Sun Asks China to Merge its Doc Format With ODF

christian.einfeldt writes "Sun's Chairman Scott McNealy has asked the world's most populous nation to merge its Uniform Office Format with the Open Document Format. Tech lawyer Andy Updegrove thinks that McNealy would not have flown to China and taken this chance of rejection if McNealy didn't think that there was a good likelihood of success."

Comments

ODF is for niggers, anyway

[Anonymous Coward]

Heil Hitler!

Re:ODF is for niggers, anyway

[koxkoxkox]

Informative ? Funny maybe, depending on your taste in dubious references, but I didn't see any kind of information in it ...

Numbers game

[Random BedHead Ed]

Playing the numbers game, if a country as large as China were to adopt ODF (via harmonizing with it), it's game over, and ODF wins. That wouldn't spell the end for Microsoft's XML standard, but it would be a major setback, globally speaking. I wish him luck.

Re:Numbers game

[EveryNickIsTaken]

I beg to differ. Given that English is still considered the "language of business" even in the East, I'd think that China would adapt to whatever format its potential buyers use.

Re:Numbers game

[Random BedHead Ed]

They could, and you're right that China could change their minds and opt for the MS Office formats. (That the leader of China wanted to meet Bill Gates on his visit to the US is worth noting.) But there are a couple problems. One, MS's office formats can't easily be implemented by third parties, particularly if those third parties want to remain independent of Microsoft (and not licensees). Second, China already has a non-MS office format, so they were thinking of diverging from Microsoft's lock-in model long before now.

Re:Numbers game

[EveryNickIsTaken]

I purchased dollar-store goods from Chinese manufacturers/sweat shops for a few years. Regardless of what document standard they may have adopted already, any correspondence I ever received was MS office format, and in broken Engrish. It matters not what their standard is if they're going to use MS office in any outbound correspondence to accommodate their Western buyers.

Re:Numbers game

[ceeam]

Yes, ODF is IMO flawed, but at the moment we don't have a better alternative, do we?

Re:Numbers game

[CarpetShark]

Until someone at MS decides that they're "going to f'in kill China", and starts spreading crap about their weird isolationist document format that only commies like, so that everyone else shies away from it.

When the greedy are playing dirty politics, and decent people still care about their reputations, there's no such thing as game over. Well, not for the good, anyway.

Re:Numbers game

[Anonymous Coward]

The post you're replying to didn't bring up this good/evil business. And ODF is better because it actually is open, regardless of who is pushing it. What other open alternatives are there?

So indeed, good luck to McNealy on this mission.

Re:Numbers game

[cduffy]

Waitaminute here -- why do you switch from talking about ODF to talking about OpenOffice? Unlike OpenXML, ODF was written based not on a single application's requirements (although that was used as a starting point), but by getting a bunch of interested parties (particularly, parties with an interest in long-term document archival and storage), and building to their requirements.

And ODF is absolutely the better standard. It leverages preexisting standards such as SVG and MathML instead of reinventing the wheel; it's structured to permit XSLT-style transformations; a complete implementation isn't required to have support for legacy bugs from MS Office. Version 1.2 of the standard will require that implementations preserve unknown attributes to allow support for lossless roundtripping to and from legacy formats; support for lossless roundtripping to and from Word is an early application for this, already available in prototype. The only serious deficiency I'm familiar with is that spreadsheet formulas are unspecified and left to the implementor -- and while that is unfortunate, it's not like there aren't de-facto standards to work from until it's resolved (also in OpenDocument 1.2).

I realize it's trendy to be jaded, and I have little love for many of Sun's actions -- but I'm pretty sure they're on the right side inasmuch as ODF is concerned.

Re:Numbers game

[suv4x4]

Yes, ODF is IMO flawed, but at the moment we don't have a better alternative, do we?

That might be quite unpopular with the crowd here, but right now, MS Office is the better alternative.

Have you actually reviewed Office 2007? Unlike previous versions, they've made incredible improvements in the whole suite, and I'm not just talking about the ribbon UI.

When you have to select a piece of software for doing real work with it, you don't just weigh in the license cost and claim anything free and open is always better. Or well, you don't do it if you have some hard and very real work to do, but you might do it if you don't, and just have an agenda to follow for the hell of it.

I need to be productive and be compatible with the rest of the world. MS Office just wins here, if Sun thinks they have the resources and skills to outdo (or at least match) MS Office in quality and features we need, I'm always ready to reconsider. This day hasn't come yet.

Re:Numbers game

[Carewolf]

You do realize that already there are several office suites that implement ODF?

Sure the only open source ones are OpenOffice and KOffice, but many small 3rd party wordprocessors have changed to ODF. So at no point will we be trapped by Sun, we will have the option of buying any of a handfull of commercial implementations, and probably 1-2 two other open source ones.

Re:Numbers game

[cduffy]

Since when was MS Office an alternative to ODF?

Office is an application suite. ODF is a document format. They're apples and oranges. With appropriate plugins, Office will interoperate with ODF documents -- just as any number of other applications will.

Claiming that OOXML is better than ODF because MS Office is better than OpenOffice is disingenuous; there's no reason MS Office and ODF can't be used together, and quite a bit of money and development time is being poured into making that an effective solution (thanks in no small part to .ma.us).

Re:Numbers game

[suv4x4]

Sure the only open source ones are OpenOffice and KOffice, but many small 3rd party wordprocessors have changed to ODF. So at no point will we be trapped by Sun

"Supporting ODF" is a very vague statement. OpenOffice and many small 3rd party word processors support Ms Word .DOC format too. Then how, all of a sudden we need ODF then, if a bit of 3rd party support takes care of the issue at hand.

Re:Numbers game

[Bastard of Subhumani]

it's just a battle of Sun versus Microsoft, which none of them deserves to win.

Even if neither wins, M$ deserve to lose and I hope they do.

Re:Numbers game

[cduffy]

I've done a lot of reading on how ODF was created, and I hold to my position.

Re:Numbers game

[marcello_dl]

But, English is in the public domain :)

Re:Numbers game

[marcosdumay]

Last time I saw it, ODF was not controled by SUN. It was an international standard, created by several companies and other kinds of entities.

Now, it's SUN pushing for ODF there... And so what? If it was Microsoft pushing for an open standard wouldn't it be as good? (Of course MS won't do that).

And, maybe ODF has its flaws (I don't know, I don't like OOo a lot, but don't know the format that well). But it's a well docummented, short, simple and formal standard. If we get something better later, we can just convert our documents.

Re:Numbers game

[suv4x4]

Office is an application suite. ODF is a document format. They're apples and oranges.

You know, I'm happy for you're so naive, it's a bless. Office application suites compete on features, and as such, each is bound to either extend ODF into a mess, or introduce their own formats if they don't have any.

There's a reason why we have "source" formats, and "final" formats. I don't need your browser to support the latest effects and features in Photoshop, since I'll export it to JPG/GIF/PNG for you, that preserves presentation, but not editability.

We already have our "common" document format, and that's PDF. Remember my words that ODF isn't going anywhere. There's simply no reason for it to succeed.

Re:Numbers game

[Anonymous Coward]

(thanks in no small part to .ma.us)

Hmm, no. First off, Google finds no ODT documents in .ma.us at all (although plenty of .doc).

Secondly, even if we were to go to the Massachusetts government website, you'd also find practically no ODT (29 total) compared with about 208,000 .DOC files.

Interestingly enough, all the ODT files Google finds are discussing the use of ODT in Massachusetts.

Keep in mind that Massachusetts originally claimed that they would switch over to all ODF at the start of 2007. Well, we're four months in to 2007 - and there's nothing.

Microsoft already won that battle.

Re:Numbers game

[cduffy]

Office suites may compete on features, but not all of those features need imply format extensions. There used to be competition between different OS vendors' networking stacks as well, but I think we're all better off now that everyone uses Ethernet and speaks IP -- and that standardization hasn't resulted in stagnation in the operating system market or a mess of incompatible IP variants.

I find it interesting that you advance the argument that having a standardized final format is adequate and folks can use whatever source formats they please while slamming me for naiveté. Applications where the ability to send documents which can be edited and transformed between parties in different organizations is critical abound, so using a view-only destination format for external communication is clearly inadequate. Preserving presentation is fine in a significant number of cases -- but if I'm standardizing on the document format used for communicating site surveys (which may be parsed and used to automatically configure servers) between my company (where the engineering department does not run Windows), its support and sales staff and VAR force (which largely do), I need documents which are editable, archivable into a database server and queryable at each stage (the latter being something XForms is quite useful for; I understand that Microsoft's InfoPath may provide some comparable functionality).

Re:Numbers game

[cduffy]

I said that the money has been (and is being) spent largely because of Massachusets. I didn't say Massachusets was actually taking advantage of it yet.

Re:Numbers game

[CastrTroy]

How many times should this story repeat until slashdotters learn: all corporations are the same. Not soon after ODF takes over MS Office, we'll be running daily articles of the "but ... Sun promised to not be evil!" kind, just like we're doing with former favorites Google, Red Hat, Novell, Adobe etc. etc.

But Sun doesn't control the ODF Format. It doesn't matter if sun becomes evil because they don't control anything. That's where you seem to have it wrong. ODF is an OASIS standard agreed upon by many companies and no one company can just change it when they feel like it. I would like to know which specific deficiencies exist with ODF. Don't complain that it's slow, because that's an application problem, not a file format problem. Just because OO.o is slow, doesn't mean that all word processors that use ODF have to be slow. There are already few out there that are quite faster than OO.o. I think that it's always going to be slower than .Doc, but that's only because .Doc is a big memory dump, and is not made to be readable or understood by anything other than MS word.

Re:Numbers game

[mhall119]

OpenOffice, and all the other non-license paying software that support .DOC format do so through reverse engineering the format. Their accuracy in importing and exporting that format varies, because they don't know for sure what the format actually is, and MS seems to change it slightly with every new version of Office.

We need ODF so that we can have more than one office suite available to choose from, and still be able to exchange documents accurately. It's the same reason we have standards for anything, computers or otherwise.

OpenXML on the other hand can not be accurately implemented by anybody other than Microsoft and is controlled by nobody other than Microsoft. On top of that, it's a badly written format that even requires that implementors perform miscalculations so that Microsoft doesn't have to actually fix their own product.

Even more compelling is this list of ODF implementors:

OpenOffice.org/StarOffice
KOffice
Abiword
Gnumeric
Lotus Notes
Google's Documents
Apple's TextEdit (in Leopard)
Corel WordPerfect (mid-2007)
Microsoft Office XP/2003/2007

As opposed to the list of Office OpenXML implementors:

Microsoft Office 2007
Corel WordPerfect (mid-2007)

So if you want to use anything other than Windows, ODF is your only choice.

Re:Numbers game

[Anonymous Coward]

With appropriate plugins, Office will interoperate with ODF documents --

Like the one mentioned here from Sun.

Re:Numbers game

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to the list of Office OpenXML implementors:

Microsoft Office 2007
Corel WordPerfect (mid-2007)

So if you want to use anything other than Windows, ODF is your only choice. No, there's Mac Office 2008 (currently in beta).

Re:Numbers game

[mhall119]

I wasn't aware of that, Mac Office 2008 will support Office OpenXML? Will it also support ODF? Which format will be the default?

Re:Numbers game

[mhall119]

Nevermind, I thought you were talking about an Apple product. After a quick google search I now know that this is Microsoft Office for Mac. Still more than a year out though.

Re:Numbers game

[Andy Updegrove]

The big difference is the sweat shop copy of MS was undoubtedly pirated. Now that China is cracking down, nobody wants to pay Microsoft prices. Instead, they'd like to use a cheap, homegrown product - built on UOF (or, if it goes that way, UOF/ODF). - Andy

Re:Numbers game

[jimicus]

Since when was MS Office an alternative to ODF?

Office is an application suite. ODF is a document format. They're apples and oranges. With appropriate plugins, Office will interoperate with ODF documents -- just as any number of other applications will.

I think the reason is that this doesn't work both ways - while Office could have a plugin written to support ODF, you can't write an alternative Office suite which supports OOXML. Not because there's anything wrong with OOXML as such, but a few issues surround implementing it:

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/03/13/161124 4
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/23/23 23237&mode=thread&tid=155&tid=99
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/04/13/2031259.shtm l?tid=109

If China standardises on .DOCX (Office XML) as a file format, Sun haven't got a hope of selling StarOffice there. Similarly, if they standardise on their own format, StarOffice is at a disadvantage because the format isn't native to Star/OpenOffice.

But standardise on ODF, and suddenly Sun are on a reasonably level playing field with Microsoft (and, for that matter, the incumbent company producing office software which writes the native Chinese file format) at selling their office suite. That's assuming Microsoft *do* wind up providing a ODF plugin (I won't believe it until I see a download available from the Microsoft website). If they don't, Sun have a huge advantage.

Re:Numbers game

[EveryNickIsTaken]

They would? How exactly do you know this? China's businesses don't rely on domestic sales for their profit, they rely on exports. Despite the fact that you and others may dislike MS, the majority of the business world still uses Office. As long as that remains true, the Chinese will use it to accommodate their Western buyers.

Re:Numbers game

[Bramantip]

Office is an application suite. ODF is a document format. They're apples and oranges. With appropriate plugins, Office will interoperate with ODF documents -- just as any number of other applications will.

True, they are different things, but one is the cause of the other. Put in another way - what good would .odt be without a program that can read them and produce them? Having the best and most capable document standard (SGML comes to mind) doesn't mean that anyone will actually use it (how many SGML editors are there?).

True enough Office could interoperate with almost any format - the question is whether it is worth the time and money to develop the software to do so... and probably from the MS standpoint, probably not, as they get more money from people being forced to use documents in their format (and thus with their program). Microsoft plays the format wars because they know that no matter what format you have, you still need the program to use it.

Claiming that OOXML is better than ODF because MS Office is better than OpenOffice is disingenuous; there's no reason MS Office and ODF can't be used together, and quite a bit of money and development time is being poured into making that an effective solution.

Well, even if ODF was vastly superior to OOXML, if the tool you have to create documents is vastly inferior, there is no question as to what tool to use - and the format will follow the tool, not the other way around.

I think most people simply use any office suite simply to write documents. They probably couldn't care less as to what format they are in as long as they can write them with ease. The only time the format really becomes a problem is when you want to share that information with someone else (who doesn't use the same tools) or use it in some other medium (such as the web, etc.).

Thus there is some point to the fact that MS Office is 'better' than Open Office - if the tool isn't easy to use, powerful enough for one's purpose, and stable, there isn't much point in creating documents in the format that it uses. Though I haven't really seen how MS Office is all that much better than OpenOffice.

Thus ODF might be the best for interoperability, as it is an 'open standard' but most of the time interoperability is accidental to the process of creating actual documents. But one might even question the interoperability of ODF, as the only application that I know of that uses it is Open Office - none of my other programs can even read this format (except vim when you unzip the archive). Until OpenOffice provides something for this purpose better than MS Office, the question of format will never be important.

Oh, and by the way I do use Open Office, as it is good enough for my purposes - as a Physics teacher - but really couldn't care less about its format as long as my students can read the printed text.

Re:Numbers game

[Anonymous Coward]

You're deluding yourself if you think that English is the language of business *in* Asia - or in China itself. That has occurred in India for historical reasons.
Remember English took the international language title from French due to the importance of *selling* to the English speaking market - particularly the US. When - in 10 years - China is the biggest market, they'll begin to take that title.

Re:Numbers game

[The Great Pretender]

Crap you mean I have to learn Chinese in 10 years! I'm screwed, I only got a C in French at highschool

Re:Numbers game

[Maxo-Texas]

Waiting for perfection results in never doing anything.

Doing something imperfect invariably results in tuning to address those imperfections.

Re:Numbers game

[cduffy]

True enough Office could interoperate with almost any format - the question is whether it is worth the time and money to develop the software to do so... and probably from the MS standpoint, probably not, as they get more money from people being forced to use documents in their format (and thus with their program). Microsoft plays the format wars because they know that no matter what format you have, you still need the program to use it.

The thing is, Microsoft aren't the only folks who can do this, and interested third parties have already decided that supporting ODF from Word is worth the time and money. See the da Vinci ODF plugins for Office. In short -- MS Word already is an ODF editor, though roundtrip support will be substantially improved after ODF 1.2 comes out.

Well, even if ODF was vastly superior to OOXML, if the tool you have to create documents is vastly inferior, there is no question as to what tool to use - and the format will follow the tool, not the other way around.

As I think I've established, the market leader among the tools is already -- with the use of some zero-cost 3rd-party software -- able to use either format. This means that the folks who do care about the format can select that independently. For some of my purposes, the ability to use XPath and XSLT-style templates with ODF is extremely helpful; other folks are more concerned about long-term document compatibility, lest Office 2043 be unable to read documents created today with Office 2003.

Putting my idealist hat on, I'd argue that in cases where documents are intended to be disseminated to the public at large, accessibility (to those who can't afford MS Office or those who run on a platform where Office is unavailable) is socially responsible as well. To be sure, lossy conversion is available -- but using a format developed as an open standard with ease-of-implementation and standards reuse in mind in mind (and thus which is reasonably implementable by more than one vendor) strikes me as the Right Thing to do. Taking the idealist hat back off, I still support ODF -- because it makes the things I want to do with my IT infrastructure (using XPATH and a bunch of preexisting infrastructure to build servers based on the contents of site survey forms provided by sales reps) easy, and allows me the ability to leverage 3rd-party implementations of reused standards for which open toolkits are available in future infrastructure as well.

Re:Numbers game

[ronocdh]

They would? How exactly do you know this? China's businesses don't rely on domestic sales for their profit, they rely on exports. Despite the fact that you and others may dislike MS, the majority of the business world still uses Office. As long as that remains true, the Chinese will use it to accommodate their Western buyers.

I don't see the sense in this. Are the products they're exporting word processing documents? If not, it doesn't matter one bit what the customer is using as far as a word processor goes. Additionally, OpenOffice has always offered the ability to save as a MS Word .doc is need be; the Chinese companies could use this feature if a client specifically requested to see something.

More likely IMO is that China would continue to use ODF for all its internal documentation, which constitutes the vast majority of paperwork produced by any organization. This way they are guaranteed access to their own documents into the future, without being trapped into having to deal with a company to access certain closed formats.

Re:Numbers game

[Shotgun]

And all the American corporations scrambling to cut their own throats to get into China? What do you think their reaction will be to the Chinese government proclaiming, "Use and open format if you want to talk to us". We don't care to be owned by Microsoft"? That's right. The chief execs will all surrender their left nuts to switch to ODF documents (and that includes Carly Fiorna).

Re:Numbers game

[EveryNickIsTaken]

I hate Microsoft. Call the Waaaaaahmbulance! You clearly have superior knowledge about the Chinese culture and its business practices. Congratulations.

Re:Numbers game

[EveryNickIsTaken]

Nah. I've dealt with them. They kiss ass like no others. Again, just because *you* hate MS doesn't mean that everyone in the world does.

Re:Numbers game

[MS-06FZ]

Crap you mean I have to learn Chinese in 10 years! I'm screwed, I only got a C in French at highschool That's OK, you actually don't need to know French in order to learn Chinese. But just in case, try this simple phrase: "Je m'appelle le Tick!"

Re:Numbers game

[The Great Pretender]

SPOOON!

Re:Numbers game

[Bramantip]

The thing is, Microsoft aren't the only folks who can do this, and interested third parties have already decided that supporting ODF from Word is worth the time and money. See the da Vinci ODF plugins for Office. In short -- MS Word already is an ODF editor, though roundtrip support will be substantially improved after ODF 1.2 comes out.

That link was very interesting - thanks for pointing it out. I hope this plug-in works out. Perhaps its technology could be 'ported' to other applications. I was thinking of InDesign or Scribus which could use an ODF importer - not to mention that I would no longer have to 'save as' in OpenOffice or include a link to download it to colleagues - I could just simply tell them to install this plug-in and let them use the program they like.

These kinds of projects make me more hopeful for the future of ODF - when I can use whatever program to open and use the same document, technology will finally be at the service of human thought and not simply a means to transmit it.

As I think I've established, the market leader among the tools is already -- with the use of some zero-cost 3rd-party software -- able to use either format. This means that the folks who do care about the format can select that independently. For some of my purposes, the ability to use XPath and XSLT-style templates with ODF is extremely helpful; other folks are more concerned about long-term document compatibility, lest Office 2043 be unable to read documents created today with Office 2003.

The fact that it is zero-cost is absolutely vital in my opinion - it is already painful enough just to download it. If they would have to pay for it, I will have to continue to "save as..."

For what you say about XPath and XSLT, I would grant that that would be useful - especially in a corporate environment or publishing house - but there are many programs that use XML (such as Apple's Pages program) whose formats are only theoretically interesting as they can't be opened by any other application. Sure one could use a Pages doc in the same way, but you are fundamentally stuck to one application. It is only really by this plugin which you gave the link to that one has the freedom to use the editor of one's choice - much like plain text gives one the freedom to use vim or emacs

Putting my idealist hat on, I'd argue that in cases where documents are intended to be disseminated to the public at large, accessibility (to those who can't afford MS Office or those who run on a platform where Office is unavailable) is socially responsible as well.

I couldn't agree with you more. One might even argue that the greatest cause of software piracy is the fact that only one program can create Word documents....

To be sure, lossy conversion is available -- but using a format developed as an open standard with ease-of-implementation and standards reuse in mind in mind (and thus which is reasonably implementable by more than one vendor) strikes me as the Right Thing to do. Taking the idealist hat back off, I still support ODF -- because it makes the things I want to do with my IT infrastructure (using XPATH and a bunch of preexisting infrastructure to build servers based on the contents of site survey forms provided by sales reps) easy, and allows me the ability to leverage 3rd-party implementations of reused standards for which open toolkits are available in future infrastructure as well.

I might even go further - if .odf actually works, it will fundamentally change communication. As I said before, the tools usually determine the format. IF odf becomes a common medium, then the tool becomes merely a tool, indifferent to the content. A fundamental paradigm shift, much like what papyrus did to cuneiform - any ink can write on paper, but only a triangular shaped tool can make cuneiform.

The consequences for civilization could be as far reaching

JJ+

Re:Numbers game

[cduffy]

For what you say about XPath and XSLT, I would grant that that would be useful - especially in a corporate environment or publishing house - but there are many programs that use XML (such as Apple's Pages program) whose formats are only theoretically interesting as they can't be opened by any other application. Sure one could use a Pages doc in the same way, but you are fundamentally stuck to one application. It is only really by this plugin which you gave the link to that one has the freedom to use the editor of one's choice - much like plain text gives one the freedom to use vim or emacs

It really depends on whether you're speaking as a producer or a consumer of software.

I'm right now working (effectively) as programmer-at-large in a late-stage startup. Most of our technical staff have a specialty (be it Java, or Oracle, or network administration); I'm the guy who gets all the interesting problems that don't fall so neatly into one specialist's space. As such, I get a wide array of projects to build and ideas to analyze for feasibility -- and having as many tools in my toolbox as possible is critical to doing this well. Being able to easily write tools that interact with office documents is, as tools go, quite powerful; I've alluded elsewhere to some of what I can do with that kind of ability. So -- if you're acting as an end-user, having a readily manipulable document format may not provide so much by way of direct benefits. As a toolmaker, on the other hand, I find it extremely useful -- and hopefully some of that utility filters down in terms of extra value to the user provided (directly or indirectly) by the tools that standards-based formats enable.

Realistically and short-term, though, yes, this is largely corporate-environment stuff -- the tools I write generally fall into the realm of site-local, proprietary infrastructure. That said, I would hope that the indirect benefits of the larger product this infrastructure supports being (ever so slightly) cheaper and more efficient to produce would have some kind of positive impact, noticeable or otherwise, on society as a whole.

Re:Numbers game

[killjoe]

Chinese are buyers too you know.

Re:Numbers game

[Anonymous Coward]

andy zebrowitz

I can't wait

[DigDuality]

This could be an awesomely smart idea and all the power to all parties involved making it work. I really like open source software, but i could really care less in the big picture. There's more to stand for in open formats than software. The illusion of openeess that OpenXML is needs to go away. I hope MS office continues to grow and improve but their strong hold on document formats need to go.

Re:I can't wait

[ror]

If Microsoft lose their hold on the document format then there would be little to tie people to office, and through that, windows. Every time I try and 'sell' openoffice to my family they scoff and say "but it's NOT office" despite the fact they're using office 97 that can barely handle office 2000 documents.

There is a perception that people NEED office to function, getting ODF widely accepted would be a huge blow to Microsoft.

Re:I can't wait

[aussie_a]

There's also the perception that if they can get Office at a discount they're saving money. Recently Microsoft offered office (and some other programs like the latest Outlook Express) for Australian university students at $99 or $199 (I can't remember). My father recommended I get it so I had a look and couldn't find any new features in Office that I would use and I didn't use any of the other software that came bundled with it. Well my sister and her boyfriend thought I was crazy. After all, it was SO much cheaper then Office normally is. I asked them what features the latest Office had that they used, they couldn't name one. Her boyfriend mentioned the great spam filtering in Outlook, but that was it. My sister liked the look of it. I said well I didn't use Outlook and I'd need a bit better feature then its "new look" before I'd buy it, they thought I was crazy.

So if the people making this decision in China are like my sister and father, all they need do is offer them a discounted Office and they'll go with Microsoft's XML format, simply because there's the perception that they'll be getting a discount.

Re:I can't wait

[DigDuality]

I disagree. While i prefer and primarily use Koffice and OpenOffice, MS Office wins in terms of user interface, usability, and functionality across the board. It is a superb office suite that wins hands down. Even the biggest linux and FOSS fanboy has to admit it's absolute awesomeness. Sure if an open standard was accepted broadly, ms office sales would drop. But that's because not everyone needs a $150-500 office suite. Most people could get by just fine, with little or no problems with alternative office suites. But MS would still be dominant purely out of quality of software, at least in this regard.

Re:I can't wait

[whyloginwhysubscribe]

Maybe Sun should extend their invitation to Microsoft as well - surely this would be the killer to getting the more open standard accepted.

Or maybe Sun should be working to adopt Office Open XML, which is likely to be the most adopted format. I know that Microsoft could have some ulterior motives behind making their XML format open - and perhaps it isn't open at all, but why can't the open source community use the same tactics to their advantage and make an effort to steer the populist formats towards their personal goal?

Re:I can't wait

[whyloginwhysubscribe]

erm - did I say more open, I meant more popular...

Re:I can't wait

[macshit]

It is a superb office suite that wins hands down. Even the biggest linux and FOSS fanboy has to admit it's absolute awesomeness.

You've got to be kidding. There are surely high points and low points to ms office, but it most certainly is not "awesome." A more accurate description might be "adequate for many tasks if you're not picky, but in constant danger of imploding under the weight of its own pointless bloat."

Re:I can't wait

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

While i prefer and primarily use Koffice and OpenOffice, MS Office wins in terms of user interface, usability, and functionality across the board. It is a superb office suite that wins hands down. Even the biggest linux and FOSS fanboy has to admit it's absolute awesomeness.

Actually, the relative merits of MSOffice and OpenOffice depend a lot upon what you do with it. MSOffice loses on the following points:

• Initial cost - OpenOffice wins on initial price by being free.
• Upgrade cycles - in order to be up to date with MSOffice and be able to open all the latest Word files, you need to pay for new versions every few years. MS Office loses here too.
• Cross-platform - MSOffice does not run on Linux or OpenBSD and thus can't be deployed across our entire company's workstations. (This is arguable due to OO mac support.)
• Archival ability - MSOffice relies upon proprietary formats which means we cannot be assured anything easily available will open them in 10 years, or even if it will be possible to hire someone to build a converter. This has already been a problem at a company I worked where no currently available version of Word would open old files and we had no legal recourse other than trying to hunt down someone with an old copy of Word that would open and convert the files on our behalf.
• Format support - Word can't open the OO files I am sent by co-workers and colleagues. OO can open the .doc files I'm sent as well as the OO files.
• long document support - Word falls down on large documents (>200 pages with a graphic every other page). The current version and all versions since 2000 I have tested since have all silently corrupted these files on save making them unopenable the next time one tried about one time in 50. I submitted this bug many, many years ago, and several times since and had to build a cumbersome workflow for one company as a way to work around this failure.
• source licensing - MS Office is licensed as closed source, thus resulting in less assurance for the future of the code, less ability to customize, increased likelihood of unfixable security problems, increased likelihood of very poor coding practices, and increased likelihood of an included trojan.
• software licensing risks - with MS Office we need to pay for a professional license tracking package to mitigate the risk of the BSA suing us because we forgot to remove a copy from some old machine or we did not count our licenses properly. This is a significant expense/legal liability that is not an issue with OO.

Because of the above list, I take issue with your assertion that MS Office wins across the board. I simply is not so. MS Office does win in a lot of ways, although I almost completely avoid it these days despite having a licensed copy installed. Mostly that is because it is not as functional or fast as other applications I use to perform the same tasks. Claiming that the buggy and bloated MS Office is "awesome" however, makes my head hurt. It crashes, it messes up, it's expensive, it's intentionally limited in some ways. For many people it is the best option, but a lot of that has more to do with the current install base than to do with concrete qualities of the programs themselves. That is why I'm such a strong supporter of ODF. I think if everyone can access the same data with any application, we'll actually see competition again and that will mean both MS Office and OpenOffice and all the other alternatives will get a lot better as they try to win customers. And let me tell you, they all need to get a lot better.

Re:I can't wait

[Anonymous Coward]

Please never put the words "blow" and "Microsoft" in the same sentence.

Re:I can't wait

[charlieman]

Yeah, i think all the 244 people there who buy MS stuff will definitively go for it with a discount.

Re:I can't wait

[Maxo-Texas]

I still have trouble getting away from office as well.

Partially, it is not that it has a better interface but that we are familiar with it. I know OO gives me fits with the way they moved some things even tho I recognize the moves were logical and Office is irrational (and is going to change a lot with the Vista Version).

But I *will* change to OO. I've been slowly doing so for about 2 years now. It's getting very good and I'm getting more familiar with it.

Re:I can't wait

[triso]

Please never put the words "blow" and "Microsoft" in the same sentence. Why not? You did. Oh! Earth humor. I get it.

If Scott brings the correct carrot

[ReidMaynard]

i.e., a suitcase of US dollars, then I predict success.

Re:If Scott brings the correct carrot

[wbren]

...or better yet, a suitcase full of British pounds.

Re:If Scott brings the correct carrot

[hackingbear]

that depends on who receives this case. better not someone who make exaggerated claims of having strong links to some powerful officials but really having none. it is only a success if the suitcase reaches the hands of the powerful official or better of his son/wife/relatives.

that's what china really is.

Nobody in China will use either

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in China. All I see is Office 2000 or 2003 with windows 2000 or Windows XP, and it's all free for them so nobody is going to change. Except perhaps they'll change to Windows Vista and Office 2007 in 2010 when enough schools buy new computers with it installed already.. and no, don't think for a minute they are legal copies.

Re:Nobody in China will use either

[aussie_a]

I'm an Australian student in China at the moment via a program at my university and all I see is UOF, UOF, UOF with windows 2000 or Windows XP.

Re:Nobody in China will use either

[DownWithTheMan]

I was under the impression that China was moving away from Windows...

:-/

Re:Nobody in China will use either

[totally bogus dude]

Programme.

(Sorry. Maybe a program helped you enrol in the programme.)

Re:Nobody in China will use either

[FooBarWidget]

No they aren't. I've been there too. It's Windows everywhere I see it. I don't even see Macs.

Re:Hopefully they go for it.

[Constantine XVI]

"They want to open up a market for their own products"
You DO realize we are talking about China here, the country that hasn't sold over 300 legit copies of Windows Vista yet, right?

Re:Hopefully they go for it.

[Anonymous Coward]

And of course I meant that I hadn't read the article. Not that I had.

(Posting anon because ...)

geeze it's the 21st century

[Anonymous Coward]

Tech lawyer Andy Updegrove thinks that McNealy would not have flown to China and taken this chance of rejection if McNealy didn't think that there was a good likelihood of success.

Yes, only if he was that sure of success would he brave the several weeks journey via galleon across the mighty Pacific.

Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

Post is very insightful and well-worded

Re:Hopefully they go for it.

[aussie_a]

You DO realize we are talking about China here, the country that hasn't sold over 300 legit copies of Windows Vista yet, right? They sound like a country full of smart people. I know a ton of people who are avoiding Vista like the plague, while in China they've got less then 300 stupid fucks (or less then 300 computer users. I somehow doubt the latter).

Harmonize or Adopt?

[Anonymous Coward]

If China adopts ODF thats a good thing.
If China 'harmonizes' with it, thats a bad thing, it creates yet another format.

china and open standards

[ceroklis]

From TFA:

[...] China's overall strategy, which for the last several years has been oriented towards developing "home grown" standards in areas where high foreign royalty payments, or product prices, would otherwise be encountered. These standards have most notably been in the area of wireless (WAPI), video (AVS), and 3G telephones (TD-SCMA), with other standards on the way. For China to give up independence with UOF would run counter to this trend, and would provide a very interesting bellwether indeed regarding China's future standards strategy.

Wrong:

\begin{lemma}
The author is an idiot.
\end{lemma}
\begin{proof}
It will not run counter to this trend, since there is not royalty payment for ODF.
\end{proof}

A merger would not cost anything to China, but allow them to share development cost with others and compete on a broader market than their own.
It would seem China can only benefit from a wider adoption of open standards. At least for now. In a couple decades they may be able to impose their own on the rest of the world.

No

[g2devi]

> it's just a battle of Sun versus Microsoft, which none of them deserves to win.

No. It's a battle between ODF and OOXML.

ODF was approved over a long drawn out process that took the input from various companies and can be implemented by multiple companies and open source projects. It reuses existing standards wherever possible. ODF is open to criticism and has already included revisions to include support for disabilities and generally specified formulas. Hopefully, it'll absorb China's format too. The official version of ODF is what's specified in the standard (regardless what OpenOffice implements), so you can be sure of a level playing field.

OOXML, OTOH, was rubber stamped by ECMA (that was one of the conditions of the submission) and fastracked to the ISO despite the objections of a record number of countries. It reinvents stands wherever possible, forces the implementation of bugs in the standards (i.e. implement the Y2K bug), has references to external specifications that are not being standardized, and has cute phrases like "Do this the way Word95 did it" without specifying what that means. The official version of OOXML is what Microsoft implements (regardless what ISO specifies), so you can be sure of an uneven playing field with Microsoft being 2 steps ahead of everyone else.

Given these two document formats, ODF clearly deserves to win.

Re:No

[I'm Don Giovanni]

OOXML, OTOH, was rubber stamped by ECMA (that was one of the conditions of the submission)

Sorty, this is bullshit.
The ECMA process took over a year to complete, and there were many revisions and multiple drafts released during that time. The ratification vote wasn't guaranteed. IBM was on the committee and voted NO. All other members had the same opportunity to vote NO as well (though nobody else did, since they didn't have an pro-ODF agenda that IBM did; IBM lost 20-1). Those other members included Apple, Novell, government entities, etc.

If anything was "rubberstamped" by anyone, it was ODF being rubberstamped by ISO. ISO approved a standard that wasn't even complete. It doesn't even have a standard for saving spreadsheet formulae. Oh, and Microsoft was on that IDO committee that rubberstamped ODF and raised no objections (unlike IBM throwing a temper tantrum at the ECMA/OOXML vote).

Look at KOffice and others

[shis-ka-bob]

I assume that you are claiming that ODF is the StarOffice format and that OpenOffice.org is the open source fork of StarOffice. The problem with this is that the format did change significantly when OASIS took over and sought input from many organizations. ODF has been adopted by the KOffice team, the folks writing Goolge web apps, IBM, etc. But don't be swayed by name dropping, just look at documents in the format, they are worlds apart from OOXML in terms of readability and conformance with existing XML standards. MS took existing binary formats and converted them to XML, this is quite different from taking existing XML tools/standards and combining them when possible and adding to them as needed. Its a completely different mindset and it leads to completely different results, even if both are superficially similar 'zipped XML' formats.

Re:Hopefully they go for it.

[the_womble]

That is because China is one of many countries where MS do not enforce copyrights.

A Chinese company selling in China might get atleast a reasonable proportion of people to pay.

I do not know China, but in my part of the world, no-one buys Windows, but corporates are paying up for Lotus Notes because IBM is starting to enforce it. Similarly you can get pirated DVDs of most films, but not films imported by a particular distributor.

Re:Just a negotiating tactic

[N8F8]

don't quit your day job

Lest we forget

[vtcodger]

Let's don't overlook that Chinese is generally written using an extensive set of non-alphabetic characters. My guess would be that the Chinese, like the Japanese, prefer their written materials to be in their characters, not in romanized text that conveys less information.

So, one issue would be whether ODF is suitable for representing Chinese (and Japanese) text. ... and how much aggravation is involved in using ODF to represent the chanacters -- compared to whatever solution(s) they are using now.

Re:Lest we forget

[ChameleonDave]

Of course ODF can handle Chinese characters, just like anything that supports Unicode. You'd be hard pressed to find a modern word-processing format that cannot contain Chinese characters.

Re:Lest we forget

[Tipa]

ODF has had this support since 2002.

See: http://opendocument.xml.org/milestones

2002 Definitions for CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) and complex text layout languages get added to the OpenOffice.org XML file format specification.

Re:Lest we forget

[fuzz6y]

Let's don't overlook that Chinese is generally written using an extensive set of non-alphabetic characters.

non-English-alphabetic characters. And you know who this stunning insight has occurred to before?

China.

Re:Lest we forget

[serviscope_minor]

> ... Chinese is generally written using an extensive set of non-alphabetic characters

> non-English-alphabetic characters.

No, non alphabetic. You know alphabet == alaph-bet or alpha-beta. The name derives from the first two letters in middle eastern/western system. The Chinese use an ideogramic character system, the Japanese use a combined syllabery and ideogramic system and in Europe and the middle East, languages are written in the Roman/Greek/Cyrillic/Hebrew/Arabic/etc alphabet.

As usual, Wikipedia has some excellent articles on the subject if you wish to find out more.

Re:Lest we forget

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. Chinese characters are indeed "non-alphabetic".

Alphabets are phonetic systems. Chinese is... uh... not, since matching characters to spoken words is a matter of rote memorization rather than simple or complex procedural rules. Written Chinese involves Characters, not an "alphabet". Yes, characters can be combined for new meanings like "lightning / picture", but this is analogous to "tele-vision" or word-level combinations in alphabetic languages, not the combination of letters into sound.

Your correction, "non-english-alphabetic characters", is wrong, and would be correct in, say, accented Spanish, or Cyrillic.

Re:Lest we forget

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Are you saying that Chinese characters are alphabetic? I thought they were morphemes.

Re:Lest we forget

[vtcodger]

Chinese characters are NOT alphabetic. Mostly, they are compounded according to a rather byzantine scheme that makes perfect sense if you happen to speak a Chinese based language (or a language like Japanese with a large vocabulary inherited from Chinese). As a first approximation, most of them are composed by merging two simpler characters on a sounds_like-refers_to basis. There are standard subsets that are easily encoded just like European alphabetic characters. But there is no rule that says that users of the language are limited to those subsets.

In point of fact, Chinese/Japanese speakers can make up new characters if they choose to, and if they do a good job, their compatriots will be able to understand the new characters. They might even use them themselves.

So, the question is, are the Chinese going to like the way that ODF handles their language? It doesn't matter if Slashdotters think that's a non-issue. What matters whether the Chinese think it is an issue.

Re:Lest we forget

[vtcodger]

Sorry. I forgot that most westerners do not understand that most Chinese characters are neither ideograms nor alphabetic characters -- something in between ... sort of.

Anyway, just because ODF (or any similar encoding scheme) can represent a subset of the characters does not mean that the Chinese will be happy with it. If you want to take this discussion further, you'll need to learn some basics of how Chinese characters are constructed. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_characters#Ch inese

I'm not saying that the Chinese won't love ODF. Merely that their somewhat -- for lack of a better word -- different -- writing method may not be as compatible with it or as readily handled as we Westerners tend to assume. According to Wikipedia, one of the symbol set standards for China (CNS 11643) includes 48K different characters. Even if ODF can handle all of those, dealing with them in practice may well be a substantial problem and the ease of doing so may well be a function of apparently minor implementation details.

Re:Lest we forget

[ChameleonDave]

I still don't know what you're talking about. I'm a student of Chinese and Japanese, and I always use ODT in OpenOffice.org for all my vocabulary lists, etc. The only problem I have encountered is that Ruby (furigana) annotations are not handled in the same way in MS Office, so I can't always convert documents; but that's a minor point.

the mcneal

[timmarhy]

he wouldn't do it if he didn't think he would be sucessful? yeah right... his other option is to sit back and watch his steadily dwindling market share. last ditch effort is what this is

Re:the mcneal

[Anonymous Coward]

...steadily dwindling market share...

Presuming this is an "on Fridays we hate Sun" rather than an "on Fridays we hate OO.o" shot:

http://enterprisenetworksandservers.com/monthly/ar t.php?3027

Re:Just a negotiating tactic

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Cant figure the mod. We have seen numerous governments announce big deals about Open Source and standards and then quietly use the press coverage to squeeze a better price from MSFT. This could be one such ploy. Agree with it or disagree with it. Like the implications or hate the implications. But off topic? Come on, mods, think straight.

Re:Just a negotiating tactic

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you seriously think China sets up a committee of scientists that spends years on developing a working document format only to squeeze a cheaper MS deal?
 
MS software is free in China at the moment, can't get any cheaper.

Mr. Tao, tear down this wall!

[Nexus7]

That's what he said, ol' Scott McNealy, "Mr. Tao, tear down this wall!"

Re:Mr. Tao, tear down this wall!

[koreth]

That'd be Mr. Hu, if you're talking about the current president of China. His given name is Jintao. Chinese, like other languages, puts the family name before the given name.

Probably Because

[Greyfox]

In Sun you need to file a business justification to run a Windows machine. If China runs ODF then Sun's China sales and support force does not need to run Windows or Word.

Another article linked by Andy Updegrove.

[ThePhilips]

Andy Updegrove gave interesting link to article: Sun's McNealy Proposes Merging ODF with Chinese Counterpart .

The article goes into into technical side of merge highlighting technical differences between the two file formats. And from my reading it seems like UOF is superior to ODF in many aspects.

playing the numbers game :)

[someone1234]

Hmm, last time i read M$ sold only some ~300 Vista licenses in China in 2 weeks. Not much more of a loss if China uses ODF.

The rest of the world subsidizes the USA

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the reasons you have a nice way of life is because we, the rest of the world, are supporting it. The USA give us paper (or just a flow of bits) in exchange of natural resources so you can waste them however you want.

In the same vein...

[triso]

My Pathetic Story

This is a true story that depicts my descent into the hellish world of "computer customization."

It started innocently about a year ago; as few friends of mine sat around the glow of the monitor and trolling for Grammar Nazis on Usenet. Lucie said something or other about different keyboard layouts. I didn't think anything about it until the next time we met over at Bill's place.

Lucie had this black bag with her and she pulled out a keyboard. "C'mon," she urged with a malicious twinkle in her eye, "its called a Dvorak and all the kewl kidz are using them."

Bill said that was cool and plugged it in. We each took turns typing with it and all of us liked it much better than the old QWERTY keyboards.

I felt odd going back to the old layout on my own computer so I gave Lucie a call a few evenings later and she said her brother was expecting a big order at the end of the month. I managed to wait four more days until the 31st and I was riding high until the 18th when I was called in to the Principal's office. She asked me if I was alright or if there was something stressful happening at home. I said I was fine and I went to Lucie's place to wind down after school.

Lucie told us that the latest thing was "ergonomic keyboards" and she had only two for us to sample tonight. I fell hard for this and bought one before leaving. By this time I was leaving school at noon just to type on my new keyboard.

Over at Mike's place on Saturday evening Lucie pulled out a track ball and made Mike unplug his mouse and use this instead. Mike was too square to try using it and we all had a laugh at his old-school QWERTY keyboard and his cheap clone mouse.

Lucie and I began dating during the summer and then her brother committed suicide on June 15th. I started pushing peripherals in July and we bought his and hers Porsche Boxsters in August. Apparently this was too much for our parents, Mike's Dad ratted us out and we now face charges of trafficking in computer accessories and other electronic devices. We lucked out since the police never found the boxes of aluminum mouse pads and chording keyboards in my folk's garage.

School starts in a week and I think we will each do well in our senior year. We have learned our lesson and now use standard peripherals only. Once a week we attend an accessories-anon meeting with our parents which helps a lot. Don't let this obsession ruin your life.

NAMES have been changed to protect the innocent.

Re: McNealy is another McEvil

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, i will ask to McNealy.

Why is bad the presentation of OO document?
Why there are still OO flaws since many years ago?
Why don't you release Java as GPL?
Why have i to fill your form register when OO starts?
Why OO is slow running over your still private JVM?

I hate you McNealy.

Chinese friends, don't agree them, it's a trap!.

Re:What irritates me is subsidizing my competition

[Maxo-Texas]

This is exactly the kind of down-mod's I'm talking about in the other thread.

It is a FACT that I am subsidizing medical care, medicine, entertainment (DVD, CD), and now software ($3 for Microsoft software stack -- free VB & .net development environments-- if you happen to be Chinese or Indian but $850 for me).

Using moderation to try and shut it up by calling a troll doesn't change the fact that the same people I am competing against for a job are getting huge discounts on their infrastructure from american companies.

Re:Just a negotiating tactic

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they already have strong local competing office suites such as kingsoft's and evermoresoftware's offerings.