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Massachusetts Likely To Approve OOXML
Ian Lamont writes "The IT department of the state government of Massachusetts has designated Microsoft's Office Open XML as an open document format, along with ODF, plain text, and HTML. It's only a draft policy, but it sets the stage for the format being given an official stamp of approval by state authorities — and weakens earlier Massachusetts support for the Open Document Format. Microsoft got a big boost at the end of 2006 when Ecma approved OOXML, and again this spring when pro-ODF legislation was being defeated or watered down in six states."
Because this is the first crack in the dam of Microsoft's vendor lock-in. If Massachusetts stores and releases all government material in an open format, then Microsoft must support that format, or lose a lot of business. Remember that Massachusetts is the home of MIT, lots of businesses there that care about government regulation. And once a couple businesses in Massachusetts stop using office, it can spread. They email some document to another company across the globe, in ODF, then that company comes into contact with ODF, and it will have to either install separate software for it, or even switch away from office, if Microsoft still refuses to support ODF.
Of course, if they do support ODF, then they lose their vendor lock-in outright. No problem switching to OpenOffice if all your clients have Office, just send your stuff in ODF, and they can open it. Microsoft chose the one way out that would let them have some control, develop their own open standard, and lobby like mad to get everyone to use that instead of ODF. That way, at least they own the standard, and that's what Microsoft's always been after.
... personally I think it should be approved; once the ECMA and ISO approval is done. You have apparently not read the OOXML standard, or you might think differently on the subject. I have read it. It is has to be one the poorest attempts at a "standard" I have ever seen. It is incredibly complex and obtuse. Go, check it out. Please.Bearded Dragon
This does raise an interesting question though, because MS is successfully slipping through the door here. It is a case of following the letter of, but not the spirit of, the law. They have provided a "standard" that is just good enough, just open enough, just documented enough, to meet the ISO and ECMA requirements (and really, it is pretty borderline on that, and could still go either way). At the same time it has a whole host of what are essentially closed unimplementable features riddled through it, guaranteeing lock in which MS so desperately needs (do they really? Is MS Office so mediocre that it can't actually fight toe to toe? I suspect it would do fine; it may lose some market share, but would probably cope well). The question is: how do we close the loophole? Exactly what needs to be asked for in a standard to ensure it is actually an open standard?
For the most part this hasn't been a problem; people seeking standards mostly wanted them to be universally implementable. The idea of someone trying to get an ISO standard that was useless to all but the submitter; well, that was rather ridiculous -- it would seem to be defeating the point. Now, however, it is very much the case. So what needs to be asked for to actually guarantee openness? This is not a trivial question.
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Microsoft could just fully document their old formats, and those documents could remain in those formats with full compatibility in other applications (other than the original program used to write the document). Hell, they could fully document the new format, but instead they say, "refer to Word version x", where x is an undocumented, proprietary format.
Also, Microsoft could provide conversion programs that convert your old documents into the current standard (whether it be ODF or a version of OOXML without all the cruft).
Another thing they could have done is make OOXML a bit more of a modular standard (especially since they're using XML) and allow full standards compliance with applications that don't implement the backwards-compatibility cruft.
And regarding patents, instead of some unenforceable "covenant not to sue", they could explicitly give up all related patents or even license the OOXML specs under some sort of GPL3-like license where they are giving away their related patents to all uses of said standard.
Instead of all the logical approaches, they've decided it would be better to just pipe their old OLE format to an XML format with little to no changes and document it. Problem is, they left the cruft intact and didn't fully document the format. Hell, there's also the issue with patents, but if all they wanted to do was crush the ODF standard, they didn't really need to release their patents for it.
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Some standards are developed before the implementation like the 802.11n standard. That makes sure everyone can interopperate. You can also open a previously closed format which is what Microsoft is doing. This will allow other companies to implement Microsoft's format in their own products without having to reverse engineer it or pay for it.
I believe ODF worked the same way. They defined the format and then allowed it to be open so others can implement it. It's not exactly the same because ODF is Open Source but it's similar. I could be wrong about this one. I can't remember how it was developed very well.
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StarOffice started in 1986. Microsoft Office debuted in 1989.
So, now it has your sympathy?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
"OOXML is an open standard."
Can you read the specification and then write software that implements it? No? How is that an open standard?
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
The Massachusetts Governor, Deval Patrick, has a website that allows people to create issues and vote on ones they care about. There is an open issue on this right now-
http://devalpatrick.com/issue/opendocument
So go let your voices be heard.
... ODF is an open standard which means that anyone can generate their own ODF reader and writer. In fact, every computer on the market right now can basically read ODF (in a primitive way), since any modern OS can extract a zip archive and read the plaintext that is inside. Yes, ODF is really that open! You can read it and work with it with very simple tools. This is exactly the case with OOXML as well. It's the same setup. Open standard, stored as XML file(s) then zipped up. The point with ODF is that you are not locked in. It is so open that it is very easy to convert your data, using a wide variety of tools (many of them freely available). The same cannot be said for MS's offering... which is why it cannot be legitimately called "open"