OpenDocument Foundation To Drop ODF

poet sends us to Computerworld for a story on the intention of the OpenDocument Foundation to drop support for Open Document Format, OASIS and ISO standards not withstanding, in favor of the Compound Documents Format being promoted by the W3C. The foundation's director of business affairs, Sam Hiser, dropped this bomb in a blog posting a couple of weeks ago. Hiser believes CDF has a better shot at compatibility with Microsoft's OOXML, and says that the foundation has been disappointed with the direction of ODF over the last year.

Comments

questions

[stoolpigeon]

The first place I saw this was LinuxToday which linked to this cnet article on the matter and I've done some digging since and I've got a few questions. Maybe someone here will know.

Is there a difference between Compound Document Formats and the Compound Document Framework. Are the formats implementations of the framework and if so are they supporting a chosen format or the entire framework?

Do any existing office suites support this framework/format?

Re:questions

[cHiphead]

Its blatantly obvious that Sam Hiser, proponent of the blog post that sparked this frenzy, doesn't know jack shit about the real specs of ODF, read the comments on the blog I linked, they more than make the point (aside from the initial long-winded comment attempting to discredit anyone with enough common sense to disagree with Hiser, its a nice try but anyone with a hint of mental forethought and reasoning ability, can see right through the propaganda). Twenty minutes of actual research would've saved Hiser and the ODFoundation a lot of grief.

Additionally, if this isn't some backroom Microsoft inspired posturing, I'd be VERY surprised. The very essence of "CDF" in the way Hiser frames his argument is compatibility with MS OOXML. Who gives a rat's ass about specific compatibility within the framework of a particular document directly with another type of document, thats not the point of the whole exercise the odf format is attempting. The ODF is OPEN for any application to implement 100%, that allows for clearer communication between applications, and as a result, real living people.

Cheers.

Re:questions

[alx5000]

Well, of course, since Esperanto is just as easily learned by people as ODF can be taught to computers...

Universally spreading Esperanto requires an effort from a lot of governments around the world to promote it and teach it; universally implementing ODF requires some programmers, some coffee, and a couple of months, to code a filter that can be then reused in future versions or other applications.

Don't confuse intent with possibility of realization.

Re:questions

[Antique Geekmeister]

While that bit of logic is similar, Esperanto never had any country that actually used it. ODF does, in the OpenOffice and StarOffice suites of software. Thus, it never had a base of native users to support or to eveolve it.

Next strawman?

Re:questions

[mrsmiggs]

The software companies that support ODF might have set out to dethrone Microsoft, however the goal of a standard and the awarding body is not to dethrone Microsft but to have the format widely used. This would force Microsoft to have include compatibility in their programs.

What the OpenDocument Foundation should be promoting is compatibility of programs like Open Office with OOXML and also Microsoft Office with ODF. They need to prompt the ironing out of issues with OOXML so it can become a well defined standard, introducing a 3rd standard into the mix doesn't sound very constructive to me. It'll just cause far more work for the developers of applications, who at the end of the day provide the ability to convert between doc, docx, odf, pdf, wpf or whatever else you've got stashed away.

Re:questions

[mysticgoat]

ODF won't be worth anymore than the proprietary format OOo used before it, if there isn't enough added-value that it's worth it for common people to spend the resources to convert.

Well, that's pure bullshit.

The primary value of ODF is that it reduces archival, retrieval, and distribution costs of our largest institutions. You know, the really big and long-lived ones, like nations, states, businesses that have celebrated their centennial year, and so on. We will start to see the benefits in about 10 years, in improved information services, and therefore lower taxes and cost of goods than would otherwise be the case.

The direct costs to implement this are lower than any alternative. There are only two other strategies, and one variant of the ODF strategy, so let's do an exhaustive listing:

1. Maintain the archives in their existing formats and keep software on hand, and hardware to run it, that can work with each format as needed. If you've never had the pleasure of working in a mixed environment of WordPerfect, WordStar, Word, Lotus, and Quattro files, then don't pretend you could imagine the costs of this approach. Talk to somebody with relevant experience. We've not all retired yet.
2. Update every document in the archive to the latest and greatest format whenever the current market leader declares that its time for the world to upgrade to its latest product. Uh, hello??? The idea is to contain costs and improve services, not keep a company that's lost its way rolling in profits???
3. (the ODF variant) Rather than adopt ODF (which has been in development for a few years, has a pretty good track record, and is extensible), let's all go with a format whose documentation is an order of magnitude more complicated, lacks critical detail, and will require everyone who uses the only software that will be sure to run it to pay an annual licensing fee?
4. For completeness, here's the ODF approach one more time: Adopt ODF. Use existing FOSS to convert documents to ODF for archival purposes. If the documents don't convert properly, tell the author to rewrite them in good form, without the stupid bells and whistles. Use existing FOSS and slack time to convert old archived material to ODF for long term storage.

The indirect costs of implementation are dependent on how effective Microsoft can be with its campaign of FUD, bribery, and astroturfing. They do not seem to be as good at this as they used to be— their notoriety now precedes them— but they are still a force to be reckoned with.

Hey, you damn astroturfers, get your crap out of our meadow!

Re:questions

[Nazlfrag]

Oh. I, see. That's why, why he talks... talks like that. It's just that, there's quite, a few pauses, in Esperanto. You don't, you know, hear it, well not much, thanks to the lack... lack of, native speakers.

Re:questions

[SEE]

or an ODF compatible software package is able to reach the level of expert-usability that Office has. No problem. I'm pretty sure Microsoft Office has 100% of the level of expert-usability that Microsoft Office has, and Microsoft Office is ODF compatible by just adding the free ODF plug-in.

Re:questions

[Ginger Unicorn]

And why must authors waste their time rewriting documents (that can be years old) properly so that the afore-mentioned FOSS program/converter can convert them?

because depending on the volume of documents, it's probably better to do that, than adopt one of the other alternatives listed in the GP. an alternative to rewriting the documents, is to write open, documented extensions to ODF to accommodate the "bells and whistles", and improve the FOSS to do the conversion. Although you'd have to pay someone with the expertise to do it, it may work out cheaper than rewriting thousands of VBA macros. and once it's done once, its done forever, for everyone.

Alternatively you could just wait till some other FOSS developer does it anyway. It's never black and white and the cost of moving vs. savings due to liberation from legacy software is something specific to each situation. So your question "why should they waste their time" contains the unstated assumption that it is a waste of time for them to do it. In some cases it isn't.

Re:questions

[mrchaotica]

They need to prompt the ironing out of issues with OOXML so it can become a well defined standard, introducing a 3rd standard into the mix doesn't sound very constructive to me.

I hate to break it to you, but introducing a second [faux] standard into the mix, i.e., OOXML, makes no sense either!

ODF already exists and is an ISO standard. Any other competing document formats, including OOXML, CDF, Apple's proprietary iWork formats, etc. have no reason to exist except for the selfish benefit of the companies that might promote them. Period.

Re:questions

[orcrist]

The reason it didn't fully catch on was laziness and English speakers' arrogance (continuing to this day) in assuming that their language is the one that the rest of the world must learn, despite its obvious technical deficiencies and difficult-to-learn nature.

Wrong wrong wrong. The reason it didn't catch on is because it's not a native language of a group whom anyone really wants to talk to -- that's two strikes against it. Any Linguist who has a clue knows this. For a language to become a lingua
franca it has to have a base of native speakers who have economic, political, cultural, and/or military influence. It has nothing to do with some special characteristic of English speakers.

Furthermore, the idea that Esperanto is somehow universal in nature is just arrogant Indo-European-centric thinking itself. Tell a Hungarian, or an Eskimo (e.g. Yupik) speaker that Esperanto is 'easier' to learn and they'll laugh their asses off at you. Anyone who claims Esperanto is somehow 'neutral' or incorporates the best of all worlds has never had any meaningful exposure to a non-Indo-European language; that's 95% of the languages of the world, in case you're wondering. Just for reference: Farsi (Iranian), Russian, Spanish, English are all first-cousins linguistically speaking (I bet you think they're *really* different from each-other, right?) Esperanto is their gene-manipulated bastard child.

To any speaker of a truly foreign language like Yupik there is no practical difference between learning any of those languages -- oh, except if she learns English she gets access to the whole world of business, science and international politics, as well as the best chance of asking for directions when traveling; if she learns Esperanto she can talk to a bunch of kooks, assuming she can find one of them.

But I'm sure you and many other amateur Linguists on Slashdot are going to disregard this completely and stick to your preconceived notions about natural languages with completely inappropriate comparisons to designed languages which is eerily similar to ID proponents when talking to biologists. I'm not sure why I even bother to respond to these kinds of posts. *sigh*

Nope

[Microlith]

Nothing has a chance at compatibility with OOXML except the bloated crap churned out by Word and its ilk.

Driving to achieve closeness or compatibility with Microsoft formats, except as something kept at arms length, is essentially suicide.

Re:Nope

[DerekLyons]

Driving to achieve closeness or compatibility with Microsoft formats, except as something kept at arms length, is essentially suicide.

On the other hand, completely ignoring Microsoft formats isn't essentially suicide, it is suicide. Microsoft exists, and dominates the office application market, pretending it doesn't exist and that you can 'do your own thing' without taking it into account is utterly stupid.

Re:Nope

[ShieldW0lf]

That's a possibility. It's another possibility that those companies who are chained to MS fucked up formats are going to bear ever increasing costs trying to deal with vast amounts of complexity that do not generate any return, but are obligatory for legal reasons, while their competitors who are not burdened with this defeat them in the marketplace by virtue of their not having this lead weight around their neck.

I'm inclined to think it's the latter, personally. It just takes a while.

Re:Nope

[martin-boundary]

That's typical short term commercial thinking, which is entirely inappropriate for open source. Remember, open source is about creating the best tool for the job, not squeezing users for cash. If it takes a few years longer to get there, so be it.

Open source can easily afford to take the long view in technical matters, because the bottleneck are the programmers and other volunteers. So if you want open source to thrive, make it interesting and simple for programmers to add a little bit here, a little bit there, and promote technical excellence, not compatibility to today's garbage.

Your concept of market suicide makes no sense for open source. If however some people still want to chase a moving commercial target for "compatibility", they can just put up some money and pay somebody instead of expecting it for free. They'd better do it fast, though, because in two years it will all be out of date again.

Re:Nope

[porl]

compatibility with ooxml is an *application* problem, not a document format issue. ogg, flac and aac audio formats aren't 'compatible' with mp3s, but what is the point? they serve the same purpose but they are *different formats*. mp3 might be the most popular at the moment, but that doesn't mean every format must be as close to it in implementation as possible.

porl

Re:Nope

[dhasenan]

Let me get this straight: you think that a document format should be compatible with MS formats? Isn't this an application-level thing? What groundbreakingly useful features can be expressed in OOXML and not ODF?

Re:Nope

[nine-times]

On the other hand, completely ignoring Microsoft formats isn't essentially suicide, it is suicide.

That's why OpenOffice (and many other applications) have the ability to read and write Microsoft Office files (.doc, .xls, .ppt). But trying to make those your standard document formats for your office suite would be completely retarded, since they're not open standards and you don't know the specs. And Microsoft can change the specs and not tell you.

Re:Nope

[Hooya]

> On the other hand, completely ignoring Microsoft formats isn't essentially suicide, it is suicide. Microsoft exists, and dominates the office application market, pretending it doesn't exist and that you can 'do your own thing' without taking it into account is utterly stupid.

Quick, somebody tell Linus and RMS that MS dominates the OS market as well and they really shouldn't try to roll their own.

That aside, I do understand where you're coming from. We do *lots* of document generation. I mean 100,000+ in a given week. We use XML/XSLT to target PDF, ODF, OOXML and what have you. OOXML is a *major* pain compared to ODF. While we did implement the necessary software to support OOXML due to market situation, I do hope that ODF displaces OOXML. If ODF attains more 'compatibility' with OOXML, what's the point? We have OOXML now. We don't need ODF to become OOXML. We need it to replace it. If ODF becomes the defacto standard by *becoming* OOXML, that'll be a sad day for us.

Re:Nope

[G Fab]

Maybe this is true eventually. Probably not, as there is no indication that anything will be easier to use than office, but who knows?

Thing is, Office is the cheaper and faster option. It costs too much to go to microsoft free solutions, because the truly expensive stuff are employees (who generally can be expected to know Word and Excel automagically) and training time.

I sure as hell would love for you to be right, and I think maybe Google or others will make online documents in a way that makes Word a dinosaur.

So many companies would love to provide their employees with mere html portals locked to the document program, and with no way to print or save data (unless you are screened well). Enter data, go home. I know it sounds dreadful, but it's probably the future.

Re:Nope

[suckmysav]

My GF sent me an email the other day with an attached word document with the tag that it was "amazing".

I tried to open it in OO on linux and got a blank screen.

  So I boot to Windows and open it in Word

Seems that it is simply a Flash animation embedded in a Word document, which gives rise to two questions;

1) Why the hell would somebody embed a flash animation in a fricking word document?

2) Why in the name of all that is holy is Word even capable of rendering Flash?

It is no fricking wonder that the MS Windows+Office platform is such a successful malware attractant when all their apps are capable of doing completely inapproriate things with inappropiate data.

It beggars belief.

Re:Nope

[peragrin]

>>Thing is, Office is the cheaper and faster option. It costs too much to go to microsoft free solutions, because the truly expensive stuff are employees (who generally can be expected to know Word and Excel automagically) and training time.

Until MSFT completely changes the file format and GUI for MSFT OFFice ala MSFT 2007. Then all new training is required because those who need training memorize locations instead of actions. Indeed the loudest complaints about the new interface is from people who don't understand the differences. while I haven't used it yet and most likely won't(I'm sorry but $1000 for an OS and office suite? I don't think so), I do think it is a step in the right direction.

the problem is people are taught Word, and Excel. They aren't taught word processing or spreadsheets. Every time MSFT releases the OS the layout is slightly different. new training is required for those were taught to memorize the interface.

Re:Nope

[Gogo0]

at work i frequently get emails with no body, just a powerpoint attachment containing (in wordart) a simple message (august birthdays party at noon tomorrow!).
people around the facility learned a while ago that i dont open powerpoints from email -save for work-related ones (which iv never come across).
if its not important enough information to treat with a little respect ("cheryl has cancer and we're taking donations!" in wordart doesnt come across as serious as it should) then i dont think its important enough to waste my time looking at.

Re:Nope

[G Fab]

Yeah, totally totally true. Office 2007 makes no sense at all as a strategic move. It is totally different from what people are already able to use, even if it is somehow better (just seems overly simplified to me).

I wonder what the hell has been going on with Vista and Office 2007. Not that MS has ever been brilliant about these things, just the monopoly.

There is a bit of a market for openoffice to fill if they can be seen as the Office 2003 successor to Office 2003. But I still think the whole model is old and we will move to web based software for basic office tasks.

Re:Nope

[Kjella]

1) Because it's what they have and what they know. For example, in dealing with an IT department recently where we needed to make screenshots attachments (they were used to Notes where they pasted in, now we needed files) the solution was to have them past it into Word, save and send. Would an image editor and an image format be more appropriate? Yes. If an IT department won't do it, will regular people? No.

2) Because Microsoft has figured out there's more money in trying to do what people want, rather than trying to tell people what to do. Using excel as a pseudo-database? Using excel to do simple lists? Ok, we'll try to accomodate you. It's the complete opposite of the Unix philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well, it's the philosophy that a user shouldn't need to use more tools than necessary and applications thus should be jack of all trades, and only if it can't be shoehorned in should the user have to use a different application.

Re:Nope

[TheNetAvenger]

Yeah, totally totally true. Office 2007 makes no sense at all as a strategic move. It is totally different from what people are already able to use, even if it is somehow better (just seems overly simplified to me).

I wonder what the hell has been going on with Vista and Office 2007. Not that MS has ever been brilliant about these things, just the monopoly.


Microsoft is in the process of pulling off a in your face, quiet revolution.

A key element of both Vista and Office 2007 is the paradigm of moving the GUI away from sins of the past.

The first and biggest problem with old UI concepts was Menus. They were a fast solution to a big problem. Menus are by nature not a 'graphic' UI element, even though they are synonymous with GUIs today.

If you are using Menus, you are in effect having to memorize a list of commands, and their location. Memorizing lists of words is one of the things GUIs were supposed to remove, and failed.

(Look at the Help Search in Leopard, it is specifically designed to search for Menu Items in applications because even Apple understands Menus are still not the ideal GUI solution.)

Vista and Office 2007 (more noticeable on Office 2007) virtually removed all menus, with the exception of single list contextual menus, and they will be replaced at some point as well.

Microsoft is 'slowly' using their UI research to bring new GUI concepts that are long overdue to the Graphic environment.

What the non-Microsoft world seems to overlook is how far they will take this, and how MS could leapfrog both Apple and the current OSS world if people stop paying attention or discount what Microsoft is doing. This is how it is a 'quiet' revolution, as most people don't get the 'bigger picture' of what Microsoft is slowly moving towards.

If you take Office 2007, Vista, and especially the framework constructs of WPF/Silverlight, notice where they are heading, as the WPF aspects are designed specifically for implementing new UI concepts in new ways. Microsoft plans on bringing the results of their GUI research this to their customers now that they have the frameworks/platform to do it.

So the next time you read an article by a 'tech' person giving Office 2007 or Vista bad marks for something like 'removing' UI Menus, realize the 'tech' person doesn't get it and MS is pulling one over on them even.

Re:Nope

[mrchaotica]

The first and biggest problem with old UI concepts was Menus. They were a fast solution to a big problem. Menus are by nature not a 'graphic' UI element, even though they are synonymous with GUIs today.

Wait, menus are a problem because they're not Gooey enough? Who the fuck decided that being Gooey was the be-all and end-all of UI design anyway?!

If you are using Menus, you are in effect having to memorize a list of commands, and their location. Memorizing lists of words is one of the things GUIs were supposed to remove, and failed.

No shit, Sherlock! And if you're using "Ribbons," you are in effect having to memmorize a list of icons representing commands, and their location. Memorizing lists of pictures is one of the things GUIs were supposed to encourage, but is fucking stupid, because then you have to memorize the mapping between pictures and concepts (even harder than between words and concepts, by the way, because it's hard to describe a verb by a picture) anyway! How is that an improvement?!

Re:Nope

[starfishsystems]

Not to mention how anyone is supposed to communicate such use to someone else.

It's bad enough now, having to write instructions like "First select Edit -> Preferences -> Security -> Certificates -> Manage Certificates. In the resulting Certificate Manager popup, select Authorities. Now click Import..." and so on.

Anything that forces a graphical representation also forces us to converse in terms of graphical representations. And guess what, humans don't do that very well.

Seriously?

[bakuun]

This, if something, will convince people that Microsoft's competing standard is better for them. Dropping support for the very format that they've been pushing for so hard, so recently?

That will have agencies and large corporations running away from ODF - and any successors - right into the welcoming arms of Microsoft.

I almost hoped that it was April, 1st - but when I checked, it was still October. Damn.

Re:Seriously?

[erroneus]

OpenDocument Foundation is not any sort of official or central proponent for ODF. Looks to me like Microsoft bought this two-man operation off and are attempting to throw in a little more chaos in with the threat to OOXML.

Re:Seriously?

[ShieldW0lf]

Hiser acknowledged that ODF supporters are angry with the foundation because of its change of heart.

Indeed, Andrew Updegrove, a partner at Boston-based law firm Gesmer Updegrove LLP and a vocal supporter of ODF, criticized the OpenDocument Foundation in an e-mail on Monday.

"It's a shame," he wrote, "that a group that was expressly formed for the purpose of supporting ODF is now actively working against the standard -- especially given the fact that its tax exemption is based upon supporting that same standard."

What I want to know is, why is this not fraudulent? Sounds like someone forming a non-profit-anti-smoking group, accepting donations and not paying taxes, then speaking on behalf of cigarette companies with the funds collected. Will this organization not at the least be forced to dissolve? What happens to their legal status?

Huh?

[LiquidCoooled]

is it April 1st?
Is this posted on theonion?
is taco drunk in charge of a keyboard?
has darl got a new job?

How much has ballmer paid to give such a turnaround?

Re:Huh?

[Eggplant62]

How much has ballmer paid to give such a turnaround?

This was my first thought: How much did MS pay off the OpenDoc Foundation?

Re:So is ODF (the format) dead, then?

[Anonymous Coward]

For more info, check here: http://netcraft.com/

Oh, My - What will PJ say?

[eer]

Looking forward to reading her reaction on Groklaw...

Re:So is ODF (the format) dead, then?

[SargentDU]

No, Sun and IBM, Wordperfect and others are still working with it. It is strange to me that the so called Open Document Foundation can do this as was pointed out in the article link, that it is a non-profit established to help with Open Document Format, that they would steer their organization to an opposite position to its namesake. I think all the officers should be kicked out and a realignment with their charter should be taken.

Boards, Foundations and Working Groups, OH MY!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why having "boards" and "foundations" and "working groups" equals death for free software. They get bogged down, undermined and subverted by politics and beaurocracy.

Re:Boards, Foundations and Working Groups, OH MY!

[Grishnakh]

From what I'm reading in other comments, this "foundation" was never meant to promote ODF at all. Basically, it's a couple of shills, probably paid off by MS, who set up this cleverly-named "foundation" to make it appear as if they are some official body in charge of ODF (they're not), just so they could tarnish ODF by speaking out against it and in favor of Microsoft formats. Basically, they're a form of astroturfing.

Re:Boards, Foundations and Working Groups, OH MY!

[Antique Geekmeister]

Sadly, Microsoft often doesn't have to pay shills like this. They can sell their services in "promoting compatibility" to third parties who don't know any better.

Witness the career of Meng Weng Wong, who naively cooperated with Microsoft in accepting SenderID into his SPF standard and watched Microsoft's proprietary, patented XML lunacy effectively destroy further SPF deployment, while allowing Microsoft and SenderID to take credit for all the good SPF had already done.

It's like dealing with Wal-mart: you may be forced into doing so in the short term by the need for expansion, but in the long term, it's usually death for you company or your project.

Quote from TFA:

[rumith]

"All Sun cares about is its application," Hiser claimed. "Sun never thought of the format as being more important than the application. Sun's position has always been that interoperability with Microsoft formats is outside the scope of ODF." A solid and justified position, if you ask me. Has this Hiser guy had a heat stroke recently?

Does it matter?

[chill]

If OpenOffice.org, Sun (StarOffice), IBM (Lotus Symphony) and KDE (KOffice) all continue to support ODF, what difference does it make what the Foundation does or says?

Re:Does it matter?

[DaleCooper82]

None for you and me and others here... I am afraid though that it will have negative impact on decisions about the format used by corporations, countries (like SA last week?). They want to see support behind whatever format they choose... and well, marketing is (unfortunately) huge player these days... And there will be ODF version of 'Get the Facts' soon. How sad.

Re:Does it matter?

[hritcu]

What foundation? Never heard about it until now.

Re:So is ODF (the format) dead, then?

[lbbros]

Foundation or not, ODF is still an ISO standard, don't forget.

Have you been bought, sir ?

[unity100]

compatibility with Microsoft's OOXML what the f**k does that mean ? we are trying to make ODF THE format, we dont care about what ms is pushing or its compatibility. ms should try to make whatever they have compatible with it. they have forced enough stuff to the i.t. world already, its time they adapt their ways to what majority wants.

Thanks a lot, guys. B-(

[Ungrounded Lightning]

My department has been migrating TO windows .doc format (over my objections) for internal documentation - apparently due to inertia among the managers.

I'm not just annoyed by getting tied to a proprietary format: I'm particularly worried about all the windows tools running, since IMHO our company is a prime target for Spear Phising. (And I know there's been some harvesting going on by ordinary malware because, just today, I got some spam coming in from outside forged to claim it's FROM an internal mailing list.)

I've been pushing for standardizing on an open format - specifically ODF - for some time now. (This has been hard, because the last time I edited a .doc format document with Open Office it broke the hyperlinks, and the last spreadsheet I touched ditto lost a bunch of graph annotation.)

Now the rug gets pulled out from under my credibility (yet again) by the open community itself.

I'm throwing in the towel on this. I'll just sit back and use the Microsoft tools and let IT handle the malware. Open documents can wait until somebody in upper management drives it when it becomes the latest management fad (which probably means when the winter olympics is held in hell). If the company's crown jewels get stolen by a spear-phisher I'm on record for an "I told you so!" and I have enough squirreled away to retire.

OpenDocument Foundation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgive me if my memory is bad, but aren't they that unimportant bunch of nobodies who formed their own organization and decided that Microsoft compatibility was their #1 goal?

As I recall, in spite of the grand-sounding name, the people in that organization don't have anything to do with anything. They're busy recommending this and that, but they don't actually do anything.

Ahh, here we go, here's my source on this:

The mythology of Silicon Valley is filled with stories of two guys and a garage founding great enterprises. And here we have two guys, and through blogs, interviews, and constant attendance at conferences, they have become some of the most-heard voices on ODF. Maybe it is partly due to the power of the name? The "OpenDocument Foundation" sounds so official. Although it has no official role in the ODF standard, this name opens doors. The ODF Alliance , the ODF Fellowship, the OASIS ODF TC, ODF Adoption TC (and many other groups without "ODF" in their name) have done far more to promote and improve ODF, yet the OpenDocument Foundation, Inc. seems to score the panel invites. Not bad for two guys without a garage.

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[oldosadmin]

As one of the founding members of the OpenDocument Fellowship http://opendocumentfellowship.com/ (although I no longer consider myself a member due to time constraints), I can say that in every effort made to get a real community going with ODF/OO.org there was always a pushback from Sun, and it's really sad to see. I don't think Sam is right that CDF is the answer, but I do think that his comments about Sun not caring about ODF are probably very true.

OpenDocument is an already vetted ISO format. Why should we return to the back of the line now? We have our format, it's approved, and has support in many applications. No need to start bickering between ourselves when we're already fighting a lot of the corporate proprietary software makers.

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[harlows_monkeys]

Wow. Someone who is paid to promote ODF doesn't like people who have problems with ODF. Is there going to be film at 11?

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[LiquidCoooled]

BRIAN:
        Are you the Judean People's Front?
REG:
        Fuck off!
BRIAN:
        What?
REG:
        Judean People's Front. We're the People's Front of Judea! Judean People's Front. Cawk.
FRANCIS:
        Wankers.
BRIAN:
        Can I... join your group?

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[oldosadmin]

501c3 Foundations under US law cannot lobby the government. The Fellowship was created with the idea of promoting ODF to everyone -- including governments, so we chose to not go the foundation route, and some other people made up the foundation.

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[risk one]

As the founding member of both the OpenDocument Federation, and the OpenDocument Alliance (both very recently founded), I can now officially state that we support a move back to unformatted text files. We are also in favor of increased funding to OpenDocument organizations, people paying attention to us, and we are in talks with Microsoft about our recent "Porsches for founding members" program.

If these initiatives are successful, we intend to combine our operations with the OpenDocument Union, the OpendDocument Pan-Atlantic Pact, the OpenDocument Coven, the OpenDocument Reading Group and the OpenDocument David Hasselhoff fanclub in hopes of getting many more people to pay attention to us.

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[kisielk]

Splitter!

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[tsa]

I can't understand why it's important to make a document format that is compatible with OOXML. Come to think of it, I can't understand what they mean by a document format being compatible with OOXML. Did MS push a few bucketloads of money in the direction of the OD Foundation to help them change their mind?

Follow the Money

[jimicus]

that it is a non-profit established to help with Open Document Format

Stop right there. If that is the sole purpose for the organisation to exist, then it makes no sense at all for it to start promoting an alternate format.

The most logical reason for this change of heart I can think of - given that nobody seriously expects "compatability with Microsoft formats" to ever be anything more than a pipedream - is a big bag of cash.

Re:So is ODF (the format) dead, then?

[hey!]

Splendid! Who wants to contribute to a foundation to "promote" OOXML?

The only thing that really matters is that developers of products that people use support the format. A foundation is just another entity that has its own peculiar interests to pursue. The importance of a foundation is in who decides to work with it, no more or less. It's just a mechanism for cooperation.

They are *nobody*

[paugq]

"The OpenDocument Foundation", in spite of its name, is nothing. They are not the "official" foundation backing ODF. They are just two guys, with a good name and without a garage, which used to develop a OOXML ODF converter. Read this for more information: Cracks in the Foundation.

Some will find this confusing until...

[Bryansix]

Among ODF's weaknesses is its provenance from a specific application and the unwillingness of its originators to release it into the Bazaar. Merchants of irony will note this is the identical problem that paralyzes the incumbent gorilla's format.

Some will find this confusing until you see the Open Document Foundation's Slogan: Achieving Universal Interoperatability through Open Formats. I think it's dumb that they are trying to create a format that will magically work with all systems instead of pushing all of the systems to work with one format.

You must love Microsoft tactics

[Pecisk]

First, it was disability support. It was shot down.

Second, it was not supported by Microsoft Office. It was shot down too, with developed plugins already available for organisations.

Third, it was "let's have two formats and let's live together peacefully". Yeah, right. Formats don't get accepted by ISO just because there are "very important to keeping in touch with old good ole Microsoft Office".

And finally, we get "interoperability with Microsoft formats" argument. What a croak.

Get this people - truely open document format will NEVER have anything to do with Microsoft Office wet dream to keep domination. NEVER.

Re:Thanks a lot, guys. B-(

[Grishnakh]

I've been pushing for standardizing on an open format - specifically ODF - for some time now. (This has been hard, because the last time I edited a .doc format document with Open Office it broke the hyperlinks, and the last spreadsheet I touched ditto lost a bunch of graph annotation.)

Now the rug gets pulled out from under my credibility (yet again) by the open community itself.

This isn't the "open community", this is a group of shills paid by Microsoft who have cleverly selected a name for their "foundation" to make it appear as if they have some power over the ODF standard. Blame MS for pulling the rug.

Reading his words...

[Skiron]

"Hiser believes CDF has a better shot at compatibility with Microsoft's OOXML, and says that the foundation has been disappointed with the direction of ODF over the last year."

All he is saying here, in honest truth, is that MS monopoly is allowed to continue.

What ODF was about is OPEN format so that all can produce, create and save documents read by any other. The above statement now concedes that we go back to 'trying' to read a proprietary format designed to lock-in users in a monopoly.

It gets from bad to worse.

Re:For me, that makes the decision easy

[Grishnakh]

I can't believe they bailed on ODF that quickly. Just makes my decision a no-brainer concerning other document standards they push in the future.

Who's "they"? This OpenDocument Foundation has nothing to do with ODF the format. They're just some shills paid off by MS who picked a clever name for their "foundation" to convince people like you that they're in a position of authority over ODF, which they're not. They just run around trashing ODF, and get paid under the table by MS to do it.

Opendocument Foundation isn't related to ODF

[fejes]

The Opendocument Foundation isn't officially related to the OpenDocument standard. They're just a bunch of guys who took the same name so that they could ride on the coattails of the ODF movement, and doing MS's bidding, derail the process... and look, they're trying hard.

Before taking this article too seriously, you might want to read this posting too:
Cracks in the Foundation

Re:So is ODF (the format) dead, then?

[AuMatar]

Splendid! Who wants to contribute to a foundation to "promote" OOXML?

Miguel de Icaza?

unacceptable

[m2943]

ODF an ISO and ECMA standard, and a lot of people have fought hard for both the standard and its adoption. For anybody in the ODF camp to abandon it at this point is unacceptable; any political or technical problems with ODF should have been resolved before

People complain about "the unwillingness of its originators to release it into the Bazaar". Excuse me, it's an ISO and ECMA standard. There should be "nothing to release", this standard should be cast in stone for at least half a decade. If extensions are needed, there should be an extension mechanism (which, I believe, XML namespaces provide).

And what is supposed to replace it? A non-existent W3C standard? Heck, the W3C hasn't even been able to replace HTML with XHTML; the notion that they can replace ODF/OOXML with CDF any time soon is laughable.

Of course, something like CDF is going to happen eventually; but the proper way of introducing it would have been to emphasize ODF as the near term solution and use it as a bargaining chip to get Microsoft to settle on CDF in the long term. What is going to happen now is that Microsoft is just going to declare OOXML the winner and point at ODF/CDF as another example of how open source and open standards are unstable and can't be trusted.

The ODF is handing Microsoft's OOXML victory on a silver platter. How much did Microsoft buy you all off for?

Re:unacceptable

[macshit]

You've probably read this in other comments already, but "OpenDocument Foundation" has no official connection with ODF (the format) -- they're just a couple of losers with a grand-sounding name, who apparently got some MS shill money recently.

Re:This is Sun's Fault

[Bryansix]

Java is platform independent for a reason. If they would have allowed platform specific code into Java it would have muddied the waters. People would no longer know when a Java App was for a platform or worked on any platform. Java has the problem of being slower because of it's just in time compiler but this is why Java is also so nice for developing in because you can rid your mind of platform dependant issues and focus on writing the application.

Re:This is Sun's Fault

[mmurphy000]

Blame Sun for this. With a few small additions, ODF could have supported Office formats as well, but Sun would not allow this. Their policy is that ODF will support what is needed for StarOffice, and nothing more. They control the ODF technical committee, and their patent license allows them to stop the ODF TC if the ODF TC goes in a direction Sun does not like.

Citations, please. If you're going to lob grenades like this, you owe it to your readers to offer proof of these accusations. I'm not saying you're wrong — I can see some factions within Sun taking this approach — but it'd be nice if you offered some proof.

"we"

[unity100]

here are many people in i.t., who actually decide what is going to be used in their respective companies as it people, and many big i.t. companies in the field against microsoft. i dont see any "majority" or "power" on microsoft side apart from being able to grab casual, irrelevant old-age user in a remote state by the balls, because s/he doesnt know jack about computers. these kind of majority dont dictate anything, unless it is during a tea party in a suburb.

Some elaboration

[g2devi]

Actually, it's just three guys:
http://opendocumentfoundation.us/we.htm
Not much of a foundation.

The *real* ODF group is:
http://www.odfalliance.org/memberlist.php

I think that the only honest thing the "The OpenDocument Foundation" can do is rename
itself "The Compound Documents Format Foundation", since to do otherwise would be as
deceitful as Microsoft choosing to name OOXML "Office Open XML". But honestly, I doubt
they will. Their comparison chart between CDF and ODF betrays a few lies:
            http://opendocument.foundation.googlepages.com/GOSCON_Chart.pdf
In particular:
* CDF is not OOXML compatible, nor has any implementation shown this to be possible. ODF at least has a not-100% compatible conversion.
* ODF has a lot more big vendor support than CDF
* Neither are universal formats, but ODF is supported by more vendors and software projects at the moment.

Personally, I think that the reasons for "The OpenDocument Foundation" changing it's
support from ODF to CDF is self-interest. When ODF was first introduced, there was
money to be made for a small company to write MS Office/Corel Office/Mac Office plugins
and other conversion services. But then Sun and others started offering free converters
and conversion services. There's just too much competition too quickly

CDF, OTOH is not as well supported universally, so there's a lot more room for
a small company. And if the CDF growth rate is slow, the "The OpenDocument Foundation"
has the chance to become *the CDF conversion experts* and make a lot of money.
Also, since CDF (if you believe their claims) is more web oriented, it would be good
for transactional converters of many types that need to be used for each message.
With ODF, you convert your document once and don't have to worry about going back
(by purpose....ODF is best for documents that have to be read, as is 100 years
from now). The difference in profit between one-time business and licensed per
transaction business could huge, even if CDF has a smaller market.

Umm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's true that Rob Weir is an IBM employee. How does that impact the accuracy of his story? Can you point to any fact in that story which is wrong or misleading? It matters not who he likes or hates if his arguments are sound.

Now then, it's also true that this "Foundation" has no official role in ODF whatsoever. It was started by a couple of random people who do little more than blog, attend meetings, and feed quotes to the press. And right now, the "OpenDocument Foundation" is abandoning ODF for CDF. Let the "Closed Document Format" jokes begin.

So, really, why again should we care about their opinions? They're certainly entitled to them, but like so many Slashdot posts, do they actually matter? Or is this fuss unseemly given that the "support" the OpenDocument Foundation offers amounts to little more than words? It's not like they're actually coding anything, developing the standard, or any actual, useful work.

It's tantamount to trumpeting "Anonymous Coward drops support for Windows!" when I can't really imagine that my opinion of Microsoft's code is worthy of front page news. Though I'll certainly settle for a (+5, Insightful) or two :-)

Re:Thanks a lot, guys. B-(

[Antique Geekmeister]

Excuse me, but there is no such thing as ".doc" format. There at least half a dozen, if not more, mutually distinct formats labeled ".doc". Each of them has features and capabilities not available in all the others, and transformations among them are non-reversible: translating a document from an old Word 95 format to Word 2003, to Word for Macintosh version whatever, will not reproduce your original document. It's even worse for spreadsheets, which are also part of the format.

The denominators for it are not "common", they're nearly fractal in their complexity.

Re:Isn't the point to be "Open" - not compatible?

[Antique Geekmeister]

No, the name is clearly designed to create an impression of a relationship with the Open Document Format. It's a common tactic for gathering webhits and credibility, much as the "Open Source Foundation" pretended to be about open source, which it never really was.

What this is really about

[iabervon]

The key point is that, with ODF v1.2, which is in progress as a further ISO specification, ISO wants the format to be able to handle conversion of all of the world's existing legacy documents. Some of these documents only make sense based on errors in the legacy applications that were used to generate them, and getting actually correct calculation would destroy the comprehensibility of the documents. For example, if a spreadsheet has a calculation error, and this error leads to the final results being different, and the spreadsheet is part of a document justifying taking a particular action based on the result, understanding the document depends on being able to see the calculation that the author saw, and not the correct calculation, which would be incoherent. Current ODF is fine for making correct decisions going forward, but it is inadaquate to understanding past mistakes. And it means that, if you use a broken old program like Excel 2007 to prepare your taxes, and you convert it to ODF and send it in, the ODF document will contain no clues as to why you're trying to pay a different amount from the total given at the end, because the information that the math is broken in the source in a particular way is not representable in ODF.

Furthermore, the OASIS committee responsible for developing ODF has broken down entirely, at least in Sam Hiser's view, over the issue of how this should be handled, with Sun ignoring the need entirely, while the OpenDocument Foundation, trying to go forward in ISO, insists on having something get done.

As far as I can tell, CDF is actually totally irrelevant to this whole thing, except that it's from the W3C, which is simply not the OASIS ODF TC, and hasn't broken down. CDF is essentially the concept "do the obvious XML thing for putting compound documents together". It doesn't specify the format of any component office documents, except for SVG for figures (it specifies a bunch of other formats for particular purposes, but nothing interesting or different). The main benefit of CDF seems to be that the group doesn't have the level of bad blood that there is over at OASIS, so there's a chance of producing some specification for the next version.

On the other hand, it's hard to corroborate any of this with any evidence outside of Sam Hiser.

Paid for by Microsoft

[HermMunster]

First, the idea of more compatibility with OOXML is not even remotely the issue. These are separate specifications. They are by nature incompatible. One format is not compatible with another. Second, you don't pull the rug out from underneath an existing format that has been approved by the organizations that matter, and Microsoft is not one of those that matter. As far as performance goes, what is he talking about? Milliseconds, adoption?

This whole thing sounds like complete malarkey to me. Something is awry. If you can't buy the standard organizations I guess they can buy the ODF key players.

trademarks?

[m2943]

but "OpenDocument Foundation" has no official connection with ODF (the format)

Then Sun, OpenOffice.org, ISO, and ECMA screwed up on trademarks. "Open Office XML" and "OpenDocument Foundation" should refer to nothing other than ODF and OpenOffice.

Appears that CDF incorporates ODF (and others)

[UnderCoverPenguin]

Looking at CDF - "Compound Document Format" - appears that it is not so much a document format, but rather a "format aggregator".

I don't see CDF itself replacing ODF, rather, ODF would be one of many formats that could be contained in a CDF file. OOXML very likely could be another such format.

HEY SLASHDOT FIX THIS STORY'S WRITEUP

[Nicolas MONNET]

As has been mentioned several times in the comment, the "Open Document Foundation" has no real connection to the Open Document Format, and the writeup reads like a MS-shill press release. So please fix it with an addendum so that casual readers of Slashdot don't take it at face value.

Could this be any *more* misleading? Editors? WTF!

[Torodung]

Are you going to edit this article so that it clearly states that the "Open Document Foundation" has nothing to do with Open Document Format (ODF), other than that they are also in the "document" business?

For crying out loud, this is a garbage summary that deliberately leaves out necessary context for no other apparent purpose than to mislead the reader into thinking it matters what this "foundation" thinks.

FROM TFA:

The OpenDocument Foundation Inc. doesn't have any control over ODF. Contrast with the OASIS ODF specification boilerplate:

The names "OASIS", "OpenDocument", "Open Document Format" and "ODF" are trademarks of OASIS, the owner and developer of this specification, and should be used only to refer to the organization and its official outputs. OASIS welcomes reference to, and implementation and use of, specifications, while reserving the right to enforce its marks against misleading uses. Please see http://www.oasis-open.org/who/trademark.php for above guidance. This is hogwash, not Slashdot. The only point of leaving it "as is" is to spur OASIS into trademark action, and I think there are better ways of doing that.

--
Toro

OASIS needs to sue. Now.

[Torodung]

This is a textbook violation of trademark. If they don't sue at this point, they will lose control of the name "Open Document Format" itself. "Office Open XML" was pushing it, this is just plain pure trademark violation so some smart-ass Microsoft executive can claim that "the Open Document Foundation has abandoned the Open Document format."

It's also probably defamation, and if there is a money trail between the Foundation and Microsoft, there are damages to be had.

It's time to serve some papers. If anyone works with the organization, forward their legal department a copy of the article with a brief reminder that trademark violations must be defended, or you lose your trademark.

--
Toro

In other news...

[Craig Maloney]

In other news, McDonalds has decided to stop selling the Whopper, opting instead for the Big Boy Classic.

Re:This is Sun's Fault

[WebMink]

Blame Sun for this.

Sounds like a populist position, or maybe troll flamebait. I'll be generous and assume the former, despite the fact your post seems like a digest from an anti-ODF briefing paper. Disclosure: My job includes the task of receiving complaints about Sun and trying to get Sun to fix whatever causes the problem. If you have proof of any of your accusations, let me know. I may have some of my facts wrong below as I'm working from memory; I'd welcome correction.

With a few small additions, ODF could have supported Office formats as well, but Sun would not allow this.

That is indeed the constant assertion that the three guys who comprise the Foundation make. However, I have personally asked members of the ODF working group at OASIS and they tell me its not so.

• The Foundation guys wanted to add structures to ODF to preserve untranslateable tags in translated documents so they could be regenerated on the reverse translation. Sounds OK at first glance, but in practice it results in very brittle software solutions that work well in demos but not in real life.
• The proposal was thus rejected by the whole working group (not just the Sun employees).
• Rejected, that is, in conversation. A complete solution was never proposed for voting.
• To say Sun would not allow it ignores the actual dynamic of the working group (see below).

Their policy is that ODF will support what is needed for StarOffice, and nothing more.

Naturally every member of a standards group in the traditional standards process is looking out for the code base where they implement a standard, and will have serious questions of any feature that they regard as unimplementable. The features actually put to a vote by the guys from the Foundation would have resulted in very brittle implementations, highly dependent on the version of MS Office with which they were coupled. It may have been possible to come up with a solution that reduced this problem, but the discussion was not sustained. The assertion you make is not true in the general case.

They control the ODF technical committee

Untrue. The ODF TC can have no more than three members from any one organisation and is not under the control of any organisation. The Foundation guys actually flaunted that rule at one point and sent many, many more representatives - OASIS had to step in to fix it. That intervention is one of the issues they have with OASIS, in fact. Sun happens to employ the people who act as Chair and Secretary to the TC but the voting remains democratic.

and their patent license allows them to stop the ODF TC if the ODF TC goes in a direction Sun does not like.

I've heard that interpretation of the patent non-assert covenant that Sun has made regarding ODF, but it's untrue. Sun covenants not to enforce any patents against ODF implementations based on any spec it participates in. To the extent that versions of the spec after Sun's departure are based on version in which Sun was involved, that covenant remains in effect even in the unlikely event of Sun leaving the TC. Sun can't stop the TC from continuing its work.

Are you relaying this all as hearsay, or do you actually have data to back up your accusations? If you have, I'd like to see it (genuinely).

Who the hell pays retail list?

[westlake]

I'm sorry but $1000 for an OS and office suite?

This would be list for the most expensive retail boxes of both.

I have at least three options as a home user for a legit, discounted, price on Office 2007. The cheapest is through my employer: about $35 for the media with shipping and handling.

Local adult education programs in Office start at a subdized $5 per course.

No age restrictions. No income restrictions.

Your ticket out of welfare, your chance for a job past retirement, if you have need of one.