, follow their reccomendations and don't be suprised when you lose and they profit.

Re:Divide and conquer

[Lord Flipper]

Consider as an example the Periodic Table of Elements - here the arrangement is content.

So, in SGML/XML one declares an element, 'table', with attributes like, 'column', etc, which includes an element, 'row', which includes, 'entry', etc, etc. Each entry can have its own elements [no pun intended], like 'name', 'symbol' [cross-reffed to a "declared" png, for example]...So what's the issue with XML and a Table of Elements? Color of the various element groups? Just another non-printed 'tag' to be referenced by the XHTML, or CSS, or pdf style sheet, whatever, etc.

That keeps your table searchable, and allows it to be printed, streamed, pdf'd, whatever.

I've seen 'verbatim' tags in well thoughtout DTDs that allow for multiple white spaces and all sorts of stuff that might seem 'formatted' to the eye [normally a no-no in good SGML].

Apple and Microsoft, and anyone else that fucks around with popping binary crap into otherwise pure XML is doing it for one reason only, and it is NOT to speed up XML code going through CPUs...they are simply fucking with it to make the format proprietary. Utter bullshit, a pox on all their houses.

Re:Divide and conquer

[jbolden]

I think the issue is whether the differences in the standards provide advantages that outweigh conversion hassles. For example the WordPerfect data standard offered things that were better than WordStar and thus it was worth introducing incompatability. OLE offered things to Word 95 that didn't exist in Word 6. Both changes of standards were worthwhile. OTOH TeX always offered things that Word didn't and vice versa.

End users do understand that not all data formats are the same. Just like the understand that people who speak Chinese don't necc. speak Spanish and vice versa. This isn't over their heads in some way.

Re:Divide and conquer

[ThePhilips]

"""I just had an interesting thought that your comment about HTML+CSS prompted."""
"""What if the presentation is the content?"""

Well this is why XML's style sheets are XML - XSL.
And even more. Transformation of XML styles described in XML too. And they are standartized too - XSLT.

So you can transform style. And you can transform transformation. XML has enough rope for everyone.

the old saying goes..

[jspectre]

"standards are great, everyone should have one."

Re:the old saying goes..

[mysqlrocks]

"standards are great, everyone should have one."

Or the other variation of that, "standards are great, there are so many to choose from."

Re:the old saying goes..

[cciRRus]

As the old saying goes, "Two heads are better than one"

<head>...</head>
<head>...</head>

Re:the old saying goes..

[grahamlee]

No, two heads are more numerous than one, but that's all.

Re:the old saying goes..

[CrazedWalrus]

Heh -- I've heard that one too, but my 26 years of 'wisdom' have shown me that two heads generally just re-enforce each other's harebrained ideas (e.g. the wacky old couple down the street who have the wild ideas about the neighbors), or simply confuse each other more (typically in professional settings, or Slashdot). It even happens with smart people who have slightly different views of reality.

In my several years of professional IT, I've been shocked (and, at times, guilty as well) by how many times smart people will argue, over something that is easily investigable, but whom both are too lazy or full of themselves to actually do said investigation.

Surely, one thing is true: Two heads are better at talking out of their asses.

Re:the old saying goes..

[eno2001]

As the even older saying goes... the man who has socks in the morning is the one who left the door closed in the winter time.

Re:the old saying goes..

[almercobb]

"standards are great, everyone should have one."

Or the other variation of that, "standards are great, there are so many to choose from."

So, wait ... are you saying there are competing standards for that old saying?

Re:the old saying goes..

[Luuvitonen]

Or the other variation of that, "standards are great, there are so many to bastardize."

Fixd!

Re:the old saying goes..

[ozmanjusri]

In my several years of professional IT, I've been shocked (and, at times, guilty as well) by how many times smart people will argue, over something that is easily investigable, but whom both are too lazy or full of themselves to actually do said investigation.

Got any evidence for that?

Re:the old saying goes..

[CrazedWalrus]

Do I need any?

I'm confused

[Anonymous Coward]

If there are two standards, how can they be called standards?

Isn't that like having competing monopolies?

Regardless, competetion in standards is only good for a short period of time, after that there is a waste of man hours on one project to the detriment of whatever the standard is for.

Re:I'm confused

[RogL]

If there are two standards, how can they be called standards?

That's right - who could possibly need more than one standard?

Just as there's only one graphics-file format... GIF! I mean bitmap... or was that JPEG? Oh, PNG - that's the one! Except for the nuts using TIFF or RAW...

Re:I'm confused

[Pudusplat]

Nope.

Multiple ideas can be thought of as a "standard", they just aren't necessarily compatible. PAL vs NTSC, 120 volts vs 220 volts, AC/DC, DVD-R vs DVD+R, Letter size vs Legal vs Postcard. They're all standards, all used for various purposes, and sometimes (DVD-R vs DVD+R) interchangable. As long as a lot of people conform to using it (not necessarily ALL people), it can be deemed a standard. Multiple standards can be a good thing. Of course, multiple standards can also be a bad thing, as it leads to unneccessary incompatabilities.

Re:I'm confused

[Skowronek]

I am very sorry to have to enlighten you. As it happens, the "nutty" TIFF format you mentioned is actually the One Format to Rule Them All. You can have TIFF/JPEG (instead of JFIF, which is the real name for what you messily call JPEG), TIFF/LZW (instead of GIF), TIFF/CCITT (for two-color images), TIFF/RAW... You can pack pretty much any kind of compression into TIFF.

Re:I'm confused

[porneL]

and then if you want to make "simple image viewer" you have to support all these formats and their variants, implement lots of algorithms, link with bunch of libs... or have partial/broken implementation.

Re:I'm confused

[Skowronek]

As far as analogies to document formats go, it's a pretty good one, isn't it?

Re:I'm confused

[CrazedWalrus]

Then maybe the missing word is "documented". Otherwise, the MS Word "standard" isn't.

Of course!

[Just Some Guy]

As soon as Microsoft releases a fully documented, non-patented format, or at least creates a perpetual license for F/OSS projects to use a patented format, I'll welcome them with open arms.

Since they haven't done that yet, the rest is just speculation. It looks like legal issues will be keeping the Free world on OpenDocument for the foreseeable future.

Re:Of course!

[cduffy]

As soon as Microsoft releases a fully documented, non-patented format, or at least creates a perpetual license for F/OSS projects to use a patented format, I'll welcome them with open arms.

Will you do that even without considering the merits of their patented-yet-standardized format?

They've promised to create exactly that perpetual license, and there's pretty much no question at this point that they will indeed do so. The problem is this: Their proposed format sucks, and ECMA probably won't do anything about it.

Compared to ODF, the format Microsoft is proposing is vastly less suitable for XMLT transforms. It fails to leverage preexisting standards, so other implementations can't take advantage of existing code to render and manipulate SVG, MathML and the like.

Please see the OpenDocument Fellowship's introduction to the technical merits of Microsoft's proposed format to better understand the extralegal objections to the same.

Re:Of course!

[telegraph_road]

O Agree with Just Some Guy, but I think that if the competion between standards is a good thing, Microsoft must implement both of them in the next Office for guarantee a correct competition. Microsoft is the de-facto leader of office suite, so if it uses only a standard, that will became the leading standard!

Re:Of course!

[Just Some Guy]

Will you do that even without considering the merits of their patented-yet-standardized format?

Will I what? Welcome them to the competition? Sure! That's not the same as blindly adopting their proposal.

Re:Of course!

[cduffy]

I think it'll be interesting to see what ISO has to say -- they're not nearly the pushovers ECMA are reputed to be when it comes to being influenced by vendors rather than technical merits.

I've upped my standards...

[SunPin]

so up yours.

It's about money

[fair_n_hite_451]

Of course it's a good thing while there is still a chance to make money on the "standard". If it was all settled and everyone agreed, that eliminates some opportunities for making money (such as selling converters and translators).

This isn't an "evil" comment from MicroSoft, but an expected one.

Now that is funny!!

[gasmonso]

"Competition between standards we believe is a very good thing.

If Microsoft had to actually compete, they would cease to exist.

http://religiousfreaks.com/

Re:Now that is funny!!

[lbrandy]

Competition between standards we believe is a very good thing.

More importantly, isn't that the entire reason for a "standard"? So you don't have competing formats? Hence the use of the word "standard". Maybe he needs to look up the definition of standard (and, while he's at it, oxymoron).

Re:Now that is funny!!

[BlewScreen]

Right. Because if there's a "standard" way of doing something and you think of something better, you should bite your tongue, suck it up and continue using something you believe isn't as good as it could be.

I'm not saying that's what's happening here, but I'm quite surprised that everyone here seems to think that competition is evil, just because MS is the competition.

Take USB 1.0 vs. Firewire for example. Would we have seen USB 2.0 as soon as we did if Firewire didn't offer "faster competition" to USB 1.0?

I'm sure there are standards that saw competition and then ceased to exist because the competing standard was better.

-bs

Re:Now that is funny!!

[VitaminB52]

If Microsoft had to actually compete, they would cease to exist.

Microsoft does compete - every time they release a new Windows/Office version they have to compete against the installed base of older Windows/Office versions.

Re:Now that is funny!!

[NanoGator]

"If Microsoft had to actually compete, they would cease to exist."

I'd find this more insightful if Microsoft's monopolies weren't de-facto.

Re:Now that is funny!!

[Austerity Empowers]

To shut them up, we demand they support all the standards.

Re:Now that is funny!!

[lymond01]

Exactly. But do we need both? I'll just keep using the faster one.

Re:Now that is funny!!

['nother poster]

No. Competing standards is not a problem. There are a dozen ways to encode and compress images. GIF, TIFF, JPEG, bitmap, and many more. Having several standards that do the same thing isn't a problem, the problem is when players in the game decide to extend the standard without making those extensions part of the standard, and available to the other players, or just not follow the standards while claiming that they do.

Re:Now that is funny!!

[shaitand]

The reason microsoft is evil competition in this case is because of motive. Microsoft's goal is to undermine the open process and any "open" proposals it puts forth will have been designed to ultimately allow microsoft to do so.

Perhaps they will leverage their monopoly to cause an inferior open format to win. It goes like this.

1. Government and some industry requires open format support in word processing application.
2. Microsoft proposes terrible open format that is vastly inferior to word doc.
3. Microsoft does not implement competiting formats, only its own inferior open format.
4. Government offices relicense office because it now complies with regulation.
5. Offices using inferior open format can not get all their work done using crippled format.
6. Ultimately regulations at offices are changed to allow them to use word docs again.

At no point here did the offices use anything but Microsoft's product and are right back to a proprietary format. Microsoft wins.

Microsoft does this crap consistantly, again and again. Never once have they claimed to participate in an open process with honorable intentions and ended up with an honorable open result. Why is it that every time Microsoft proposes something like this there is someone piping up and suggesting that Microsoft could have a legitimate involvement in ANY open process, format, or standard?

Re:Now that is funny!!

[friedmud]

"There are a dozen ways to encode and compress images. GIF, TIFF, JPEG..."

This is the second time I have seen this argument in this discussion... and it simply doesn't work... because those image formats are all for different purposes..

GIF: Lossless, useful for small images with limited number of colors
TIFF (well, what most people think of as tiff): Lossless, useful for large full color images that need to maintain pefect quality.
JPEG: Loss(full?), Useful for large full color images that can lose some quality without damaging the intended message.

Each one of these formats fills a particular niche... unlike ODF vs DocX (which is what is being discussed here).

There are plenty of other examples out there that _are_ examples of "competing standars" (DVD+R and DVD-R are the first to come to my mind).... where the things competing _do the exact same thing_.

Friedmud

Re:Now that is funny!!

[ozmanjusri]

Microsoft does compete - every time they release a new Windows/Office version they have to compete against the installed base of older Windows/Office versions.

That's why they introduced Product Activation. So a product which never wears out becomes unusable at the same rate as the hardware it is installed on. It is their way of avoiding competition with older installed products.

Re:Now that is funny!!

['nother poster]

Well, the image paradigm is closer than the DVD burner examples since the DVD examples have to work with another standard, the DVD standard. It doesn't matter how they go about the encoding and burning, when it's all over it has to read in a bog standard DVD player. The image encoding is better example. When it is all said and done, neither standard will be able to be read by a reader for the other standard. They will all be read by some programs because those apps will have readers for all of the standards. Both standards will do what the authors and readers want, and they don't care what happens under the hood to get to that point. Whether it is a .sxw or a microsoft derived open standard won't matter one bit to them.

As long as the standards are open to all to use, it doesn't matter if there are one or one hundred, anyone can make it so their application can handle them.

Good idea?

[ceeam]

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<p class=MsoNormal><span lang=EN-US>Idiot</span></p>

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Re:Good idea?

[BushCheney08]

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<p class=MsoNormal>Hehehe. Good One.</p>

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Re:Good idea?

[Div3B0mbr]

omg my eyes, my eyes!!

Re:Good idea?

[pembo13]

Funny isn't it

Re:Good idea?

[jannic]

<office:document-content xmlns:office="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmln s:office:1.0" xmlns:style="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns :style:1.0" xmlns:text="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns: text:1.0" xmlns:table="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns :table:1.0" xmlns:draw="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns: drawing:1.0" xmlns:fo="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:xs l-fo-compatible:1.0" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:meta="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns: meta:1.0" xmlns:number="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmln s:datastyle:1.0" xmlns:svg="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:s vg-compatible:1.0" xmlns:chart="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns :chart:1.0" xmlns:dr3d="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns: dr3d:1.0" xmlns:math="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:form="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns: form:1.0" xmlns:script="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmln s:script:1.0" xmlns:ooo="http://openoffice.org/2004/office" xmlns:ooow="http://openoffice.org/2004/writer" xmlns:oooc="http://openoffice.org/2004/calc" xmlns:dom="http://www.w3.org/2001/xml-events" xmlns:xforms="http://www.w3.org/2002/xforms" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instan ce" office:version="1.0"><office:scripts/><office:font -face-decls><style:font-face style:name="Lucidasans1" svg:font-family="Lucidasans"/><style:font-face style:name="Arial" svg:font-family="Arial" style:font-pitch="variable"/><style:font-face style:name="Lucidasans" svg:font-family="Lucidasans" style:font-pitch="variable"/><style:font-face style:name="Times New Roman" svg:font-family="&apos;Times New Roman&apos;" style:font-family-generic="roman" style:font-pitch="variable"/></office:font-face-de cls><office:automatic-styles/><office:body><office :text><office:forms form:automatic-focus="false" form:apply-design-mode="false"/><text:sequence-dec ls><text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Illustration"/><text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Table"/><text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Text"/><text:sequence-decl text:display-outline-level="0" text:name="Drawing"/></text:sequence-decls><text:p text:style-name="Standard">Indeed...</text:p></off ice:text></office:body></office:document-content>

Re:Good idea?

[animaal]

I was going to post the reply "I agree", as a document in MSWord 2003 format. However, the .doc file was 19.5KB, and I'm not sure the Slashdot filters would accept a hex dump of it...

Re:Good idea?

[sarguin]

New Microsoft Word format:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<word-doc>
<![CDATA[
!@#$WED FWE$%@#$FSDFWE$%EFFWER#$QWFWEFWEF#$R@#$FDF
@#$%#% %EGGWERGFWEFT$%$FERFWERF$%#$%^@#$%@#$%$%#$%
]]>
</word-doc>

MS strategy

[JoeCommodore]

Let's just forget the embrace thing, we'll just muddy the market by extending.

Just excellent

[KlomDark]

Ah yes, the 'Tower of Babel' defense - Completely screw up the ability to communicate clearly by introducing another competing way.

Also known as "StirStick of Muddy Water +5"

So much for historians trying to figure out the years 2006 to 2012... How very non-altruistic of Microsoft. How very against the basic tenets of Information Systems.

Competition

[QuaintRealist]

"Competition between two standards we believe is a very good thing"

From past experience, Microsoft only believes this when the leading standard is someone elses. Once Microsoft's standard holds the most mindshare/marketshare, then they don't like competition anymore.

Just what I've observed

Re:Competition

[DogDude]

How unusual... a business not liking having competition.... hmmm... did you go to business school at the Velvet Jones School of Bidness, by any chance? Any company that says that they do love their competition is in collusion with their competitors (Coke and Pepsi), so there isn't any real competition, anyway.

Re:Competition

[Eil]

MS realizes at this point, that it's going to be quite hard or impossible to beat out OpenDocument. So what do they do? Well, they simply suggest that there will be two standards, and that they will at some time converge into one. But taking these statements apart and considering Microsoft's prior attitudes and actions toward difficult competition, we arrive at some very strong assertions from a Microsoftian point of view:

1) We will sooner curl up, die, and/or join the open source movement before letting a non-MS Office document standard become any sort of official or de facto standard.

2) There will be two incompatible standards in popular use. Yes, that does defeat the entire purpose of standards in the first place, but you have to realize that we're Microsoft and that we will never stop pushing our own solutions, even if they're inferior, evil, or expensive. Even if everyone on the planet rejects them, it will not hinder us. But we will succeed eventually.

3) Our standard will converge with the competition's in response to market forces. And if the market doesn't force it, we will, and we'll just make it sound like we didn't.

4) We plan to be in charge of this convergence. And by "converge," we mean "effectively replace that one with ours." We'll be in full control of the result.

Re:Competition

[DogDude]

:) Yeah, I can't imagine MS, with their "monopoly" issues saying otherwise... hell, or any large corporation, *especially* a consumer-oriented one for that matter.

Ford Motors: "We disklike all competition. We'd rather be the only car manufacturer on the planet."

That'd go over like a lead balloon with the public.

Re:Competition

[Paul Bristow]

That is exactly what I was about to say: well said!

What Competition?

[ZiakII]

Competition between standards we believe is a very good thing

Sure you can say that when the most used application uses your format and doesn't support the other format, which can be extremlly bad for the user and forcing the user to buy Office products.

Now I have to give M$ credit though there Office Suite is probably the best out there I have yet to see one that even comes close to how well their program works, and how well one migrates into the other program, with ease.

Last time I checked...

[mmaddox]

Last time I checked, TWO ain't a standard. It's a competition.

For who?

[grasshoppa]

Competition between standards we believe is a very good thing

Yeah, for microsoft.

You can expect this kind of horse shit from MS because they are on the weak end of the document format wars. Allow me to explain:

Competition between programs is a very good thing. No arguments. Standards are just that, standards. There has already been a shake down period, and people have agreed this is an agreed set of rules. Hence, "standard". By instigating a whole new standards "war", they hope to create confusion and chaos. And those of you who work with PHB already know the next bit: They panic and go with the safe option.

Fuck 'em. I hope against logic that they get eaten alive on this one.

Re:For who?

[grasshoppa]

I have yet to even meet in person ANYONE who uses open office

Then you don't work in IT. I would further say you don't work with computers much on a day to day basis.

No one cares about OS except linux zealots and and a few governments looking to save a few pennies by using an inferior product

Try not to drool to much on yourself, it really undermines your credibility.

Let me paint you a picture. You are the IT head of a state ( lets say California ). You see Mass moving to open-office due to concerns about document formats. A year goes by, and they report an enormous budget savings due to no MS tax on their office suite.

Now, do you a) Stay with MS, and have to deal with corporation crap regarding their document formats and pay for the privledge? Or do you b) investigate costs associated with moving to open office?

Try not to drool on yourself while you think about this.

Re:For who?

[grasshoppa]

I've never seen Open Office, nor have I ever met anybody who uses it either.

Would you like to see my resume, smartass?

Why yes. Yes I would.

If anything, I'd say that you don't work in IT. A real IT person doesn't use such juvenile phrases like "MS Tax".

Oh? I would argue that you haven't met many people in the field then. MS tax is a perfectly valid description of a forced update model. Sure, PHB may use different words ( longer and more meaningless, generally ), but the essence is the same.

So yes. Please post your resume.

Re:For who?

[picaro]

Competition between standards we believe is a very good thing.

Competition between the English and the metric systems, for example, has provided an endless stream of benefits over the years.

And while we're at it, the different standards for power plugs and telephone adapters are really great, too, stimulating the ingenuity of international travelers everywhere, and doubtless provide jobs and livelihoods for tens of thousands of adapter manufactures around the world.

Re:For who?

[grasshoppa]

You're kidding, right?

Programming : Micro Soft Visuals: Basics, C, C+, C#, C++, Java, Internet.

Internet programming? I wasn't aware "The Internet" was a programing language.

Computer assembly and repair: Advanced knowledge as a technician, effective use of the Internet.

Effective use of the internet? You actually put on your resume that you know how to find porn? You've got balls man, I'll give you that.

And no, I would not like fries with that.

Re:For who?

[tehshen]

YHBD. It was taken from The Daily WTF.

Re:For who?

[bob frost]

On the government side (and arguably on the private as well), M$ products are a veritable black box, and for security purposes, that stinks. When the source code is open, programmers working for the gov't can comb through the code to understand how secure it is. That, as much as cost considerations, is why a number of countries (and now Mass) are moving away from closed code. It's simply irresponsible for a CIO to adopt products that prevent security analysis.

That the US' new Ministry of Homeland Security opted for end-to-end M$ products indicates to me that that agency is more concerned with nurturing the connections of the bushies to M$. The latter not only dumped big bucks into Shrub's last campaign, Bill's dad is a principle of the lobbying firm for which the notorious Jack Abramoff worked when all of the above happened. Conclusion: gov'ts who *don't* go open-source might often have agendas that have little to do with "good govenment."

Too funny to be true.

[Swordfish]

This is one of the funniest stories I've heard for a long time.
Are microsoft sending themselves up?

This reminds me of the old joke about the advantages of standards, that there are so many to choose from.

That old joke was supposed to be in the Tanenbaum book, but I couldn't find it in the 3rd edition. Was it removed? Or can someone give me a reference for this?

"The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from. And if you really don't like all the standards you just have to wait another year until the one arises you are looking for."

Open XML?

[john82]

Seriously, is that what Microsoft calls their format now? I can hear the PR guys.

"We've got to come up with a name that at least sounds like we're the good guys. You know, open to new ideas. I've got it! We'll use Open XML!"

It's just marketing BS. Bleh!

Re:Open XML?

[morgan_greywolf]

No. Open XML is a real open standardfor Kylix and Delphi. I can't see what that has to do with Office, though. Is there a conflicting name here?

Open Standard?

[Fallen Kell]

I still do not know how they can call their "Open XML" open to begin with. It was basically MS dictating what the "standard" would be with no comments accepted from anyone in the community (asside from MS's internal community).

The process was, this is the standard.

Microsoft's bastardization of the word 'OPEN'

[OwlWhacker]

Open doesn't mean what it should anymore.

Like in this article for example.

QUOTE:

Thanks to Microsoft, users will face the "unsavory prospect of two supposed standards. The truth is that only one of them is free of intellectual property encumbrances. Only one reflects multivendor support, and only one reflects openness. That standard is OpenDocument Format,"

Re:Microsoft's bastardization of the word 'OPEN'

[N6546R]

I was at the meeting mentioned in the article. What struck me most was that there was significant confusion in the minds of most, including some of the panelists, between an open standard and open source. Several times during the 2+ hours the discussion came back to procurement costs, and it was clear that many in the room see this issue as: "Should the Commonwealth buy Microsoft's office software, or someone elses?" Linda Hamel did a great job of trying to get the room to focus on the standard. Quinn's analogy of differently colored Legos was not bad but he didn't follow through to use it to explain why an open standard is important. Bob Sproull of SUN had the best analogy, which was that he could design a telephone with any sized buttons he wanted, but because there are telcom standards he could always plug it into the wall and it would work. And, unfortunately, the discussion was thrown completely off track by the inclusion of Judy Brewer from the W3C whose just kept repeating that whatever it was we were talking about had to be "accessible". Apart from wasting valuable time it also served to furher muddy the minds of the participants as to whether we were talking about software or a standard format. Quinn and his department are for some reason under a lot of pressure from the Secretary of State's office to back down, and I give him and Linda and the rest of his staff a lot of credit for trying to do the right thing. Personally I think that this meeting was a step backward.

Re:Microsoft's bastardization of the word 'OPEN'

[Tom]

See other comment.

M$ is quite successfully employing their "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy to words now. "Open" is merely the first victim. If this works, you can be guaranteed that nothing is safe.

Re:Microsoft's bastardization of the word 'OPEN'

[bit01]

True. M$ marketing has been very good at embracing generic words/phrases with general meanings like "word", "excel", "access" and "SQL server" and attaching them to their products, thus making it impossible for people to talk about a word processor with mentioning M$' word, to talk about accessing their data without mentioning M$ access and so on.

Compare this to other, more responsible, companies which choose specific, distinctive names that won't come up in normal conversation. e.g. WordPerfect, CorelDraw, Apache etc.

M$' approach is legal and good marketting but has the ethics of alley cats.

---

Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.

Not again...

[Taevin]

Let's see, embrace, extend, extinguish.

Embrace: Do a complete reversal; say that open standards are a great idea, far better than our own proprietary asshattery.

Extend: So yeah, we're all about open standards now and look we've got our own version OpenXML. It's obviously better (or at least that's what people will believe thanks to our unstoppable marketing department) so we'll add extra tags and change the format of existing ones. Oh by the way, this means that only Microsoft products will create this and only Microsoft products will understand this but that's not our fault, honestly.

Extinguish: Well everyone seems to be using our version of the open document format since 90% of all computer users use our software so only masochists use that 'other' standard. We'll repeatedly change the standard by making each version of our software understand only a new version of it. After everyone is frustrated by the lack of stability in a so called standard, we'll do another 180 and point out how much better and stable closed source/standards are and move everyone back to safe, trustworthy Microsoft standards that Just Works(tm).

Thanks for playing!

Been here before

[Nom du Keyboard]

Microsoft says that the consumers should have the choice between multiple open standards for documents.

It's Beta vs. VHS all over again.

Or HD-DVD vs. BluRay for those of you with short memories.

Missing the point?

[Jugalator]

Isn't it missing the point a bit saying that there should be many open source formats for the same thing, when the point of open formats is to make it easy for everyone to implement them?

How about Microsoft instead making it easier for everyone and joining forces with IBM, Adobe, Corel, and Sun among others behind OpenDocument, and trying suggest improvements to it to do whatever they so badly need to make their own format for?

Re:Missing the point?

[Trepalium]

It's obvious, isn't it? Microsoft has exclusive control over the ECMA standard. Only Microsoft can release another OpenXML standard and the "standard" states that clearly. On the other hand, anyone from the ODF group could update the Open Document format, and release a new standard through the normal OASIS procedures. If Sun became disinterested in maintaining the standard, the remaining members could. If Microsoft becomes disinterested in maintaining OpenXML (say, for example, they successfully killed the ODF threat), that would simply be the end of OpenXML. We're exchanging one de facto standard for another de facto standard, and calling it open to keep lawmakers happy. It's all about control.

MS craftier than you think

[spycker]

I got a new laptop and it had MS works installed. I used Word until the trial period expired then when I could no longer open documents I downloaded OpenOffice. Lo and behold when I try to open an MS document now it does open using Word except it does ask me to license the product.

I get the impression that Word looks for OpenOffice and if it finds it decides to go ahead and open the document!!!!

Re:MS craftier than you think

[WindBourne]

Is anybody else seeing this? I wonder if that was due to OO being seen in the registry via MSOffice, or if it occured by information being sent to MS AND then back again?

Re:MS craftier than you think

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Very interesting! May I ask which versions of MS Works, Windows and OOo you were using?

Re:MS craftier than you think

[darkfire5252]

I don't know about Word, but I have OO installed, and .ppt files are associated with OO. In Explorer, they view as OO presentations and all that, but if I double click, they are opened by PowerPoint viewer. The only way to get OO to open it is explicitly choosing "Open with"

Just another blatant ploy from the boys at Redmond

[mmell]

Consider: if the Open Document standard is widely adopted, that means the end of proprietary document formats - who wants to go through their professional career knowing that M$ has the software equivalent of a gun to their heads?

IF, however, M$ can create a second "open" standard (one which presumably is not compatible with the existing open standard), end-users will be frustrated by what they perceive as a failure of the open document standard. I can see some poor cubicle inhabitant trying to open a M$ fnord OpenXML document in OpenOffice and not understanding why it doesn't work. At some point, the PHB's will conclude that "open" document formats aren't interoperable or don't work, making them more receptive to accepting the "lock-in" of proprietary formats because they "just work".

This is just another example of MacroHard trying to pollute the open-source stream. Nothing new under the sun here. Move along, people - move along.

Microsoft loses first battle, goes for #2

[digitaldc]

"Additional standards give you more choice over a period of time," Alan Yates, general manager, business strategy with Microsoft's information worker group, said Wednesday. "Governments should be open to both [Open XML and OpenDocument] and whatever else is rolling down the street. Choosing both is really wise."

Translation: We at Microsoft were really disappointed when we heard the State of Massachusetts was not 'agile' and were not going to 'realize their full potential' by going to the Open Document Format. We thought it over, and found that when you can't beat 'em join 'em. Just look at us trying to catch up with google. If we can create our own version of the same thing, it might just keep us in the game.

Another article from MS on their Open XML: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/nov0 5/11-21EcmaPR.mspx

For Some Definition of "Open"

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Multiple, competing open standards are fine, and being open it is usually not too difficult to translate between them. Unfortunately MS's "Open XML" standard is not open, so they are not really giving us the choice they are claiming. Open XML is format that is patented and that is licensed with a variety of important restrictions. For example, only the current version is covered by the license, it expires immediately should a new version come out. According to the letter of the license this means the benefits of backwards compatibility and even the ability to distribute a program from one day to the next are subject to MS's whim. Should MS release a new version that is intentionally broken, they could legally restrict competitors from continuing to sell or even give away a word processor.

Redistribution is completely forbidden by the licensing, leading many to believe that it was specifically designed to exclude GNU licensed applications, like Open Office, their primary competitor. How can anyone call "Open XML" and open format when the license under which that format is offered means it can't be implemented by OpenOffice?

All of this is MS marketing FUD. Closed is open. Bad is good. Ha ha we made it really hard for you to explain shit to your managers by naming our product the opposite of what it is. This is like GM calling the next iteration of their traditional cargo van "Hybrid Luxury Mobile" despite it not having a hybrid engine or any luxury features. Don't fall for their crap.

Re:For Some Definition of "Open"

[man_of_mr_e]

I find it interesting that you are so meticulous about interpreting Microsoft's license, yet you seem to ignore entirely Sun's license and patent covenent which contains very similar "loopholes". For instance, Sun's patent covenent promises not to sue anyone *SO LONG A SUN IS PARTICIPATING* in that version of OpenDocument.

So, for example, if Sun decided they didn't like the direction of OpenDocument 1.1, they could stop participating and then sue anyone for "suddenly discovered" patents.

Additionally, the "openness" of something has nothing to do with whether or not it's GPL compatible. There are many open source (and even Free, according the Free Software Foundation) licenses that are not GPL compatible. The Mozilla Public License, for instance.

I'm also skeptical that Sun's license is GPL compatible either, since they impose the additional requirement of granting Sun reciprocal patent rights (explictly Sun, not necessarily others), which violates the "no additional restrictions" clause of the GPL.

Re:For Some Definition of "Open"

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

find it interesting that you are so meticulous about interpreting Microsoft's license, yet you seem to ignore entirely Sun's license and patent covenent which contains very similar "loopholes". For instance, Sun's patent covenent promises not to sue anyone *SO LONG A SUN IS PARTICIPATING* in that version of OpenDocument.

First, MS has applied for and been granted patents on the format itself in multiple jurisdictions. Sun has not patented the Open Office format. The license you are referring to discusses technologies that may be utilized by the format, not the format itself. Second, Sun has promised not to sue anyone for using any of their patents that might cover technology in the Open Office spec, because that is what OASIS requires. It does not imply that any such technologies exist. Third, regarding the participation clause, no company in their right mind would cede all their patent rights for all technology arbitrarily. The participation clause allows Sun to decline the option to participate in a new version of the standard, thus preventing someone from arbitrarily inserting random patented technology in a new version of the spec, and thus gaining access to any of Suns patents, license free.

There is a big difference between an agreement that says if any patents conflict with a format they won't be enforced and a patented format, licensed with restrictions. There is a huge difference between the ability to not release a new version of a format from patent protection and the ability to arbitrarily rescind a license to a format. If Sun decided not to participate in a future version of Open Office any company that has implemented old versions are still free to do so and new programs are free to implement them for backwards compatibility. If MS releases a new version of the "Open XML" spec no one is free to keep distributing old word processors or implement new word processors that can use that format for backwards compatibility, save at MS's whim. If you don't see the practical difference then you're either dense or being paid not to see it.

So, for example, if Sun decided they didn't like the direction of OpenDocument 1.1, they could stop participating and then sue anyone for "suddenly discovered" patents.

Sun can only sue if they have patents covered by a new version of the spec that they are not implementing (none are known) and if other companies then go ahead and implement that spec. The reason for this restriction on their patent protection license was already explained above.

Additionally, the "openness" of something has nothing to do with whether or not it's GPL compatible. There are many open source (and even Free, according the Free Software Foundation) licenses that are not GPL compatible. The Mozilla Public License, for instance.

You're confusing "open" and "open source." Open source means you can view the code. Open means the format is unencumbered and freely implementable by all. An open standard is one that can be implemented by anyone. A closed standard is one that must be licensed and is subject to restrictions. The Open Document standard is open. No license is needed to implement it, and the various companies that submitted the standard have pledged that if any of their patents cover items within it, they won't enforce them (to prevent submarine patenting). MS, on the other hand, admits to having patented the "Open XML" spec, and further has placed restriction on how that spec can be used (singling out certain software licenses for specific exclusion).

I'm also skeptical that Sun's license is GPL compatible either, since they impose the additional requirement of granting Sun reciprocal patent rights (explictly Sun, not necessarily others), which violates the "no additional restrictions" clause of the GPL.

A document format cannot be (by definition) GPL compatible. The GPL covers source code and redistribution of binaries. That is copyright law, not patent law. Nothing prevents GPL programs from implemen

Re:For Some Definition of "Open"

[man_of_mr_e]

There is a big difference between an agreement that says if any patents conflict with a format they won't be enforced and a patented format, licensed with restrictions.

No, there's not a big difference. The only difference is one of chance. If Sun discovers they have patents on technology covered by ODF, it's the same situation. The question becomes, do you want to gamble on whether sun will discover such patents or not.

You're confusing "open" and "open source."

No i'm not. The "open" in "open source" and "open standard" means the same thing, it's just whether or not it applies to a standard or source. Being GPL compatible doesn't determine whether something is open or not.

A document format cannot be (by definition) GPL compatible.

That's incorrect. The GPL explictly defines the conditions upon which patented work is compatible with the GPL. That condition is that the patent rights must be reciprocal to everyone that gets a copy of GPL'd source code that implements the format. In the case of Sun's patent covenent, they only require that Sun be granted reciprocal rights, not everyone who might use GPL'd implementations.

Re:For Some Definition of "Open"

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

No, there's not a big difference. The only difference is one of chance. If Sun discovers they have patents on technology covered by ODF, it's the same situation. The question becomes, do you want to gamble on whether sun will discover such patents or not.

You don't see a difference between, "Sun might find patents that apply and might not decide to let them be used in a future version the spec (inconveniencing themselves in the process)" and "MS has patents that specifically apply which they are already using to restrict people and which they can use to close the spec at any time?"

The "open" in "open source" and "open standard" means the same thing, it's just whether or not it applies to a standard or source. Being GPL compatible doesn't determine whether something is open or not.

No, but not being GPL compatible is pretty good indication that a format is not open to use. But all of that is semantics. What we are interested in is not having a word, we are interested in the benefits a truly open standard can bring, including competition among vendors, no lock-in, and guaranteed backwards compatibility and legal data access in the future. The Open Document spec guarantees all of these things, while the Open XML spec and accompanying licensing seems designed to prevent them.

If MS complies with government requirements to implement an approved open spec by implementing the Open Document spec what will happen? Well, Word will have to compete on its merits against Open Office and other applications. In ten years I can be certain I'll be able to read documents created in that specification. And if I ever want to I know I can switch applications without much pain.

If MS convinces the world that its Open XML spec is "good enough" what will happen. Word will not have to compete on a level field against Open Office, KOffice, and and most open source word processors, since those programs will not be able to implement the Open XML format legally. MS will have the option of legally closing the spec in the future and banning distribution of existing implementations, thus offering me no guarantee that I will be able to open a document in the future. I might be able to switch to a different application, but I have no guarantees of that.

Call it what you like, but it has none of the important benefits that have motivated various governments and companies to demand an open specification.

The GPL explictly defines the conditions upon which patented work is compatible with the GPL.

I'll say this again, slowly. The GPL is a license to redistribute a copyrighted work. It applies only to copyrighted works. Neither Open Document or Open XML is copyrighted. The GPL limits whether or not someone may redistribute GPL code after adding more code that runs afoul of a patent. It does not limit any new works, only modifications of the old works. Hence if a format can only be implemented by using a patent that is not licensed, the GPL cannot stop you from writing a new application using any license you want, including the GPL, to implement that format.

Open office is distributed under the LGPL, and thus Sun has agreed to whatever terms are necessary to redistribute their and other people's work under it, including any patent issues. The document linked to earlier was the patent agreement Sun signed to satisfy OASIS and get the format approved as a standard. Sun is bound by both.

Look lawyers from numerous companies have looked at the legal issues for the Open Document format, and then it was implemented by a half a dozen different companies and groups. Many of those same lawyers have looked at the Open XML licensing and said, "we can't implement this legally." Are you telling me they are all wrong and you know better?

Just admit it, The MS license is not "open enough" to bring the main benefits people want. MS is just trying to confuse others with their naming, that may not understand what the benefits trying to be achieved are.

Interesting Business Plan

[||Plazm||]

'Competition between standards we believe is a very good thing.'

Translation: Let our competition show us what we're doing wrong then buy, hire, or whatever we need to do to incorporate their technology into ours.

"Competition between standards we believe..."

[blackcoot]

"... is a very good thing."

apparently he never owned a betamax.

Re:"Competition between standards we believe..."

[digitaldc]

"... is a very good thing."
apparently he never owned a betamax.

or had an 'Apprentice' TV show that was recently cancelled.

Choice huh?

[Hobberdome]

That's a funny statement coming from Microsoft. Just like in choice of OS's or choice in Web Browser's. Yeah ... I noticed how you liked those choices. When it's not a Microsoft thing, the answer is always "more choices is better". While you embrace and extend, then kill it, so the only choice is a Microsoft choice.

Am I the only one...

[squoozer]

...that thinks two competing document standards isn't a good thing? Yes, I know all the arguments about the competition spawning features and a better product and quite frankly I don't really believe them. As far as I am concerned it will just lead to a situation where I am always playing off the benifits and draw backs of the two formats and trying to guess which one a potential client will want. At least at the moment it's a no brainer. Send it in the latest .doc format or .pdf depending on whether you want the recipient to be ablet o edit the document.

If MSO and OOo have perfect reading and writting capabilities for both formats and both formats are able to produce quality documents (I think that's a given) that it's not a big issue but how would you choose between the two formats. You can't because they would be the same so you might as well roll them into one.

My worst fear is that the two formats will be fundamentally incompatible. That would be like having two incompatible versions of HTML and having to choose your browser based on site.

Re:Am I the only one...

[tigre]

That would be like having two incompatible versions of HTML and having to choose your browser based on site.

Oh, you mean like it has been in the past, and sometimes is even now?

I use Firefox for most standards-based HTML sites, and IE for those sites which demand it

Differences in standards.

[headkase]

I think the difference between open and closed standards is simply the ability to easily migrate your data to a new standard with open standards. That's what Microsoft does not want.
Narf.

Re:Blah blah from MS

[Kookus]

We do...
Have you ever saved a word document as an html document in Microsoft Word?
I call that output mshtml!!!

ROFLMAO

[Spy der Mann]

Before: "Open standards harm competition"
After: "Two open standards are better than one".

C'mon, Steve, you can do better than that.

Re:ROFLMAO

[Spy der Mann]

Choosing between PRODUCTS is good.

Choosing between STANDARDS is not.

Microsoft 'believes'??

[erroneus]

I'm sorry, but where did they get that conclusion? If it was something stated by an official at Microsoft, can we somehow sue them for lying or something?

What is being said and what is being demonstrated are two completely different things. Do I need to go into detail able how ferociously they fight and undermine the use and deployment of non-proprietary software and data solutions? (Even to the point of having laws created and changed and having decision-making power shifted from experts to politicians?)

It is clear that they see competition in a very different way than most people. When most people think "competition" they think of people, products or services that do pretty much the same thing or having similar purpose where it is judged by popularity, functionality, capability or whatever the directly relevant quality of the competing objects are. Microsoft somehow sees competition as something much larger. They show through their behavior that they think competing involves undermining, undercutting, casting "fear, uncertainty and doubt" and changing the playing field to their advantage. If it can be considered competition, it's at the least unfair competition.

Microsoft's methods do not leave room for a surviving competitor. Their behavior most always seems to be targetted at the elimination of the "competition" in whatever means possible. I can think of no better opposing notion than someone suggesting that "Microsoft 'believes' two competing standards is a good thing." If this is an official statement by Microsoft, then it's nothing short of a LIE.

Nonsense is right.

[WindBourne]

The only competition was dos vs. Dr.Dos. And they had to cheat to win that.

It was PC vs. Apple, which means that Apple competed against all the PC manufacuers. As to the office stuff, MS gave away office forever until they had. It was all subsidized by MS's owning the DOS/Windows monopoly.

So, no, MS is not a competitive company.

Look what it's done for Linux...

[ninja_assault_kitten]

With 2340987239424 Linux distributions and no clearly defined direction. The 'good', 'innovative' developers are all scattered around working on their own thing. Imagine where Linux would be if they all came together an focused their attention on the same goals.

Obligitory Animal Farm quote.

[AltGrendel]

Some animals are more equal than others.

Grind, grind, grind

[FishandChips]

If you are Microsoft, what you have at stake are billions of dollars and your monopoly. Therefore Microsoft will do absolutely anything to protect both. They are a monopoly and this is what monopolies do.

I guess all the rest of us can do is plot our course - in this case OpenDocument - and stick to it through thick and thin.

Microsoft will contine to wriggle and bluster around this for months and months. It's part of the game. There's no point wasting any more energy on the subject. Microsoft would like nothing more than to exhaust people they will always regard as competition.

Re:Blah blah from MS

[PyroPunk]

While I admit the save as HTML option in Word produces some scary HTML, if you view it in a browser it looks just like the document you saved, with all the proper formatting and everything. Now, do the same thing in OpenOffice. The last time I tested it, I had a line of text that was left justified, a line of text that was centered, then a line of text that was right justified. I saved as HTML, viewied it in a browser, and everything was left justified. Didn't look anything like the document I saved.

offtopic? Surely you jest

[porkThreeWays]

offtopic? I guess some people need things spelled out for them. The above was a reference to Microsoft's blatent disregard of html standards. In effect, when we've got more than one standard out there, the above is the result.

You know the old saying...

[Crash Culligan]

"Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence?"

Lemme put it this way: this cannot be adequately explained by incompetence.

They're not simply missing the point, they're brushing it aside as they forge ahead with their own plans to convolute the "OpenDoc" information space. Then, when everyone's confused, they try to make theirs look as good and reliable as possible compared to that other, "lesser" standard to snatch what market share they can.

They get their all-important lock-in, government gets sold a bill of goods, and outsiders are screwed. Everybody (read: Microsoft) wins!

Let there be as many formats as you want...

[AnXa]

We are Microsoft. Resistance Is Futile. You Will Be Assimilated. (...after people have been forced to start using our format.)

Two Standards?

[theJML]

The last time I remember two standards really working out well was VHS and BetaMax... Oh wait, that didn't work out well did it.. We all ended up tossing our superior BetaMax decks for big, lower quality, VHS ones. Just think my pile of VHS tapes could have been so much smaller if Beta won... But I digress. Honestly, in the VHS vs BetaMax, they're both still in use (well, maybe not as wide spread as they were a few years ago), just some on the professional side of the fence and some on the home side. So is that going to happen for these two standards? I suppose time will tell.

Re:Blah blah from MS

[afd8856]

Yes, and content structure is more important then presentation.
Do not mix the presentation into the content.
Next time when you'll try integrating Word html into an existing website, "congratulate" Microsoft on making this task an easy one.

Read Groklaw's example of "recipe with marzipan"

[NoSuchGuy]

Here is this story.

It goes like this.
MS has a recipe with marzipan as an ingredient.
MS allows us to use this recipe for free.
But MS does not tell us what kind of marzipan is used for this specific recipe.

==> We are allowed to use this recipe but can not use this recipe because we don't have all the details about all ingredients.

OMG ...

[webmistressrachel]

... this looks a good case of "divide and conquer" to me!

Competition between standards is a very good thing

[mwvdlee]

Competition between standards we believe is a very good thing.
So is learning to admit defeat when beaten by a superior standard.
The race is already over and Microsoft is begging for a restart.

Pair of standards

[djupedal]

MS didn't mean 'two' standards, they meant 'double' standard.

You know, like when she forgets to do the laundry, it's ok, but when YOU forget, it's hell to pay.

That 'pair' of standards...same as they've done all along.

There Are Two Standards

[John Hasler]

"Microsoft says that the consumers should have the choice between multiple open standards for documents."

There are two standards already. ODF and PDF.

Re:There Are Two Standards

[DogDude]

There are two standards already. ODF and PDF.

+5 Funny. Seriously, I've never seen an ODF document, Open Office, nor do any of my customers or vendors use them. I'd say that you're wrong abuot ODF being a standard.

And as far as PDF goes, we don't allow PDF's in our business, yet we get along just fine. How do you explain that, exactly?

That standard for Office documents is MS Office. Saying otherwise doesn't make it true.

Re:There Are Two Standards

[arkanes]

I'd say that you're incompetent with a barely adequate command of the English language? That you're totally unfamliar with the concept of technical definitions and that you enjoy making provocative comments just so you can get a cheap thrill out of people pointing out how stupid you are? Maybe that your pissant pet store is not the sole defining authority on the office workflow and document formats?

Re:There Are Two Standards

[DogDude]

I don't have to justify myself to you, and I'm not about to get into some sort of dick measuring contest. Suffice to say that your cluelessness is absolutely overwhelming.

divide and expand

[towsonu2003]

We might not be able to beat one good format, but we can easily defeat two

They still manage to embrace extend and extinguish at the same time...

Can't believe noone has made this pun yet...

[ziggamon2.0]

... so I just have to do it...

Of course Microsoft wants two standards, after all - double standards has always been their thing!

Thank you... thank you... I'll be here all week....

Re:Read Groklaw's example of "recipe with marzipan

[Anonymous Coward]

For any flavor of Marzipan, just use a comparable amount of sand. Should taste about the same.

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[VitaminB52]

You're just upset because they're winning.

Most MS critics are not upset because MS is winning, but because MS is using unfair and illegal means in order to win.

People have chosen to use MS software and they have chosen to give MS a majority market share.

You mean: PC manufacturers have chosen to bundle Windows and Office on every system they sell, not giving a rebate to consumers who want a new PC without Windows+Office. Having Windows+Office preinstalled on every new system gave MS a majority market share.
Joe Average will reason that, having already paid for the pre-installed software, he is going to use that software instead of buying and installing alternative software - after all, the only software Joe Average installs on his PC is the software that get's automatically installed when you surf to the wrong websites with IE as your browser.

Please stop parroting the MS marketing speak; MS Office isn't running on most PC's because the consumers chose to use it, but because the PC manufactures preinstalled it.

Codebase is the real problem

[0xABADC0DA]

I have seen lots of posts saying it is some scheme for dividing and conquering, or creating more work for open source people, etc, but the real story is that the Office codebase is so convoluted and fragile that they need a document format that favorable to how Office works... friendly to its data structures and whatnot.

Basically the only innovation to Office in the last 4+ years has been in the UI, and I don't think that is an accident. An interface just issues commands to the document engine, so it's fairly simple to rework. But loading a new document format is much more closely tied to the actual engine. For example, if the structures are not defined the same way it may be necessary to create caches (hashtables say) of elements during loading. And also their code is designed around a format where a document is not written out completely, but is document with a set of changes (so that saves and timed backups are immediate without having to regen the whole doc).

So I think it is very likely that the real reason Microsoft is so adamant against the open formats is that they've talked to their engineers who have said it will take 5 years to fully support the new format (for ex, make backup saves happen in background so user isn't annoyed). Or they've got developers that have just said "f'that I'll f'ing leave before touching that crap".

Re:Codebase is the real problem

[I'm Don Giovanni]

I have seen lots of posts saying it is some scheme for dividing and conquering, or creating more work for open source people, etc, but the real story is that the Office codebase is so convoluted and fragile that they need a document format that favorable to how Office works... friendly to its data structures and whatnot.

Have you seen the Office code base? No? Then stop talking out of your ass. There's no reason to believe that Microsoft's code base is any more "convoluted" than OO.o's (which is derived from the years-old closed code of the old StarOffice).

Secondly, ODF is based on OO.o's previous format which is "friendly" to StarOffice's code structure. There's nothing *special* about OO.o other than the fact that a committee of self-appointed members declared it as a standard approved by OAISIS, a group nobody gives a damn about. ECMA and ISO haven't recognized ODF as a "standard" of any kind (I read somewhere that ODF was submitted to ECMA in October 2005, but has a long way to go before being ratified).

ODF is "friendly" to OO.o's code, and MS formats are friendly to MS code. There's nothing to say that one is superiour to the other. Anyone making a word processor not based on either of these code bases (WordPerfect, for example) would have to alter their code to adpot either format more than OO.o would alter its code for ODF (basically, minimal alteration since ODF is essentially OO.o's previous format) and mroe than MS would alter its code for MS formats.

BTW, MS formats provide for more functionality than ODF.
Also, ODF is geared towards the features in OO.o that OO.o cares about.
For example, MS formats allolw embedded OLE objects themselves to be represented as the XML format of their respective apps, while ODF represents OLE objects as binary blobs. Why? Because OO.o's OLE support sucks badly, so they didn't care too much about proper OLE support. There are many features in MS OFfice that OO.o doesn't support or does a half-ass job; these features are those not supported in ODF (or not supported well, at least).

Re:Codebase is the real problem

[0xABADC0DA]

Have you seen the Office code base? No? Then stop talking out of your ass. There's no reason to believe that Microsoft's code base is any more "convoluted" than OO.o's (which is derived from the years-old closed code of the old StarOffice).

Anatomy of a Software Bug:
        http://blogs.msdn.com/rick_schaut/archive/2004/05/ 19/135315.aspx

In short, two lines of code caused an error in Mac Word that preventing saving data entirely in some cases. It took them years to fix this bug even though not being able to save your data should be a pretty high priority fix.

The reason was "the overall complexity ofthe software". The author was talking about the number of features Word has, but he works for Microsoft (like he's actually going to say the code is a mess and risk getting fired?). In any case if you read on you'll see the description of their document format, and how there could be plenty of problems loading another format.

Re:Codebase is the real problem

[Cutterman]

Yes, I suspect that one reason why MS wants to keep it's own semi-open, semi-proprietary format is for backwards compatibility with it's own old documents. Okay, that's understandable and maybe not a bad idea though I appreciate that there may be other nastier reasons.

BUT I'm not asking to see MS's code, I'm not asking Ms to open it's durn format, I'm not asking MS to do anything much EXCEPT allow me to open, edit and save documents in ODF - that's all. And it would NOT be difficult for MS to add this ability.

I don't mind if trying to save a document previously created in a MS format in ODF generates a message saying "All of the features of this document may not be preserved if you save it in this format blah blah blah" (so long as I can turn off the warning).

I do wish MS would at least get THIS message

Re:Codebase is the real problem

[himagain]

Wow! That blog explains so much of the grief that Word has caused me over the years - e.g. numbered list have never worked from day 1, pasting from one doc to another frequently trashes the formatting (often irreparably), page numbering is often screwed and updating contents pages should only be done with plenty of Valium at hand.

It also explains why my colleagues can't edit a shared document if I've copied text from it, and why my filesystem is full of temporary files.

The problem is, as I've suspected for a long time, the fundamental "design". Complexity is built into the codebase - not, as the article suggests, because of the large number of functions available (like most users, I only use a tiny subset), but by the underlying data format virtually guaranteeing undesired interactions.

This brings us back to the headline topic. Get the document data structure right, and the code almost writes itself. Get it wrong, and you end up with kludge upon kludge.

From what I've seen (not much I must confess), the MS proposed alternative standard shows little respect for the writers' notion of the document structure, but virtually ensures your document will end up in pieces, stuck together into a structured file. In contrast, the OOo format inherently expresses the writers' structure.

Summary: this is a wheel invented by Microsoft. It's a square with the corners rounded off and curved bits added onto each edge to smooth out the bumps. It'll fall apart as soon as it's placed under stress. They'll fix it by adding more and more bracing so that it'll eventually work, but it'll never be pretty.

Groklaw article

[Jason69]

Groklaw has a good article http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200512150 14700305 on this story including the transcript of Alan Yates.

not everyone can have standards

[matt me]

i don't think slashdotters can have standards if they hope to get laid :p

Hate to say it-- but it's basically true!

[razorx100]

Although I am always happy to bash Micro$oft, the posisition of multiple open standards is a good concept in theory, but in practice it would end up as the status quo if not managed by disinterested third-parties. If no one other than M$ has maintained the source, and then things change significantly at M$ -- open standard or not people risk a serious lack of access. Personally, I have switched to OpenOffice because my business needs to be able to access document created today, 20+ years down the road. But what's to say there isn't a better standard WITHOUT a little competition??

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[RetroGeek]

Replying to a troll yet....

People have chosen to use MS software and they have chosen to give MS a majority market share. It could be argued that they chose wrong, but they still made the choice.

This is so wrong. People did NOT make a choice. The "choice" was foisted on them by MicroSoft's restrictive licencing rules, which basically said: "You sell a computer, you owe us a licencing fee". So if you bought a computer with OS/2 on it, MS got a Windows licencing fee (and a separate OS/2 imbedded Windows licencing fee, but that is another story). Buy a computer with NO operating system, and MS still got a fee. So hardware sellers did not want to put any other OS on the machine, as it cost them anyway.

This was evetually ruled illegal. But by then the damage had been done.

Then, for a while, MS included Word as a free option. So every new computer had MS Word installed. Hard to compete with "free and already installed". Which is why the European Union wanted a version of Windows without Windows Media player so that other competing formats would have a chance.

Ideally (hah!), you would order a computer much like you order a car. Start with the basic model (engine, wheels, etc), then add the air-conditioner, radio, seat warmers, power windows, each of which is an added cost.

So order a computer, then add your choice of the OS, and apps.

P.S. Yes, I know the car analogy breaks down, but hey, that is why it is an analogy....

Re:Blah blah from MS

[arkanes]

That is because in a lot of organizations the Legal and HR departmets are idiots who don't know anything about technology and won't listen to the people who do. You cannot guaranteee proper formatting with HTML, even with mshtml. If proper formatting is actually important to you you won't use HTML for that - you'll publish your documents as PDFs or similiar instead. People who write documents in Word, save them as HTML, and consider that "saving the formatting" because it looks right in IE don't actually care about saving formatting - they use it as an excuse for not doing things the right way.

I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop...

[RiotNrrd]

...and this seems to be it.

I remember being cautiously optomistic when they announced that Office 12 would be moving to an "open document format". Looks like they're attempting to flood the market with too much data.

Multiple standards good? Not

[guice]

I distinctly remember it being dubbed that multiple DVD standards would be BAD for the consumer. How is this going to be good for the consumer?

A man with 2 watches

[MountainMan101]

A man with one watch knows what time it is, a man with two doesn't have a clue.

Protect the Lock-In

[AeroIllini]

This seems like a pretty predictable move to me. Microsoft's entire Office business model is based on vendor lock in; word processors in general are starting to plateau, since they have reached a point where new features are giving diminishing returns. Other than opening legacy documents, there is no reason for companies to use MS Office over one of the alternatives, so Microsoft is counting on vendor lock-in to keep selling licenses. Office currently represents one quarter of Microsoft's total revenue, and they will do anything to protect that.

Once open standards are prevelant, MS Office will simply become one of many alternatives, and seen in that light it doesn't really stand out. To protect their status, Microsoft has to convince the PHBs that "open" means "clear text storage format"... and then they embrace, extend, extinguish.

The ray of hope in all this is moves like the Massachussetts state government made, where they specified that "open" means what we (at Slashdot) all know it really means: fully documented, standardized, cross-platform, and format-frozen. Then they required that document formats used by the state conform to true openness. Microsoft can rant, rave, market, convince, and press-release until they are blue in the face, but if their format is not truly open, MA won't use it. Period. We need more initiatives like that, especially from some of the larger companies. Then maybe Microsoft will be forced to compete in the word processor market on the basis of product quality, and not vendor lock in. I think Microsoft could write an office suite that really kicks some serious ass and does it all with truly open formats, but they would have to change their focus quite a bit, and their inertia is currently preventing them from doing that.

open OpenDocument documents

[trollable]

Well MS Office is still unable to open OpenDocument documents...
If they don't add quicly import/export features, MS Office will become irrelevant. Not because it is a bad product but because their users will be unable to open the documents they receive. Because companies/agencies are switching massively (from what I can see).

Re:open OpenDocument documents

[angrykeyboarder]

Honestly, I don't think Microsoft has anything to worry about. The overwhelming majority of documents an MS Office user will receive will not be in OpenDocument format.

That's part of the point of Microsoft choosing to ignore OpenDocument. They know they can get away with it.

It stinks, but they can get away with it and they know it.

Mars...

[St. Arbirix]

Wasn't crashing a probe into Mars proof enough that competing standards only introduces unforseen problems? I think some amusement park had a ride derail for pretty much the same stuff.

NASA Proved Two Standards are Bad

[codepunk]

One only has to look at NASA to see just how bad using two standards can be. NASA used two standards of measurement (english and metric), the result is a pile of parts strewn across the red planet.

Yes, and they even broken the "export" tool

[blueZ3]

For older versions of Word, there was a tool call "compact HTML export" that you could download from MS that resulted in "almost clean" HTML coming out of Word docs. No "mso" tags, no weird bullet styles, no tables used to present 'bulleted' lists. It was great for when someone passed you a Word file that they wanted put on a Web site (I manage a couple of non-profit sites).

Unfortunately, that tool now doesn't work as it once did. I used a newer version the other day, and still got about 100 lines of crud that needed to be cleaned out. DreamWeaver's "Clean up Word HTML" tool has also suffed some degradation, so I'm down to copying out the text and then reformatting it all by hand. Not a difficult task, but it eats up time.

It's the one screwed-up thing about Word that consistently makes me frustrated. I can live with the broken number tokens, the automatic reformatting, and the inability to handle log docs. But this just kills me.
\
At this point, I'm going to re-install OO and see if I can get better results.

Microsoft doing something....fair? Yeah right.

[TheDarkener]

Now sit back and ask yourself why Microsoft would want to create a second standard instead of embracing the one that already exists.

OSS People: "Oh wow, the MS open standard has THIS, maybe we'll start using that in OpenOffice.org..."

Microsoft: "Muhahaha!"

News for Nerds at 11: "Microsoft has just announced some proprietary new extentions to their open document format, which uses C# and .NET to show shiny widgets in your documents instead of the open standard way of doing it!"

OSS People: "Oh crap."

Brought to you by Faux News...

[benjamindees]

Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument

Written by Jim Prendergast, executive director of Americans for Technology Leadership. Microsoft Corporation is a founding member of ATL.

This article is filled with so much bullshit it's difficult to know where to begin rebutting it:

OpenDocument applications would have to be built from the ground up.

Pure FUD. Applications already exist that implement OpenDocument. In fact, OpenOffice is mentioned in the article right in the next paragraph! Anyways, adding a new file format or converter to an existing application is easy enough to be trivial.

Massachusetts may be aligning with what becomes a second-rate file format as Microsoft
keeps expanding into XML and metadata and OpenDocument may have trouble keeping up.

Yeah, we all know Microsoft are the ones "innovating" with XML and those who choose an open format will be left out of all the great new proprietary lock-ins that MS will come up with. Give me a break. Reality is, if Massachussets goes with an open format, other states will follow, and Microsoft will do their best job of implementing it poorly to try to kill it. Same... as... always... (yawn)

The policy promises enormous and unnecessary migration costs to Massachusetts' taxpayers.

Yes it does. And so do Microsoft's closed formats. The difference is, this cost is basically one-time. Those other costs are recurring and arbitrary.

Businesses, organizations and citizens who interact with the state will also be forced to support Massachusetts' mandated technologies.

And they already do. The difference is, this mandatory technology is open and can be implemented by anyone, for free. Microsoft's mandatory formats require you to use Microsoft products, on a Microsoft operating system, on a computer built by a Microsoft partner.

Government is not directly in the business of innovation, but it should support policies that drive innovation.

So, do paved roads stand in the way of innovation? Should government outsource that as well? Are we really expecting a growth of *innovative* new ways to exchange text?

The main advantage to using Microsoft products in an office environment is that, in large measure, these products provide very reliable interoperability and rich functionality. Since most of our users are not IT experts, such interoperability and functionality are critical to the day to day operation of our offices.... We are unaware of any organizations with which we exchange documents that use products such as OpenOffice or StarOffice.

Obviously, not IT experts. Sounds like they don't even have IT personnel. Not even halfway knowledgeable users. They don't realize that OpenOffice and others do an exceptional job of reading and writing Microsoft's reverse-engineered proprietary file formats. And they think sticking with those file formats is the way to foster "interoperability". Ah, well, I should expect nothing less from an article written by yet another Microsoft shill.

Double-standard Double-speak

[Sean0michael]

So Microsoft has done an about-face about OpenDocuments and such. But we all know what MS means by "open."

And what about the Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD battle? Would they say two standards are good? Since recent Slashdot news reported that Blu-Ray is winning, will we see the same push for double standards?

OK, but if it's kosher XML

[smittyoneeach]

How do you preclude an XSLT to un-frobnicate documents bearing the Redmond taint?

Re:OK, but if it's kosher XML

[the eric conspiracy]

MS XML Format: .... /binary?

Re:OK, but if it's kosher XML

[petermgreen]

define "kosher XML"

i could take a binary word document, base64 it add a few tags arround the outside and it would be perfectly valid XML. Can't do anything with it but retrive the original word doc though.

while i doubt ms will go as far as doing that to the whole document i bet there will be embedded objects in there which are just binary data encoded into something that can be used inside xml.

Re:OK, but if it's kosher XML

[smittyoneeach]

define "kosher XML"

That by which the market lets itself be flogged.

Re:UMMM???

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow... not very good at the whole reading comprehension thing, are you?

Maybe I can spell it out using nice, short little sentences for you.

1. User uses MS Word trial edition to view/edit documents.
2. MS Word trial edition expires.
3. User double-clicks on Word document, Word says "Piss off, I've expired".
4. User installs OpenOffice (and doesn't change any file associations).
5. User double-clicks on Word document, Word opens document and says "Yes, I would be happy to serve you. Don't forget to license me sometime!"

See, the interesting part comes from the change in Word's behaviour upon installing OpenOffice. That wasn't so hard, was it?

Not acceptable.

[electrosoccertux]

What you say is simply not acceptable. If we say we'll embrace MS as soon as they release their Open format, then they instantly have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Simple thought process for Microsoft: "Hm...seems like a win/win for us. We do everything we can to get people to accept our monopoly, and if they don't, we'll change, apologize, and then they'll accept us. Either way we win without a gamble."

Re:Not acceptable.

[Just Some Guy]

What you say is simply not acceptable. If we say we'll embrace MS as soon as they release their Open format, then they instantly have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

You guys are misreading what I said. I won't embrace Microsoft, but I'd be willing to consider their offerings based on their technical merits (or lack thereof).

Suppose that OfficeXML or whatever they're calling it was truly superior to OpenDocument, and available under a Free license with a non-expiring patent waiver. I don't see the inherent evil in adopting that as a standard, or even with OpenOffice migrating to it as their official format. Who cares if Word can also interact with it? Why would that be worse than MS giving Word a full-featured input/output filter for OpenDocument? In either case, both office suites would have the ability to read and write the same files and could compete in other areas like price, Freeness of source, features... Isn't that what fair competition is all about?

Not that I don't still believe this is all academic. Regardless of what some people think, until Microsoft coughs up that patent waiver, in my opinion it doesn't exist. Other people obviously take them at their word, or else we wouldn't have things like Mono, but that's a subject for a different day.

Re:Not acceptable.

[belmolis]

If Microsoft came up with a technically superior standard I would have no problem adopting it if it were truly open and unemcumbered, AT THE RIGHT TIME. The problem with what they're doing now, beyond the fact that they still don't seem to be ready to go with a truly open standard, is that they're late to the game. Competition among standards is fine at an early stage, but after some evolution and refinement, when the desirability of a true Standard becomes apparent, we want to settle on a single standard. At that point a negotiation takes place. It may result in one of the existing standards being chosen or it may result in the development of a hybrid of some sort. That process has already taken place. Until now, Microsoft wasn't interested. Only now that they realize that there is a real movement toward an open standard and that their lock-in strategy is in trouble are they interested in playing ball. Its too late.

In any case, as far as I can see there is no technical advantage to Microsoft's proposal.

It's actually called "Office Open XML"

[fritsd]

Really! Office Open XML! ("MOOX") I wonder how Microsoft came up with that name? :-)

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/nov0 5/11-21EcmaPR.mspx

Two standards are always better, one is ignored.

[CFD339]

There must be at least two standards, and they must be at "WAR" all the time. What will the industry press write about otherwise?

There once was a lawyer who moved to a small town in Vermont. As there were no other lawyers in town, he assumed he'd make a fortune. Nobody called. Finally, he convinced a friend from law school to open another law firm in town. They've been busy ever since.

Competition between standards: good?!?

[egarland]

Take for example Betamax vs VHS. That was very good thing. Oh wait, no, the other thing. A major catastorphy. It caused consumers tons of pain, cost everyone tons of money and set the industry back years.

Competition is good. Standards are good. Competition between standards: very bad.

"And we go round and round and round in the circle game."

Missing from the article quote

[alexborges]

'Competition between standards we believe is a very good thing.' .... For us....

Microsoft's definition of "open"

[AirDave]

When a vendor (Microsoft in this case) says "Open" what they mean is "Open your wallet if you want to use our format".

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[Anonymous Coward]

Most machines come with Works, not Office - you usually have to get office yourself.

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[DrinkDr.Pepper]

Dell sells systems with WordPerfect.

So they think competition is good?

[scruffylooking]

So why do they try so hard to stamp it out in every market they enter?

Re:So they think competition is good?

[SmurfButcher Bob]

More to the point, why was their format "Closed" before MA walked?

Re:So they think competition is good?

[scruffylooking]

Exactly!

Another F/OSS vs. MS battle

[recharged95]

Basically, the only problem with opening formats is time. Office is really Microsoft's flagship product. people actually respect it. Their OS is just a crappy vehicle to Office considering the number of versions (95/95/Me/NT/2K/XP/blah blah) and the problems that each version currently have.

At this point, either Microsoft is betting their Office team can "out do" the F/OSS community such as Oo or this is all vaporware. If they play fair with their "open" format, then this could be a race about who turns out a better product: F/OSS or corporations... Basically this could be a test if FOSS can live up to the promise of quick feature turn around and reliable s/w (time). If the F/OSS can't take advantage of the open formats with robust, reliable apps, then Office wins.

If I were Microsoft and wanted to compete in the F/OSS world, Office would be a good weapon to use against the competition. Who would you bet on (Office, Oo, WP)? The problem I have with my theory: Is Microsoft willing to compete or just play the system as usual?

The case for Microsoft

[J.R. Random]

Microsoft is right. That's why we're so much better off with half the computer users using ASCII and the other half using EBCDIC. Think of the stagnation that would have happened if everyone had settled on ASCII.

I've corrected Mr. Yates statement

[RouterSlayer]

I've made the corrections for you-

Microsoft's Yates said that OpenDocument and Open XML come from very different marketing objectives. 'In the future at some point there will be convergence to Microsofts products,' he said. In the near term, the transition period from actual open standards document formats to Microsoft proprietary Open XML-based ones will be 'messy and complex,' he added. 'Competition between standards we believe is a very good thing, as long as Microsoft ends up owning them and getting the royalties.'"

competition

[SebNukem]

"Competition between two standards we believe is a very good thing"

What a ridiculous statement.

If there are multiple standards then there is no standard by definition.

Competition between products using a common standard is a good thing.

Unintended side effects for Microsoft

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Microsoft "opening" their XML format has an unintended side effect. Sure, they may end up winning the purchasing agreement for office software for the Massachussetts state government ... but by opening the format, they've also opened the door to allowing the OpenOffice.org software to read/write Microsoft's format -- legally. This will allow the free world to continue using OpenOffice.org in a Microsoft-centric world.

Re:Unintended side effects for Microsoft

[NutscrapeSucks]

Jeez, give MS some credit ... Obviously after 20 years of obscuring their file formats, they had to realize that an open spec would improve other suites' interoperability with MS Office.

The bottom line is that OpenOffice is a pretty irrelvant competitor, when compared to older versions of MS Office that work just fine.

Re:Two standards are always better, one is ignored

[narcc]

We are at war with Open XML. We have always been at war with Open XML and allied with OpenDocument... Winston Smith knows this...

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[bjk002]

I'm no big fan of M$.

However, I think in the argument of M$ Office vs. Open Office (I've used both), M$ Office is clearly the superior product. Easier to use, let system resources, etc...

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[ZSO]

Please stop parroting the MS marketing speak; MS Office isn't running on most PC's because the consumers chose to use it, but because the PC manufactures preinstalled it.

This still leaves open the question of why PC makers preinstall their software and none others. Clue: it's not because the MS Mafia forced them to.

Re:UMMM???

[crabpeople]

"Wow... not very good at the whole reading comprehension thing, are you?"

Well i guess im not either because the grandparent wrote the following:

I try to open an MS document now it does open using Word except it does ask me to license the product

so in actuality, you ( i assume you are the GP because you posted as an AC and you rabidly defended the GP from a valid complaint ) cannot write proper sentences. That sentence clearly says that it DID ask you to license the product. Who knows if you really meant does NOT instead of does? you do maybe but thats not what you wrote.

When a user installs open office with msword on the same system, very frequently MSword will steal all the file associations back. the parent and I both guessed, based on the literal words you used, that that is what was happening. How was anyone to know you actually meant the exact opposite. magic?

There are already multipler 'standards' available

[I'm Don Giovanni]

There are already multiple 'standards' available for document representation. I don't know if they've been recognized by standards bodies, but there are defacto 'standards' like RTF, that everyone supports (despite it being a format created by, *gasp*, Microsoft). It's funny to see OSS fanboys scared to compete after all their huff and puff about competing on merits. Rather, you want *government* to declare ODF to be the one true standard. Wait, I went too far; I forgot that you guys support *governent* giving its blessing to PDF, a 'standard' controlled by a single entity Adobe (only an outdated subset of PDF has been recognized by ECMA). LOL The irony and hypocrisy is delicious. Let ODF compete and succeed or fail based on its merits rather than winning by government fiat.

Let's cut to the chase. OO.o couldn't compete with MS Office based on merit, so it changed the rules of the game by declaring its format as a 'standard' and saying, "You should use us because although we lack MS Office's functionality, ease of use, speed, and relatively small memory footprint (OO.o is a slow pig), our format is a standard!!" And they even got Mass to go along with using 2nd rate software for the sake of a standard format, which delighted you guys to no end. But hold on, Microsoft does something that you never dreamed that they would do (and secretly feared that they would do); MS makes its own format a standard, and we go back to OO.o having to compete on merit again. This is why you guys are pissed off.

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[Lifewish]

Yes it is. They all have agreements with Microsoft which means they lose discounts if they sell systems without Windows on.

You would not believe how hard it is these days to get a laptop without an operating system preinstalled. There are precisely two companies doing this in the whole of the UK, compared to several hundred (rough estimate) laptop+windows vendors/resellers.

ODF Introduction flawed

[hackwrench]

In the Mixed content model section, it gives a hyperlink example in which the Microsoft example doesn't show the reference http://example.com/ so it isn't equivalent to the ODF example.

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[mikefe]

MS Office isn't running on most PC's because the consumers chose to use it, but because the PC manufactures preinstalled it.

Bullshit.

Every time I do an install at an office, they want word and excel. When alternatives are suggested, they flat out refuse them.

OOo needs to use less memory, and processor to get its job done. That and some marketing (which they're working on) might do it. The problem now is mindshare. MS has it, and OOo doesn't at the moment.

Let's fix that.

Anti-dual-boot pricing

[tepples]

This still leaves open the question of why PC makers preinstall their software and none others. Clue: it's not because the MS Mafia forced them to.

O rly? I've read tales of OEMs getting deep discounts if they install only Windows but having to pay nearly full retail if they partition the hard drive and install Windows and GNU/Linux. This would seem to become even more important as the cost of PC hardware falls and the Windows license becomes a greater proportion of the cost of goods.

Independent or joint competition?

[Jadrano]

I don't necessarily think competition between standards is always bad. In this case, most independent experts agree that ODF is better. But if people at Microsoft aren't sure about that, they could create a new version of MS Office that supports both ODF and their own format. That way, there would be two independent competitions, one between standard formats and one between different software. However, Microsoft wants joint competition rather than independent one - hoping that their large market share will also help their standard.
Anyway, other Office suites will support both ODF and Microsoft's format, so those who will really want to try out different standard formats and let them compete in personal use will have to choose non-Microsoft office software.

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[ZSO]

This is in response to tepples too, since he also argues about the discounts.

Sir, offering discounts to manufacturers who install Windows exclusively is emphatically not mafia-like activity. I'm sure you also believe Walmart's enticingly low prices "forces" people to go there instead of their mom-n-pop stores.

I am apalled that anti-Microsoft sentiment has led people to these extremes. This is normal business activity, and it happens everywhere. Manufacturers can turn down the discount deal if they want - the fact that they don't simply means they *gasp* want to make money.

Microsoft misses the point... or do they?

[Eric Damron]

The point of a standard is to allow multiple entities to develop software in a way that will be compatible with other developer's implementation of that standard. If you have too many standards then nothing is really standard.

It is a good idea to encourage competing products that use a common standard. It is NOT so good to encourage competing standards. Microsoft knows this full well. Like most of what Microsoft say and do they feel they can leverage some unfair advantage. Gee what could it be? The undocumented extensions that they plan maybe? Legal obstacles that block open source from implementing their standard?

With Microsoft's past record of dirty tricks we would be fools not to ask such questions.

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Is this what they call "begging the question"? One person says that MS didn't win fairly because they never played fairly (legally) and so have never been competitive. You suggest that since they won, the market chose them (implying they won via fair competition), then use the assumed win at a fair competition to prove that they are competitive. The fact is that they won, yes. Another fact is they were convicted for their actions. You can scream that "people chose MS" all you want to, those of us who've been tracking the industry since before there was a MS no better.

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[ichin4]

For manufacturers and users, there are real advantages to dealing with fewer suppliers. Because of that, if you want your office suite to be adopted, it can't be just marginally better than Microsoft's. It has to be phenomenally better. While that might feel "unfair" to you, it derives from the real, practical needs of manufacturers and users, and it certainly isn't "illegal".

As long as the standards are XML-based, it is OK

[drgroove]

As long as the standards are XML-based, it is OK to have multiple standards. You can always use XSLT to transform one format to another.

Just look at the competing XML standards between Oasis and Acord in the insurance industry, for example. Both are valid, useable standards - one or the other happens to be more appropriate for various purposes. If you end up in a situation where you need to translate Oasis to Acord or vice-versa, just use XSLT.

The same concept should hold true for open document standards for office productivity suites as well, or for any open document format for that matter. As long as it is in XML, there should be no real issue. Besides, competition spurs innovation - that's a simple hallmark of the American capitalist system.

Attribution

[swillden]

standards are great, there are so many to choose from.

If you're going to paraphrase someone, you might as well get it right and provide attribution. It was Andrew Tanenbaum who said "The good thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from."

Re:Attribution

[swillden]

Oops. Here I am talking about getting it right, and then I mess it up.

s/good/nice/

what about tcp ip

[sniggly]

'Competition between standards we believe is a very good thing.'

im glad they werent about when tcp/ip was invented... the russians had a different width between rail tracks so that the germans couldnt easily use their rail system in case they would invade. That's the purpose behind having different standards, it's to make sure someone elses stuff cant work with your infrastructure and derail you..

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[swillden]

Sir, offering discounts to manufacturers who install Windows exclusively is emphatically not mafia-like activity.

Nope, it's a normal business practice.

However, monopolists are barred from many normal business practices, for good reason. This is one that Microsoft should not be allowed.

Re:UMMM???

[drew]

Try reading the same sentence again, and emphasizing a different portion of the sentence.

I try to open an MS document now it does open using Word except it does ask me to license the product.

When compared to the previous sentence:
I used Word until the trial period expired then when I could no longer open documents...
we see that the interesting part here was the change in behavior from not opening documents to opening documents. It does still ask him to license the product (which it probably did during the trial phase as well) but that is not really the interesting part- because we know it hasn't ever been registered, the fact that it would ask shouldn't be very surprising.

Not buying it

[ShimmyShimmy]

Yeah, that's right Microsoft. Consumers ashould have the right to choose between .xls and .xlt to save their spreadsheet.

Re:MS is coercing, not competing

[meosborne]

Yeah, Microsoft is big on allowing users to actually make a choice. That is why, when I went to purchase computers for our company and simply wanted the Windows licenses not to be tied to the machine I was told that *Microsoft* wouldn't allow it.

Microsoft also wouldn't allow our vendor to sell us machines without windows at all. We were told that we could purchase Windows *again* to get what we wanted. Rediculous.

Who cares what the customer wants, it's what Microsoft wants that matters.

About the same time this happened it was revealed that Microsoft was giving "rewards" to vendors who reported on customers who asked for naked machines. It's amazing that Microsoft felt that they had some right to know about a transaction from which they were explicitly excluded.

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[ZSO]

What ever happened to equality under the law? You're suggesting that once a company becomes too big (i.e., too successful), they must have special restrictions placed on them. In other words, equality of results. Not exactly a successful (or particularly moral) idea when implemented, as history should indicate.

$125 million cost of competing standards

[zufar]

"Competition between two standards we believe is a very good thing"

The Mars Climate Orbiter was lost at the Red Planet on Sept. 23,1999 because of a mistake by engineers who delivered navigation information in English rather than metric units, according to a mission failure investigation report released.

http://www.space.com/news/mco_report-b_991110.html

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[swillden]

You're suggesting that once a company becomes too big (i.e., too successful), they must have special restrictions placed on them.

You bet. To do otherwise undermines the competition that is essential to a healthy marketplace.

Not exactly a successful (or particularly moral) idea when implemented, as history should indicate.

Right. Standard Oil was great, wasn't it? You need to study the history of anti-trust law, and the abuses that made clear its necessity.

Competition between Standards, an Oxymoron

[Kamiza Ikioi]

'Competition between standards we believe is a very good thing.'

Now I know MS is on crack. The whole point of a standard is that it is standard. MS even helped develop the standard they plan on competing with. Now, they've embraced and extended it, and hope to "converge" their proprietary licensing on top of it. No, competition between standards is a very bad thing. The VHS Beta-max wars didn't result in any great euphoria of enlightenment upon the VHS standard. That's like saying that Compact Disks somehow benefited from competition from Cassette Tapes. Its the same with the BluRay/HD-DVD fight that is about to ensue. It's not beneficial to anyone that this happens. All it will do is put more money in the pocket of the winner, because the consumer who initially chose the loser will have to go out and repurchase everything they bought in the new format.

No, there is little or no benefit here. An open standard can always be improved upon. Competing against a proprietary standard only muddies the water. This is much like MS creating their own proprietary web standards. Are those also "very beneficial"? Are we all reaping the rewards of divergent standards? If divergent standards are so beneficial, then the whole idea of "standards" are then, what... not beneficial?

Someone help me understand this, because every time MS talks about OpenDocument, it sounds like they are either A) talking completely out of their ass, and are having the marketing guys (who couldn't tell a TCP from an IP) make these decisions, or B) flat out lying to the non-tech public about what this debate really is about. And what it really is about is that going to OpenDocument, which is fully supportable in MS Office if they want it to be, is one VERY large step towards putting MS Office out the way Firefox put out IE, and that they are willing to do anything to prevent that from happening, even if it means forking an open standard with a proprietary one, muddying the waters, FUD, and preventing governments from doing whats best for its citizens.

Ever wish you could have been that guy that threw the cream pie in Gate's face?

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[lachlan76]

I'm sure you also believe Walmart's enticingly low prices "forces" people to go there instead of their mom-n-pop stores.

What if going to the mom-n-pop stores automatically doubled the price of things you bought at Walmart?

translation

[smash]

2 open document standards better than one for us

smash.

In Other News....

[rm69990]

'Competition between standards we believe is a very good thing.'

Hell Freezes Over

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[ZSO]

You bet. To do otherwise undermines the competition that is essential to a healthy marketplace.

How do you define a healthy marketplace? One where success is punished? That seems quite the opposite of healthy.

Right. Standard Oil was great, wasn't it?

Yes, it was. Rockefeller lowered the price of oil dramatically - nobody disputes this.

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[ZSO]

I have no idea what you are talking about or what your point is.

design

[Tom]

OpenDocument and Open XML come from very different design points.

Absolutely! One was designed to be an open document format useful to both users and developers, and the other was designed to embrace&extend the idea and create a fake impression of being open while keeping the customer solidly tied to one product.

Losing

[Tom]

M$ is losing this battle and knows it. You can see that from the comment. Why? Because only he who knows he is at #2 says "hey, why not have two winners?".

Remember Mars...

[mathfeel]

Remember when the confusion between SI and English unit cause a crash? I hope NASA won't contract their work to some company that use a different standard...

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[swillden]

How do you define a healthy marketplace?

One where competition exists and no single player can unilaterally dictate prices.

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[ZSO]

One where competition exists and no single player can unilaterally dictate prices.

The idea that a company with large market share can "dictate" prices is a myth. As already noted, Standard Oil lowered prices, not raised. Even with 100% marketshare, companies still haven't escaped free market forces. If Microsoft raises its prices artificially - say, to $100 million per license - new competitors will rise to take advantage of the situation.

Microsoft, for the most part, isn't competing against existing competitors, but against the possibility of competition.

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[swillden]

The idea that a company with large market share can "dictate" prices is a myth. As already noted, Standard Oil lowered prices, not raised.

Standard Oil lowered prices in the effort to build the monopoly, forcing competitors out of business. Even before they were officially broken up, public concern caused them to avoid raising prices (to avoid being broken up, which happened anyway), but if it weren't for that possibility, there's no telling what they may have raised prices to, particularly as demand was set to skyrocket in a few years when the internal combustion engine became popular. As it was, although they didn't raise consumer prices, Standard Oil did dictate prices on both the supplier side and the consumer side. They *chose* to squeeze their profits out of the suppliers, in order to minimize public backlash, but had they not feared government intervention, there's no reason they couldn't have squeezed it out of consumers as well.

If Microsoft raises its prices artificially - say, to $100 million per license - new competitors will rise to take advantage of the situation.

Microsoft's prices are already artificially high. Microsoft Office costs $400. Given that all R&D expenses on the product were recouped long ago, a healthy market would have pushed prices to a fraction of that. StarOffice pricing is more in line with where office suite prices should be.

Microsoft, for the most part, isn't competing against existing competitors, but against the possibility of competition.

Precisely the problem. They have such a thorough control of the market that they not only don't have competitors, they can act to ensure that competition is not even possible.

You really consider that a good situation?

one or two, but please do chose

[TLouden]

one OS and one document format or two of each. or would you like to have your cake and eat it too.

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[ZSO]

Standard Oil lowered prices in the effort to build the monopoly, forcing competitors out of business. Even before they were officially broken up, public concern caused them to avoid raising prices (to avoid being broken up, which happened anyway), but if it weren't for that possibility, there's no telling what they may have raised prices to, particularly as demand was set to skyrocket in a few years when the internal combustion engine became popular.

Where's your evidence for this? The facts only suggest that they lowered prices. All this talk about motivations is compelete conjecture.

Microsoft's prices are already artificially high. Microsoft Office costs $400. Given that all R&D expenses on the product were recouped long ago, a healthy market would have pushed prices to a fraction of that. StarOffice pricing is more in line with where office suite prices should be.

Wouldn't you find it arrogant if other people told you how to run your business? How much money to charge? I don't have the insider knowledge about what total costs MS has, nor do I pretend to.

You really consider that a good situation?

The possibility of competition is what keeps them going. Otherwise, they would have done exactly what the slippery slope of your theory suggests they would do - they would charge $100 million per license. Why not? After all, monopolies can "dictate" whatever price they want.

Not exactly

[CarpetShark]

Well, PAL is a standard in some countries, whereas NTSC is a standard in others. They're competing standards, but not in the SAME place.

At BEST, allowing people to choose between ODF and MSXML will lead to division and confusion and incompatibility within Mass. ITD, which is exactly what Quinn wanted a standard to solve. So, it defeats the purpose in the best case scenario. In the worst case scenario, however, you have an inferior format and all the vendor-lockin that goes with it chosen over the CLEARLY superior ODF format.

Also, you have MS manipulating governments to make it happen, when the (original) powers that were clearly favored the superior format and understood WHY they favored it.

There is absolutely nothing good about this, except for Microsoft. I don't know if this is a final decision, but if it is, then corporations have won over the citizens they're supposed to exist for yet again.

The nice thing about standard...

[Per Abrahamsen]

... is that there are so many to choose from.
    -- Andrew S. Tannenbaumaum

The sad thing is that when Andy first wrote this, everybody understood that it was a joke.

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[Lifewish]

Equality under the law (as applied to companies, at least) is a means to an end. That end is a healthy marketplace - in the majority of cases, discrimination does no-one any good in the long term. By contrast, in the case of de jure or de facto monopolies (since its investment in patents began, MS is both), discrimination is absolutely necessary to give other companies even the slightest chance.

This goes double since the computer industry, like many others, is naturally inclined to monopoly. There would be no such worry in, say, the vacuum cleaner market, but traps such as proprietary file formats and protocols make entry into the market inordinately difficult for newcomers. In this case, Microsoft is leveraging that natural blockage - it makes it absolutely essential to computer vendors that they be able to install Windows on computers, and Microsoft can use that to deny them the ability to also install other operating systems. This does no-one other than Microsoft any good, and in fact massively harms the IT industry by allowing Microsoft to systematically obliterate their competition.

History shows quite strongly that market breakdown must be compensated for by government. This is a textbook example of that situation.

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[swillden]

Where's your evidence for this? The facts only suggest that they lowered prices. All this talk about motivations is compelete conjecture.

You need to look at more than just a high-level summary of the history, including the actions Standard Oil took long before being broken up. Arguably, their fear of being broken up by the government was sufficient that they really didn't need to be broken up in fact.

Wouldn't you find it arrogant if other people told you how to run your business? How much money to charge?

The government tells all businesses how to run their business. Monopolies just get a little more oversight.

I don't have the insider knowledge about what total costs MS has, nor do I pretend to.

Who needs insider knowledge? Microsoft is a public company; you can read the SEC reports. Do you consider the federal government's requirement that public companies publish such detailed reports another arrogant interference?

The possibility of competition is what keeps them going. Otherwise, they would have done exactly what the slippery slope of your theory suggests they would do - they would charge $100 million per license. Why not? After all, monopolies can "dictate" whatever price they want.

I ignored this bit of ludicrousness previously, but since you repeat it, I'll address it. Even monopolies can't push past the limits of consumer price elasticity, so silliness like "$100 million per license" is just useless hyperbole. In case you've never studied economics, a rough definition of elasticity is the maximum price that consumers will pay for a given good. At $100M per seat, businesses would never buy Office, even if no alternatives existed or could be created -- they'd go back to typewriters and hand-written ledgers first.

In a healthy, competitive market, on the other hand, prices tend to drop to an equilibrium point with minimal profit margins... basically, everyone charges as little as possible such that they're still making an acceptable profit. Such an outcome is ideal for the economy as a whole, because it frees up capital to spend on other goods and services.

Looking at Microsoft in particular, MS is currently netting profit margins in excess of 30% while operating primarily in what should be commodity markets. And that 30% profit margin would actually be much, much higher if MS weren't a fairly wasteful, inefficient company. In a healthy market, MS would be forced to trim the corporate fat and drop prices across the board by 40-50%. MS Office pricing would probably have to drop by 80+%.

Obviously, Microsoft is deathly afraid of a healthy, competitive market. They have managed to shake off the governmental rules that should have reigned them in, so now we just have to hope that the peculiar dynamics of the software market can do the job. Luckily, software is unusual in that the marginal cost of production is zero, and in that development can be decentralized so that there's no single target for Microsoft to strongarm, or buy out. Even still, MS has such a stranglehold on the market that it's going to take a great deal of outrage and discipline on the part of large purchasers of IT (like governments) to force MS to adopt an open standard. Once that happens, competition will be reintroduced in the office suite space, which hopefully will enable competition in the desktop operating system space, which will highlight Microsoft's stranglehold on the OS distribution channels.

At that point, Microsoft will probably have to back down on the OEM license agreements. The DoJ suit already forced them to clean up their act to some extent, and if it becomes obvious that MS monopoly power is the only thing keeping Windows on 95% of the desktops, Microsoft will have to back down to avoid being slapped down. Much like Standard Oil, in that case the monopoly's fear of being broken up will do the job, even without the breakup.

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[Lifewish]

Wouldn't you find it arrogant if other people told you how to run your business?

That's what government does all day, every day. That's the point of government. They told Enron how to run its business (or, rather, how not to run its business). In the UK, they're telling the telcos (classic monopoly here) how to run their business vis-a-vis local loop unbundling. They keep telling me that the running of my business should include giving them tax. I don't really see any conceptual problem with them telling Microsoft that, since they're top dog, they're no longer allowed to play silly buggers.

The possibility of competition is what keeps them going. Otherwise, they would have done exactly what the slippery slope of your theory suggests they would do - they would charge $100 million per license. Why not? After all, monopolies can "dictate" whatever price they want.

If Microsoft controls the formats that the majority of electronic data is stored in, there is no possibility of competition - the loss of access to their own documents would destroy businesses if they tried to switch. This reduces the elasticity of demand (if I recall correctly from my GCSE Economics class), which allows them to bump up prices and/or provide less quality*. It doesn't allow them to go to the $100 million per license mark because the market won't bear that (and it's frankly a rather silly suggestion), but it does allow them to go many times above the "natural price" of the product, and to invest less in the quality of the product, with minimal repercussions. This does no-one but Microsoft any good.

* For example, IE 7 is finally coming out, and has cool new (to Microsoft anyway) features, now that they have Firefox to compete with.

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[ZSO]

You need to look at more than just a high-level summary of the history, including the actions Standard Oil took long before being broken up.

You missed my point: "there's no telling what they may have raised prices to" is complete speculation. No responsible historical summary can provide evidence for this.

Who needs insider knowledge? Microsoft is a public company; you can read the SEC reports.

I meant that I don't pretend to have the expertise to know fully how MS gets from making a product to putting a price tag on it.

In case you've never studied economics, a rough definition of elasticity is the maximum price that consumers will pay for a given good.

Which consumers? I'm sure MS could find a few (very few) rich consumers who would pay $1000 for a license. The point is that they are not maximizing their sales. As you mentioned, the ideal price point is at the equilibrium point when the supply curve crosses the demand curve. Putting the price anywhere else either hurts your sales because you're not making enough per sale, or hurts your sales because you're not getting enough customers.

...and if it becomes obvious that MS monopoly power is the only thing keeping Windows on 95% of the desktops,

Well, there's also that pesky fact that no other operating system company provides anything close to the developer support of Microsoft. Show me anything comparable to MSDN, please. I would actually agree that Windows is ugly, poor performing, and not fun to work with, but that's not what matters in the market - courting developers is what matters. Apple doesn't do it, Linux certainly doesn't do it.

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[ZSO]

That's what government does all day, every day. That's the point of government.

The point of government is to run businesses? Not to kill terrorists or jail murderers and pedophiles? Times are a changin'.

It doesn't allow them to go to the $100 million per license mark because the market won't bear that (and it's frankly a rather silly suggestion), but it does allow them to go many times above the "natural price" of the product, and to invest less in the quality of the product, with minimal repercussions.

Of course it's silly, but it was suggested that monopolies can "dictate" prices. Not very good word usage.

* For example, IE 7 is finally coming out, and has cool new (to Microsoft anyway) features, now that they have Firefox to compete with.

IE does suck. I'm using Firefox right now.

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[ZSO]

Equality under the law (as applied to companies, at least) is a means to an end. That end is a healthy marketplace - in the majority of cases, discrimination does no-one any good in the long term.

This is a very awkward view. Are you saying the fight for civil rights wasn't about moral principle, but economic expediency? The idea that equality under the law is a "means to an end" is the exact opposite of the view of our Founding Fathers that rights are inalienable (i.e., they're not convenient ways to ensure a healthy marketplace, they are held by all peaceful people under all circumstances as a matter of principle).

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[ZSO]

So the standard here is: If you make an offer to a company that they cannot refuse else they go out of business, the offer is coercive. Can you imagine how many business deals today are coercive by this definition?

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[swillden]

Your lack of understanding of this entire space is so complete that I can't discuss it without educating you first, and I don't have the time. I have code to write. As such, I'll allow you the last word. Feel free to tell me I'm copping out.

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[Lifewish]

Are you saying that companies should be treated as people when it comes to morality? The whole point of treating corporations as people in the first place was (iirc) economic - I'd say the same applies to our means of legal control over them.

Anyway, a similar principle applies with human beings. If someone has power, we try to ensure that it's balanced. Police and other public servants have oversight committees. Presidents can be impeached. Abusive parents get their kids taken away. None of this applies to people who aren't police, presidents or parents but, once they put themselves into a position where the balance of power is heavily weighted towards them, a counterweight is essential.

The situation is exactly the same with Microsoft. It has exceptional power over the industry, so it's perfectly reasonable to impose exceptional limits on its behaviour to ensure that it can't abuse that power. If it can't maintain its dominant position subject to those controls then competition will flourish and we won't have to apply those controls any more. Everyone wins but Microsoft. If it can maintain its dominant position then we'll know it really deserves to be there - it must be innovative, efficient and all that good stuff. Everyone wins, including Microsoft.

Re:MS is competing... and winning...

[Lifewish]

The point of government is to run businesses? Not to kill terrorists or jail murderers and pedophiles? Times are a changin'.

Well, more generally (and depending on which philosopher you speak to), the point of government is to supply goods with high positive externalities (justice, defence, streetlights, all that jazz). It's generally accepted, I believe, that this incorporates a degree of control over businesses acting within its jurisdiction

Of course it's silly, but it was suggested that monopolies can "dictate" prices. Not very good word usage.

You're quite right. Does appending "to a far greater extent than usual" to the end of it improve matters?

IE does suck. I'm using Firefox right now.

How would you react if Microsoft pulled a DR-DOS - "broke" their software specifically so that Firefox wouldn't work? Would you consider it their right as a corporation to do so? I don't believe that there's any necessity for a company to allow others to interoperate with their products. Unless, that is, the company is a monopoly - but I believe you've just been arguing against laws that treat monopolies any more harshly than other companies. Goodbye Firefox...

What versions?

[SgtChaireBourne]

Igot a new laptop and it had MS works installed. I used Word until the trial period expired then when I could no longer open documents I downloaded OpenOffice. Lo and behold when I try to open an MS document now it does open using Word except it does ask me to license the product.

Which versions of McWerks/ McWerd / McWindoze? If what you have observed can be duplicated by others, there will be big news.