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Microsoft Blasts IBM Over XML Standards
carlmenezes writes "Ars Technica has up an article discussing Microsoft's latest salvo against IBM. Microsoft's open letter to IBM adds fresh ammunition to the battle of words between those who support Microsoft's Open XML and OpenOffice.org's OpenDocument file formats. Microsoft has strong words for IBM, which it accuses of deliberately trying to sabotage Microsoft's attempt to get Open XML certified as a standard by the ECMA. In the letter, general managers Tom Robertson and Jean Paol write: 'When ODF was under consideration, Microsoft made no effort to slow down the process because we recognized customers' interest in the standardization of document formats.' In contrast, the authors charge that IBM 'led a global campaign' urging that governments and other organizations demand that International Standards Organization (ISO) reject Open XML outright."
Help! I just bought a ThinkPad (yes, IBM, not Lenovo). I run Windows on it. Which side should I take?!
c++;
It does not take a rocket scientist with a good look at the spec to figure out it sucks. The fact that it sucks has little to do with IBM.
Got Code?
Perhaps IBM's actions are based on the format qualities, not on its favoritisms. About those, since when IBM was in bed with Sun any more than it was with Microsoft?
This "Open Letter" is nothing than another piece of FUD and whining.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
This might be true, but when Massachusetts decided to adopt this standard they raised holy hell, and used every trick in the book to make Massachusetts take it back.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
Besides being an open standard, the standard needs to be usable by people other than Microsoft. Why would any document standard need specific tags for Windows 95? IBM lobbied against it because it was a bad standard, not because it was made by Microsoft.
Is it really an open standard if they are the only ones that developed it? It reminds me of a quote which I will paraphrase:
Reusable code is not truly reusable until it has been used more than once.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
This is similar to convicts trying to get jobs once out of prison. There is no longer an assumed trust due to prior actions. Who trusts MS to NOT pervert any of their documentation or standards if they see an economic benefit in doing so?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
'When ODF was under consideration, Microsoft made no effort to slow down the process because we recognized customers' interest in the standardization of document formats.'
Yeah... are we supposed to believe that? If anything creating there "open" format looks to me like a blatant attempt to prevent the one thing that open format people are trying to accomplish, namely having one open format that can be used by everyone and can't be arbitrarily obsoleted by any one company. Or maybe I missed something.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
And it performs brilliantly with any product you want: MS Office Ultimate 2007, MS Office Professional 2007, MS Office Enterprise 2007, MS Office Standard 2007, or MS Office Small Business 2007.
Details here.
This little blurb just kills me...
"When ODF was under consideration, Microsoft made no effort to slow down the process because we recognized customers' interest in the standardization of document formats."
Yep you bet no effort to slow down the standardization process because they refused to be involved. However they have made every effort possible and will continue to do so in the future to slow
the adoption and deployment of this standard by any means necessary.
Got Code?
Their heads are so far up their asses they cant even see that the problem with Open XML has less to do with Microsoft being the one who created it (which in MY mind is a problem in it's self) and a lot more to do with Open XML, which as a format, makes baby kittens cry.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
I thought the main objection to OpenXML was that it fails to define a number of things, essentially saying "render like WordPerfect 1.0", making it an incomplete standard. Making it not impossible but very difficult for anyone other than Microsoft to implement it so it's fully compatible with the MS version.
Hey Microsoft! We don't just hate you: fact is, your OpenXML spec is an appalling dump heap overflowing with the most disgraceful assortment of deplorable rubbish imaginable, mangled up in tangled up knots! I mean, we at IBM know a brain-damaged document format when we see one (heck, we invented plenty of them ourselves) and trust us, this one takes the cake. Ratification of this garbage could set the word processing industry back about twenty years. So don't give us the "customer's interest" line. We know what this is all about: this is about YOU.
Disclaimer: I don't work for IBM (anymore|yet) and these ain't IBM opinions. Well, not official opinions, anyway. ^^
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
After all they had to create a 6000 page document without releasing any information on how to make their "open" standard work. There are so many statements like "functions as per Word 95" without explaining what that means. They must have worked long hours creating a specification that doesn't actually specify how to implement it.
IBM is being a big bully and not allowing Microsoft to screw the public and private companies of the world as Microsoft wants to.
Naughty Naughty Big Blue.
While it is clear the so-called Open XML is owned, controlled, and licensed by MS, is ODF actually owned by OO.org. And, if so, will OO.org use it to limit users ability to migrate data? The reason why so many people are against any MS format is that MS will actively limit the ability for the user to use the data. For instance, it could be that a user that does not license a copy of MS Word does not have the right to use a particular format.
In fact the ODF format appears free of any such encumbrance, and SUN, which contributed much of it, has pledged it to remain unencumbered. Therefore, this seems like simple marketplace economics. If one has two products, and one is somewhat better but has a high real cost of acquisition, and the other is slightly worse but has a significantly less real cost of acquisition, the the market will choose the later. MS understands this, as cheap products is why people bought MS instead of IBM, and why MS continues to pay huge sums of money to create favorable TCO reports. There, this MS rant is simply an attempt to distract technical staff from the real issue, which is that future growth will be limited for benefits that are not always clear.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Microsoft seems to have it backwards. When it comes to standards, they advocate choice. When it comes to software, they advocate monoculture.
The questions I ask are rhetorical - I know the answer, and so should most people. The open source community (among others) have blasted Microsoft for years for trampling choice in software. Now they are seeing that open source (and competition in general) has a real chance of making significant headway with a well documented, open standard that anyone can implement, that will interoperate, and isn't controlled by themselves, so now they use the community's arguments, but in an area where it's not appropriate. They use the words the community has used to attack their software monoculture to attack a standards monoculture. It's calculated, and a smart move on their part. Utterly contemptuous and underhanded, but very very smart.
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I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
Microsoft's format in and of itself is an attempt to sabatoge OpenDocument. Their refusal to support it, despite having the most popular Office Suit is another clear sign of their contempt for it, and the customers they claim to care about now.
God forbid IBM promotes their own standard. Jeez, that's almost like having competition! We'de hate to have to make MS actually compete with anyone. On top of all that, why in the world would IBM trust MS not to tweak the standand and make it MS only? Why would anyone who actually cares about an open format trust MS to touch it?
Here's what I wrote :o)
of the 21 members, IBM's was the sole dissenting vote. IBM again was the lone dissenter when Ecma also agreed to submit Open XML as a standard so long as you don't count the twenty assorted countries that registered comments and objections to our fast-tracking proposal.
When ODF was under consideration, Microsoft made no effort to slow down the process because we were too busy trying to kill it completely.
This campaign to stop even the consideration of Open XML in ISO/IEC JTC1 is a blatant attempt to use the standards process to limit choice in the marketplace for ulterior commercial motives and is in no way whatsoever similar to our own campaign to stop the consideration of ODF in Massachusetts for our own commercial interest.
It is not a coincidence that IBM's Lotus Notes product, which IBM is actively promoting in the marketplace, fails to support the Open XML international standard in the same way as all other office software (other than our own) does, because we deliberately designed it so nobody but us could use it.
If successful, the campaign to block consideration of Open XML could create a dynamic where the first technology to the standards body, regardless of technical merit, gets to preclude other related ones from being considered and that's one of our tactics, dammit! Or do you actually think all those people out there using Internet Explorer do so because they tried out Opera and Firefox too, but decided IE was the best browser going? No, they use it because it was the first browser they ever used.
The IBM driven effort to force ODF on users through public procurement mandates is a further attempt to stop us forcing Open XML on them instead through our usual blatant monopoly abuse.
XML-based file formats, which can easily interoperate through translators can easily allow Open XML documents to be imported into Lotus Notes, and there are two such translators currently in existence - one of which we ourselves initiated - so we're being blatantly two-faced here by saying that Lotus Notes not supporting Open XML will be a significant barrier to people using Open XML for their documents.
This campaign to limit choice and force their single standard on consumers should be resisted so that we can limit choice and force our single standard onto consumers. Don't you know how important lock-in is to us??
We have listened to our customers. They want choice. They want interoperability. They want innovation. But we don't have to give it to them, because we're Microsoft! Bwahahahahah! Give us money or you'll wither and fade into the limbo of incompatibility.
What do you mean, that tactic doesn't work any more? It's got to, our whole business depends on it!
Damnit. . . hand me another chair. . .
So.. it has come to this
Having looked into both formats, I realized that they're both trash.
The major problem is the use of XML. At least with HTML, the tag names were kept short. But both standards use rather long element names, often in excess of eight characters, plus eight or more namespace characters beyond that. For some of the XML element names of each format, we're looking at over 16 characters overhead! When such tags are used repeatedly, especially in a large or heavily-formatted document, a lot of space ends up being wasted.
Another major problem is that they don't really solve any problems that LaTeX or GROFF haven't already dealt with. Both LaTeX and GROFF allow for far more compact document files, and they easily allow for output in a wide array of formats, from DVI to PostScript to PDFs to HTML. The HTML that is generated, for instance, is actually human-readable. OpenOffice.org and MS Office's HTML output is garbled and insane.
After reading the Open letter, it's very clear that Microsoft claims IBM's want to stop Open XML stems from their ODF format making it through the standards group first and being adopted. MS claims that people should be able to choose their open standards...
Call me crazy but having two different standards doesn't really capture the idea of having Standards at all. I thought the point of standards was to make it so we (the developers) only have to implement one thing. I can fully understand IBM's reasoning here. The only thing it seems MS wants to do is create more vendor lock.
Nevermind that customers are rejecting Microsoft Office because they are trying to get out of the lock-in of Microsoft's proprietary document format. Nevermind that Microsoft is into "Open" only to fudge the line between "Open standards that are documented and that anyone can implement and use" and "Proprietary with an open wrapper". Heh ... if I embed an MS-Word file into an XML document and compress the result using the Open Source program Gzip, does that make the resulting file "Open"? No? According to Microsoft's own logic, this would be the case.
And all this just to disguise the fact that their proposed "Open" standard allows them to put their their (totally proprietary) Office format into a document that follows the standard and then call it "Open". It's squarely aimed at fooling manager types into ticking a box labelled "Open Standards compliant" on their checklist.
Of course it's a fine example of complete intellectual dishonesty on Microsoft's part ... but whenever did Microsoft ever care about honesty? Intellectual or otherwise? Microsoft didn't become big by using such stupid tactics ...
Take that video demonstration for example. You know ... the one that showed Windows "crashing" when Explorer was removed. Any ordinary person would have gone to jail for perjury on that "testimony" ... but large companies are exempt it seems. "A regrettable communication error sir." Yeah, right.
As many people know ... Microsoft's OOXML is a blatant attempt to perpetuate Microsoft's proprietary standards through a selection of backdoors in a 6,000 page standard proposal that Microsoft is trying to rush through. Just see the "criticism" section in this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML
This emphasis on ODF is to strengthen the parent post's claim on the importance of ODF being unencumbered.
Think global, act loco
Since ECMA is willing to recognize crap as a standard, I'm just going to stop recognizing ECMA as a standards organization.
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
Some randomly selected points from TFA.
True but irrelevant since the others are rarely used and everyone (but especially Microsoft) knows it is the default format that matters.
Billions? Maybe that is technically true but Microsoft's record on backwards compatibility isn't great even within their own product suites. I'm pretty dubious that with OpenXML all my old Word documents will convert with perfect formatting. I'm even more dubious that OpenXML will be be read/write with perfect formatting in other applications. It's a 6000 page specification after all and I'm quite sure there is plenty of ambiguity even if the attempt to specify everything was a good faith effort. And with only 30 days to review all 6000 pages I'm not confident it will be evaluated with a satisfactory level of scrutiny.
OK. Let's assume that IBM is being a bad guy here. It's possible. Wouldn't be the first time. Is there something about ECMA International" that prohibits competing standards? Honest question, I don't really know. If not Microsoft is entitled to complain. But on the other hand the process is moving forward and there is little doubt it will be approved in due time. So I'm at a bit of a loss as to why I should care if IBM was obstructive, even assuming they were? IBM is one of the few companies that really isn't especially beholden to Microsoft's monopoly power so I'd expect them to be a bit more prickly. Let me be clear, for me to trust Microsoft I will need to see a lot more than a format approved by a standards body to believe they are going to compete openly and fairly in the marketplace. This is a company convicted in a court of law of abusing their monopoly power to the detriment of consumers. Implicitly trusting them is foolish.
Having looked into both formats, I realized that they're both trash.
... OpenOffice.org and MS Office's HTML output is garbled and insane.
So (assuming any legitimacy to the complaint) then use a different tool to convert OpenDocument to HTML. Geez. It's XML and there are quite a few ways to make the transition, many of which are quite good.
You do realize that the article is about the format and not the applications which use them, don't you ? Yeah. I thought so. There are something close to three dozen applications which support OpenDocument, of which OpenOffice is only one.
MS shills seem to be working over time to try to confuse the issues regarding OOXML vs ISO/23600 aka OpenDocument. Two of the main themes are here.
Crissakes, even the government of China is trying to harmonize with OpenDocument. You also have the 5000 or so participants in OASIS representing 600 or so organizations, companies, agencies and universities participating in OASIS, which is responsible for OpenDocument. You also have about 2 billion MS Office users tired of being forced into a new office suite and/or operating system purchase every the vendor decides to change its undocumented, binary formats.
The whole thing seems to be MS doing the only thing they're good at, waging a PR war, to try to 1) bring focus away from the technical issues being discussed at ISO, and 2) try to hide the groundswell of support for a universal file format.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
What the heck kind of open document format requires a rocket scientist to figure out it sucks? Most rocket scientists know more about you know... rockets and stuff.
True, and you could probably earn a PhD in ME from a good university before you could finish reading all 6,000 pages of M$ spec. So there, as the OP stated anyone can tell you which is better. Confronted with a 700 page volume or three feet of shelf space that do exactly the same things, most people would go with ODF. As is the usual case, the only person who will ever read M$'s soon to sink standard are it's authors. Something makes me think a majority of the spec was written by scripts, so that no human being will ever have read it.
All of the human being who have read parts of the M$ "standard" have quickly found out it's not a standard at all. It's incomplete and contradictory. The would be implementor is left to find ancient implementation details from older secret formats. Those details were different from version to version and even on different "platforms" within the same version. "Make it look just like the Apple Version of M$ Word from 1995" is hardly a specification and the M$ proposal says things just like that, though you might think that they could fit exact measurements into 6,000 pages. That kind of bullshit has little to do with a formatting implementation, and properly belongs to the exporter that M$ themselves should author because they are the only party with knowledge of all the previous versions. Mostly, their so called "standard" is an admission of past non portability.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
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IMHO this is is the crux of the "Microsoft Problem" in entirety.
First: They have no idea how to document file formats, this is mostly because of their file format model. I worked as a contractor, indirectly, for Microsoft a long time ago. Their file formats are not "documented" per se'. They are program structure based and can change on the whim of a developer, their name at the time was "chunk format." This works well if you don't expect anyone to use your document format or you supply the access library.
At its core it is because they do not design formats, they code them as needed. Need a feature or special case? Just add a struct, an ID, and a chunk of read/write code and it works. How the hell do you document the outcome of that process? This isn't a bad methodology for internal state or temporary files, but it is a disaster for any sort of long term accessibility and interoperability.
Microsoft develops software like a small company because as long as they have the monopoly, they don't *need* to supply document format information in order to compete. Everyone else has to understand their formats and they aren't going to help at all. Their 'XML' format shows they have not changed one bit. Rather than "design" the document format, they are merely documenting what they have which is just a bunch of special cases.
Second: A true open office document format, usable by everyone, will spawn amazing amounts of innovations. Everything from document searching to intelligent document processing. When anyone can read and create documents on any platform or programming language than everyone else's programs can use as well, just think of what people will come up with. If that's going to happen, Microsoft has to make sure that they are the only benefactor, because except for the monopoly, Microsoft has no inherent value in the face of Linux and OpenOffice.org. At least Apple makes a nice computer.