New York Jumps Into Open Formats Fray

cyrusmack writes "Hot on the heels of the bad news regarding the defeat of all open formats bills, New York has become the latest in an area that has seen a flurry of activity already this year. In the article on InfoWorld, it's pretty clear that this bill is significantly watered down from what other states have attempted to do this year. You can bet Microsoft will be there in force, just as it has been elsewhere."

Comments

Bias Showing

[speaker of the truth]

Bills that would have required state agencies to use freely available document formats in Texas, Connecticut, Florida, and Oregon were shot down mainly due to the pro-Microsoft lobby Incorrect. They were shot down because of the FUD spread by both IBM and Microsoft.

From Computer World:

Wyne said, "this really is a battle among large commercial interests" -- a comment that was echoed by other people engaged in the political fighting.

The other problem, Mathers said, was the jargon-laden disinformation that committee members felt they were being fed by lobbyists for both IBM and Microsoft. Although lobbyists would tell the committee one thing in private, they got cold feet when asked to verify the information publicly under oath.

That undermined the credibility of each side, but it particularly damaged the position of ODF proponents. Perhaps this time round IBM will keep its mouth shut and the government will be able to see this isn't a battle for commercial gain, but a battle for information freedom and the rights of the people to view what its government has to say.

Re:Bias Showing

[belmolis]

You mistakenly present the situation as symmetric. It isn't. We only need one document standard, and we already have it. ODF is already an ISO standard and implemented by numerous products from a variety of sources. OOXML, on the other hand, is a Johnnie-come-lately, and is not a standard in any real sense. It is not an ISO standard and is not in use by anyone other than Microsoft. Furthermore, since it is not truly open, it simply doesn't meet the criteria. Thus, if Microsoft decides that it wants to join the rest of the world in supporting the open standard, it needs to add support for ODF. On the other hand, there is no reason for anyone else to adopt OOXML. There are, nonetheless, converters between the two formats.

Re:It doesn't matter...

[75th Trombone]

No, it's you who are confusing your personal idea of "value" with the accepted definition of "intrinsic value".

That's why M$ Sucks.

[Erris]

What, do you think Office is incapable of supporting ODF or something? That can be changed quite fast. I work on the Live Meeting team, and we are constantly working on communication/productivity tools...

Great, we all know that M$ could use ODF. The standard is complete and easy enough to implement that everyone else has already done it.

The problem is that your company would rather waste money on their own special format and propaganda so they can keep their little format franchise. Where was your bragging in Mass. when M$ was complaining that ODF would hurt blind people? If ODF is so easy to implement, was it really worth smearing Peter Quinn's out of job and reputation? It's this kind of arrogance that will cost M$ everything. People remember what you do.

Re:ya..

[belmolis]

You're missing the point. ODF doesn't require legislation to be successful as a format for those who are motivated to use an open format. Legislation is required to ensure that documents issued by governments use open formats such as ODF. In the absence of such legislation, we will continue to see governments produce documents in closed formats such as Microsoft's.

The crucial difference between ODF and OOXML is not one licensing. The problem is that ODF is truly open, while OOXML references a number of proprietary specifications. In short, OOXML is not actually open. The one place in which licensing comes in is that Microsoft only disclaims patents on the open parts of OOXML. Some aspects of OOXML are therefore not only closed but potentially subject to patent restrictions.

A secondary, though important, difference between ODF and OOXML is that ODF builds on a superior set of standard technologies, while OOXML incorporates all sorts of old Microsoft cruft.

Bill #A08961

[Takichi]

The bill basically initiates a study into vendor neutrality and interoperability. It states that the study will be completed by January 15, 2008. It says nothing about actually doing anything with the study, so nothing may actually change.

Still, it's better than nothing. So all you registered voters in New York, consider writing your state assemblymen and senators.
NYS Assembly Members
NYS Senate Members

I wish they would do it for the blind people.

[Erris]

I bet MS already has ODF compatibility ready to put on their website for download if a bill like this were to pass.

A M$ rep has bragged as much in this very thread. If it's true, I wish they would shut up about ODF being harmful to blind people.

I don't see any reason it would not be true. ODF is a sane standard and everyone else has been able to use it.

ODF is a great idea. But it is only a tiny step away from propriatary formats.

The difference between published and non published "standards" is night and day. Just ask yourself why there's no OOXML implementation for Mac or GNU/Linux.

Re:bullshit

[ozmanjusri]

So it's neither closed, nor proprietary as you claim.

It's both closed and proprietary.

OOXML is a dump into XML of all the data from existing Office formats. It can only be fully implemented by the vendor of MS Office.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2007011 720521698

Re:open formats win, MS loses

[Savage-Rabbit]

No one would ever use MS Office, or Visual Studio, or Windows, if there wasn't sufficient quality therein to justify the expense of staying. There are huge flaws and gaping shortcomings, to be sure, but somehow MS still manages to have enough quality over the free alerternatives that they stay in business. According to Sun's CEO, pretty much the same seems to be happening with Office suites as happened with Linux on the server OS market. More and more students are using OOo and many of them will be making decisions about which software to deploy in corporations in years to come and MS Office won't always be the neurologically hard-wired default choice like it is today. Whether this will lead to OOo becoming the threat to MS Office, that Linux is to Windows 2003/Vista Server is another story but the presence of OOo isn't helping Microsoft to sell their Office Suite and it certainly is among the only real competitors MS Office has had in the Office Suite market for years. The mere fact that OOo is being ported to Aqua with support from Sun has me (a Mac user) breathing a sigh of relief since OOo will finally become practically usable on the Mac (The X11 port is nice but really annoying to use) which gives me an alternative to MS Office plus it means there will finally be a real incentive for Microsoft's Mac Division to improve their product..

Re:bullshit

[ozmanjusri]

You say stuff, but nothing on how it's either closed or proprietary.

I provided you with a link to explanations clearer and more concise than anything I could include here.

I'm aware you're not prepared to look at evidence which would conflict with your view, but for the convenience of other readers, I've posted the headers to the Groklaw articles which contain the complete explanations.

# 7 Ecma 376 contradicts numerous international standards

* 7.1 The Gregorian Calendar
* 7.2 ISO 8601 (Representation of dates and times)
* 7.3 ISO 639 (Codes for the Representation of Names and Languages)
* 7.4 ISO/IEC 8632 (Computer Graphics Metafile)
* 7.5 ISO/IEC 26300:2006 (OpenDocument Format for Office Applications)
* 7.6 W3C SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics)
* 7.7 W3C MathML (Mathematical Markup Language)
* 7.8 ISO/IEC 10118-3, W3C XML-ENC, and other cryptographic hash standards
* 7.9 W3C SMIL (Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language)

# 8 Ecma 376 is immature and inconsistent

* 8.1 Fabricates units of measurement
* 8.2 Internal inconsistencies: the w:sz element
* 8.3 Internal inconsistencies and omissions: ST_Border
* 8.4 Confusing and inconsistent definitions of lengths of hexadecimal numbers
* 8.5 Unspecified terms: plain text
* 8.6 Poor names and inconsistent naming conventions for elements and attributes
* 8.7 Inflexible notation for percentages
* 8.8 Inappropriate non-document settings (application settings)
* 8.9 Non-XML formatting codes
* 8.10 Inflexible numbering format
* 8.11 Uses a Microsoft-specific namespace

# 9 Ecma 376 uses bitmasks, inhibiting extensibility and use of standard XML tools

* 9.1 Background: bitmasks
* 9.2 Bitmasks in Ecma 376
* 9.3 Bitmasks are not extensible
* 9.4 Bitmasks cause significant validation problems
* 9.5 Bitmasks defeat XSLT manipulation
* 9.6 Bitmasks conflict with the Ecma TC45 charter

# 10 Ecma 376 relies on undisclosed information

* 10.1 Undisclosed proprietary specifications
* 10.2 Cloning the behaviour of proprietary applications
* 10.3 Relies on application-defined behaviors

# 11 Ecma 376 cannot be adequately evaluated within the 30-day evaluation period

* 11.1 Ecma 376 has not met the stability requirement

# 12 Ecma 376 cannot be reasonably implemented by other vendors

* 12.1 Ecma 376 requires implementation of undisclosed specifications
* 12.2 The "compatibility with legacy formats" can only be implemented by Microsoft
* 12.3 Patent rights to implement the Ecma 376 specification have not been granted
o 12.3.1 The Microsoft covenants not to sue grant no rights
o 12.3.2 Microsoft licensing documents are ambiguous
+ 12.3.2.1 The Microsoft Open Specification Promise is ambiguous
+ 12.3.2.2 The Microsoft Covenant Not to Sue is irrelevant and ambiguous in any event
* 12.4 End-User License Agreements (EULAs) may forbid full implementation

Anyone wishing to understand the full risks of implementing OOXML in their own software should read the Groklaw page very carefully.

Re: Dont confuse Open Format with Open Source

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

They are different things. Open Formats/Standards are simply interoperability requirements. Do not confuse it with Open Source. And dont confuse Open Source with Free Software. Proponants of Free Software also support Open Source and Open Standards. They have to. But their zeal actually turns off many companies who would otherwise support Open Standards.

Open Standards, just mean that, Open Standards. Both proprietary software and open software can implement the API and formats. We can not skew the Standards to favour either one of them. Infact to counter the deep pockets of Microsoft, we need another one with deep pockets. And such a player would definitely want to make money for all the pain and effort. So we need to support anyone who supports open standards, even if such a player wants to sell proprietary closed source solutions.

All I want is a level playing field. Let all software, open source and close source, free software and comercial software, and shareware too, fight for their marketshare in a field of guaranteed interoperability. Let the marketplace decide which is best at that time.

Re:One Missing Weapon

[CastrTroy]

Nobody is saying that MS or any other commercial company cannot produce software to read the open formats. The only thing that public standards allows is for people to use free software (or any commercial package) if they choose to. Nobody is forcing anybody to use any specific software. If the government put out everything in MS .Doc, then the only way to properly and reliably read the documents would be with MS Word. However, if they release the documents in ODF, then you could read them in OpenOffice, KOffice, MS Office, WordPerfect, and any other word processor that you might want to use. Sure some word processors don't support it yet, but it's a free and open spec to support, so if there's a market for it, and the choices are support the format or lose customers, then they choice is pretty clear.