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

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

[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

[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

[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

[marcello_dl]

But, English is in the public domain :)

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

[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

[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

[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

[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).

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

[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.

If Scott brings the correct carrot

[ReidMaynard]

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

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

[DownWithTheMan]

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

:-/

Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

Post is very insightful and well-worded

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).

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.

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.