Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Wins Industry Standard Status for Office
everphilski writes "The International Herald-Tribune reports that Microsoft has won industry standard status for Office. EMCA International, a group of hardware and software makers based in Geneva, approved the MS file formats with only one dissenting vote - IBM. IBM backs the OpenDocument standard, which was approved by the ISO in May of this year." From the article: "Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president for open source and standards, called Microsoft's Office formats technically unwieldy - requiring software developers to absorb 6,000 pages of specifications, compared with 700 pages for OpenDocument. 'The practical effect is the only people who are going to be in a position to implement Microsoft's specifications are Microsoft,' Sutor said."
As long as by "industry standard" you mean buggy, bloated, insecure, unreliable, overpriced, nonintuitive, clunky piece of dog shit. Am I right, or am I right?
Wow, 6,000 pages to describe an "open" format? Never underestimate the power of committees.
Sutor, IBM's dissenting voter says: "The practical effect is the only people who are going to be in a position to implement Microsoft's specifications are Microsoft." This in the context that the OpenDocument (competing) standard is only 700 pages. Seems like both must be quite verbose, but I'd opt for mastering 700 pages.
6,000 is a lot of pages to master, but it should be freely available for others to interpret, correct? On the other hand, since it is "essence of Microsoft", there's probably lots to misstep with and lots to nuance for interpretation letting Microsoft essentially maintain a proprietary flavor of a supposedly open standard.
Also of note from the article:
Van den Beld might be an idiot. Using his logic we should strike Microsoft Windows XXXXX as the standard for OSes, not.Hopefully there is still some inertia for the OpenDocument (yes, I know it's an ISO Standard) standard to gain purchase and compete. It is largely the emergence and work done with OpenDocument that has pushed Microsoft into the uncomfortable arena of pretending to like open standards.
Does EMCA standardize anything other than MS apps? Before MS started using them, I'd never heard of them. My guess is its a mouthpiece for large companies who want a body to declare them a standard. At this point I'm ignoring anything from them- if you want to call it a stadard I want to see ANSI, ISO, IEEE, or IETF on it.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
IBM's vice president for open source and standards, called Microsoft's Office formats technically unwieldy - requiring software developers to absorb 6,000 pages of specifications, compared with 700 pages for OpenDocument.
This piece of information is of little use without comparing the supported *features* in both format and their implementation.
ECMA just confirmed the MS Open Office XML format as a standard, not Office in general. MS further states that OOXML will be an "open and royalty-free" specification.
What's also interesting is that MS will be offering a "bridge" (as a separate download) that enables Office software to read and write ODF (the OpenOffice Open Document Format) files.
Just junk food for thought...
Tom Brookes, a Microsoft spokesman in Brussels, said the software maker had created open-source versions of Office and...
Malice, or an incompetent journalist?
If the format is designated as an "industry standard", won't that make it more susceptible to regulation by governments needing access?
I am not an expert on these bodies so can someone please explain the difference between EMCA International and ISO and how the approval from each organization differs.
Then WHY was it approved as a "standard"?
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
...that people might find interesting:
It's ECMA. It even says that in the page you've linked to. And the original article. This Slashdot typo's infectious - it seems to have spread to half the comments posted already...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Microsoft's spokesman countered the IBM executive's statement by pointing out,
"Actually the Open standard we propose is six thousand pages, but that's only because we printed it in 256 point boldface fonts in order to be handicapped accessible for the visually impaired, you insensitive clod."
Microsoft further countered allegations of being too hard for developers by pointing out,
"If you take away the title information, the table of contents, the index and the pages that say This Page Intentionally Left Blank, all the standards document says is 'Buy a copy of Microsoft Office'. What could be simpler than that?"
Conspiracy Theory: EMCA created/used for the purposes of the appearance of endorsement by ECMA without the burden.
More likely theory: editorial dyslexia.
Tweet, tweet.
It's all well and good that OOXML is a published standard, but how long until Microsoft decides they need some enhancement and just add it without going through a revision to the ECMA standard? It's one thing to get something to become a standard, quite another to adhere to it. Think of how Netscape decided they wanted new HTML features but didn't want to wait for W3C and just dreamt up stuff like the blink and marquee tags. Once Microsoft Office diverges from the OOXML standard we're right back to where we started—a proprietary document format.
Microsoft as a company may decide product features mean more to them than adhering to a standard, even one they created. I'll never forget Microsoft's FORTRAN compiler under MS-DOS described by Microsoft as "a superset of a subset of FORTRAN 77." In other words, whatever they hell they felt like implementing.
I guess your standards for standards is higher than the standard industry standards standards used by standard Microsoft employees. In other words, "I've upped my standards, so up yours".
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
"Your honor, since Microsoft is recognized by ECMA - an independent European standards organization - as an industry standard, any attempt to will irreparably harm ."
Damn, they're good.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Does anyone know whether Apple will include support for ODF (Open Document Format) in Pages? For more a bigger testament of industry standard is getting it used by enough people.
BTW It should be noted that Office essentially uses OLE for its binary document formats. For this reason anything you add to an Office document is essentially an embeded data type. Their XML format is another beast.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Actually, there are infact ANSI standards for databases. This how you can have a single database schema and codebase support MS SqlServer, DB2 and Oracle.
AIX conforms to posix and uses utilities common to all Unixes.
Websphere can conform to the specs for J2EE.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Go take a look at it and judge for yourself. The open document formats are fairly reasonable XML-based structures (as "reasonable" as XML can ever be). MS Office XML abuses XML and is horrendously complex.
From a practical point of view, OpenDocument already works for interchanging between multiple open source apps.
In addition, Microsoft's file format is patented and Microsoft uses that patent to spread FUD. While the patent probably wouldn't stand, it's an additional reason not to use MS's office formats.
"So, for most of the world, the Gregorian calendar has been the law for 250-425 years. That's a well-established standard by anyone's definition. Who would possibly ignore it or get it wrong at this point?
l
If you guessed "Microsoft", you may advance to the head of the class."
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2006/10/leap-back.htm
Tips on writing a "standard":
http://www.robweir.com/blog/index.html
They could have avoided sucking by just using Open Document instead of inventing their own pseudo-open format. Why reinvent the wheel?
MS Office formats have always been a "de facto" standard, meaning they appear to be standards merely because a majority of people use them, and because there is only one implementation of them (regardless of versions). No matter how many industry groups, in this case ECMA, give them a stamp of approval, they will never achieve true "standard" status.
Just because the vast majority of people use something (especially when they have no means to consider alternatives) does not make it a standard. That is textbook "de facto" status.
Standards are what everyone agrees on after open, cooperative discussion. MS simply churns out what they think would be useful, influenced more by their bottom line than by user need. As long as alternative formats exist, are implemented, and are actively used and developed, MS Office formats will never be truly "standard", no matter how lopsided the usage shares are. The patent and IP issues just make this more true.
I'm sure everyone would laugh just as hard if ECMA (or any other group) had declared AIM a standard over Jabber, ICQ, MSN messenger, Yahoo IM, or even IRC (Jabber and IRC being the closest thing to standards among all of them).
There are countless examples of multiple ends to the same means in hardware and software. Which is the standard among SCSI/IDE/SATA? AMD vs Intel? MP3 vs Ogg? Gnome vs KDE? Emacs vs vi? None of them.
MS is incapable of producing a real standard, unlike the *NIX community which has been doing so for decades. I can't think of a single RFC published by MS that has influenced other platforms, meanwhile MS is forced to implement (sometimes badly) such things as TCP/IP and email (among many other).
Calling the MS Office formats a true standard is a meaningless label that can only be explained by MS having bought it. So they put a bright red "ECMA says this is standard" sticker on every box of Office 2007... the average person has no idea what the ECMA is.
How about this one:
n tlicense.asp.
p x. Is it the same? different license? Bad links happen to everyone.
No right to create modifications or derivatives of this Specification is granted herein.
There is a separate patent license available to parties interested in implementing software programs that can read and write files that conform to the Specification. This patent license is available at this location: http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/ip/format/xmlpate
The link with the actual license to READ and WRITE a file to their specifications is dead. This one works though, http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/xpspatentlic.ms
Some handy excerpts: "Necessary Claims" do not include any claims: (i) that would require a payment of royalties by Microsoft to unaffiliated third parties; (ii) covering any Enabling Technologies that may be necessary to make or use any product incorporating a Licensed Implementation,....
This says to me that they have not indemnified developers from patent time-bombs for the functions one step beyond their proposed standard or other patent time-bombs laid by lesser-known Patent IP firms. Maybe someone with more coding skills can explain if it would be possible to implement a standard without so-called "Enabling Technologies"?
(iii) covering the reading or writing of documents other than XPS Documents, or rendering of XPS Documents in a manner that is different than the rendering allowed by the XML Paper Specification. "Enabling Technologies" means technologies that may be necessary to make or use any product or portion of a product that complies with the XML Paper Specification, but are not expressly set forth"
To me this says Microsoft can come after you if you do something they didn't think of.
I don't see how this benefits any developer outside of a select few.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
That's a very valid point, I don't see what makes it a "flame".
I am also pro-open and have my own irks with Microsoft. And I do use OpenOffice.org when I can.
But like it or not, MS Office is still in the lead as far as being intuitive and functional. OO is close, but certain parts of it still fall short of MS Office. Microsoft has been developing and refining this stuff for a long time, and it is by far used by more people (and businesses) than any other office software suite.
Plus, it works. Sure, MS Office has its flaws, but let's face it: So does OpenOffice. This doesn't change the fact that it's the most widely used, and as such would be a reasonable candidate for becoming an industry standard.
(Of course, I use 'industry standard' loosely since different groups seem to declare different standards for document formats...)
Since it's apparently grounds for automatic down-modding to express a valid opinion in favor of Microsoft on Slashdot, you people can 'troll' or 'flamebait' me all you like. Doesn't make my point any more or less reasonable.
/* No Comment */
This piece of information [6,000 M$ vrs 700 ODF pages] is of little use without comparing the supported *features* in both format and their implementation.
No, that order of magnitude difference is informative. I imagine 6,000 pages can buy you:
And then some because I'm only at seven.
300 pages is roughly two inches of shelf space. M$'s specification will take up 40 inches of your shelf and burden your floor with a hundred pound load. I don't even want to think of how log it would take to read 40 inches of XML specs.
For all that, it will be incomplete in a typical Microsoft way, rendering it useless outside of PHB relations.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
While I'm inclined to a cynical view that Microsoft is unnecessarily burdening the specification - and they probably don't mind the fact that this will impede the development of competitors products - I do have to admit the possibility that they are addressing a different criticism that many have made of them in the past.
Namely, that Microsoft specifications are incomplete and/or imprecise (corner cases, etc.).
Albeit verbose, is their specification technically watertight?
Or is it merely, "Here's everything Word can do as a result of development since 1985." with no overall logical structure?
"Provided by the management for your protection."
How long until Microsoft embraces and extends its own standard? This is simply an old Microsoft trick with a new twist. As soon as Microsoft documents break compatibility with ECMA OOXML, then every other third party software will lose the ability to read and write compatible documents. Worse than the current situation, because an attempt to maintain compatibility with Microsoft Office might violate the conditions of the OOXML license. And no doubt break the format they will, in subtle ways of course, a little bit off here and there just enough to make a document look much better in Microsoft Office than it will in other applications.
The Microsoft license to use ECMA OOXML is contingent on following the standard to the letter, which is a seemingly innocuous condition until you realize that Microsoft itself is under no legal obligation to follow the standard to the letter. So you will have a bunch of third party software that follows the standard which won't be able to accurately read or write documents written by the dominant office software, it will just look like the other software is defective when really it is working according to the standard. And even if the other software developers want to break the standard in favor of microsoft compatibility, they won't be allowed to do so under the OOXML license. Microsoft wouldn't do this at first of course, what good is a trap sprung before your prey are fully in, so I am sure that Microsoft would spend a year or two adhering rigorously to the standard, just enough time for other software to incorporate OOXML compatibility. Then it would be time to break compatibility and continue the microsoft monopoly for another few years, while things work their way through the courts.
If Microsoft itself makes a legally binding and enforceable commitment to follow the ECMA OOXML standard to the letter, then I don't see a problem with another document format standard. But as the licensor, I don't see how they could be forced to adhere to the OOXML standard. Unless Microsoft itself can be forced to rigorously follow the OOXML standard, then this is just a monopolist's trap.
Microsoft own and control future versions of their format, and control the biggest (and currently only) implementation of it.
ODF on the other hand is controlled by a group of companies, a group that microsoft was given every chance to join. Any standard should be controlled in this way, either by a group of competing companies or an independent body, otherwise it can always be twisted to favour one vendor at the expense of another.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
FOSS should avoid "Open" XML because Microsoft has encumbered it. Their game is now on. Offer code and protocols that they claim is "open" but, when push comes to shove, they alone control.
Down the road a bit they will begin strategic law suits and try to make FOSS programmers look like a bunch of thieves for implementing the "open standards" they pushed through without paying royalties.
Microsoft is not even a bit interested in competing on a level playing field. For a very long time they have used their monopolies to gain unfair advantages; antitrust laws be damned. Now they want to use their monopoly muscle in their Office package to control a "standard" that they feel will lock out their greatest competition. They know that GPL'd software CAN NOT be encumbered by patents.
They have no intention of real cooperation.
The solution: EVERYONE must work to make them irrelevant. Put them into a position where they either start playing fair or die. Not an easy task. We must press our Justice department to hold them accountable for breaking antitrust laws. The Courts MUST break Microsoft into a least three separate companies. This can easily be justified by their continued disregard for the law.
We should only support protocols and "standards" that are truly free. No unacceptable licenses, no royalties etc. As Linux gains market share there will come a time when Microsoft's insistence on being incompatible with OSS will begin to work against them.
We should push for laws that force standards and protocols to be truly open and available to everyone including Open Source.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Let me tell you how simple ODF is. I did the following with ZERO documentation. No knowledge at all.
.zip file, opened content.xml and found the xml for what I had put in the test doc. I then wrote a Java program that would parse the CSV and output xml that looked like the xml in the file. Cut and past the generated xml into the document, drop the photos in the pictures directory, and then zip it back up and change the name back. It just worked.
I implemented a photo directory for my church congregation. Since it would need to be easily updated I kept the information in a CSV spreadsheet, including names, addresses, and the name of the photo file. I looked at doing a mail merge with either OOo or Word and it didn't look like I could get what I really wanted with either. So I made a sample doc in OOo Writer and saved it. I then renamed it to a
I'll admit that you would have to be a programmer to do something like that, but it was really easy and required no documentation or specialized knowledge. That is the power of the ODF. I'm guessing the same isn't possible with the MS format.
Lasers Controlled Games!
So which file format is this they're talking about? That from MS Office 95, 97, 2k, 2003? And which version, the documented one or the actual one?
Fact is that even though MS tries to cover it up by keeping the names constant, the office file formats are just as fragmented as the various versions of windos. It's a neat trick, but "Windows 3.1" and "Windows XP" really don't have much in common except that the later contains a backwards compatability layer, i.e. "Wine from Redmond".
Same with the file formats. Yes, newer versions of MS Office contain importers for the older file formats. That just hides the fact that there are probably 10 different versions out there.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org