Study Touting OOXML Over ODF Is Debunked

The Burton Group, an IT research company, published a study urging that enterprise organizations adapt OOXML rather than ODF. Their reasons include things like "ODF is controlled indirectly by Sun," "MS Office is cheaper than OpenOffice.org," and "OOXML improved many problems of DOC." The Burton Group also claims that although ODF is well-designed, OOXML is better suited for the specific needs of enterprise organizations. The study claims to be impartial in that Microsoft didn't pay for it. Ars Technica now has up a pretty thorough debunking of the Burton study. Ars wonders how the Burton authors can so blithely overlook Microsoft's vote-buying in Sweden, while wielding unfounded accusations of chicanery in Sun's direction.

Comments

must not have been a hard job

[moderatorrater]

With claims such as "Sun indirectly controlling ODF" (as opposed to Microsoft directly controlling it) and "OpenOffice is more expensive" (free? wtf?), it doesn't sound like Ars Technica had too difficult of a job.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[Finallyjoined!!!]

It's no problem de-bunking the report, Burton are obviously in the pay of the monopoly. /. readers know this. The real problem is that corporate high fliers will read it & take it for a "reasoned & studied, impartial report"

monopoly money well spent.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[jorghis]

> "OpenOffice is more expensive" (free? wtf?),

License fees dont begin to cover the real cost of software. You need to have an IT department to support it, you have to train users on it, etc. A $100 dollar license fee seems negligable pretty fast when contrasted with the IT budget for a company and any productivity gains/losses that result from using different software.

This is often referred to as TCO (Total Cost of Operating) and salesmen love it cause they can always put up graphs that indicate that their product is clearly the best from that perspective. A lot of people roll their eyes when they hear this term because they dont think much of the aforementioned salesmen's BS. But it really is foolish to factor licensing fees into your decision about what software to use from a cost perspective unless those fees are truly exorbitant.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[jorghis]

Total cost of perating should have been total cost of ownership in the above post there. I wish slashdot allowed edits. : /

Re:must not have been a hard job

[MightyMartian]

I can guarantee right now that, from a training perspective, for anyone familiar with Office 97 through Office 2003, OO.org is going to be a helluva lot cheaper than Office 2007.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[wizardforce]

License fees dont begin to cover the real cost of software. You need to have an IT department to support it, you have to train users on it, etc

yes about that, do you have any examples where the license cost justifies staying with MS?

But it really is foolish to factor licensing fees into your decision about what software to use from a cost perspective unless those fees are truly exorbitant.

if you're going to count support and training into the equation you can't just ignore liscense fees now can you? considering a lot of businesses require many licenses the cost of this alone can add up quickly. As for training, you're reasoning seems to be that if it isn't exactly the same as MS it will cost boatloads more and that's a load of ****.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[jorghis]

That is true, no doubt. But it still isnt very cut and dry. What happens 4+ years from now when everyone and their cat knows Office 2007 (not an unlikely scenario) and every new employee needs to be retrained on OO.org? Then it becomes more expensive.

Also, using the new file formats (which was the original discussion here) doesnt necessarily entail using the new software. You could continue using Office 2003 and use the newer file formats at the same time.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[Jawshie]

I understand your argument is about TCO but this article isn't about determining the overall cost of a product.
So you contend that Microsoft's software does not require any training whatsoever? All software requires training whether it be professional or self training. OpenOffice is similar enough in layout (in my opinion) to Office '03 that people familiar with it will find OO easy to navigate. Those who are not familiar with any office app will need training anyways.
I am confused though... Does Microsoft, assuming it is able to set OOXML as an ISO standard, plan on releasing the OOXML specs or have they already? It would be a shame if competitors could not read their formats even though theres a plugin for OO to read docx format files. Now if Microsoft would just kindly do the same and have their Office software read ODF...

Re:must not have been a hard job

[MightyMartian]

Well, I think, at the moment, some argument can be made to moving over to OpenOffice. Four years down the road, who knows? What I'm seeing thus far is a good deal of resistance in many quarters to Office 2007, and a lot of bitching from those who have it and save in OOXML, and then have to go and set the default to Office 2003 doc files so that Aunt Martha or the Accounting department can read their files. Strangely enough, a lot of people, from Aunt Martha or the idiot IT guy in Accounting can't or won't do that.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[Gyga]

4 years from now everyone working will still have used an earlier version of office (for school) so it would take very little to retach them (just bringing back old memories). Farther into the future you will start having the generation that grew up with computers, training costs for these people will probably be loads lower than today's current working class.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[Penguinisto]

That is true, no doubt. But it still isnt very cut and dry. What happens 4+ years from now when everyone and their cat knows Office 2007 (not an unlikely scenario) and every new employee needs to be retrained on OO.org? Then it becomes more expensive.

Maybe 10+ years from now... but even four years hence? The vast majority of the workforce today will still know how to handle OOo rather seamlessly. So unless you're talking about wet-behind-ears bottom-half-of-the-class college grads who don't know any different, Office 2k7 isn't going to represent any real paradigm shift in how documents are made and disseminated.

You also assume that world+dog would be using Office 2k7 - meanwhile, in 2008, half of world+dog are mostly using things like Office 2000 and Office XP.

/P

Re:must not have been a hard job

[jorghis]

> yes about that, do you have any examples where the license cost justifies staying with MS?

Like I was saying in my original post any salesman can make it sound one that one is better than the other. If you go to MS's website you can find case studies where it was cheaper. If you go to Sun's website you can find case studies where their stuff is cheaper. Both have som basis in fact and both are going to be slanted slightly to favor their respective authors. If you really want examples just look at those two web sites.

> if you're going to count support and training into the equation you can't just ignore liscense fees now can you?

License fees are tiny next to the cost of operating an IT department and any productivity gains/losses. A handful of guys working in IT will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Even if you have a lopsided ratio and a few IT guys are supporting hundreds of people that is still a one time cost of a few tens of thousands of dollars versus hundreds of thousands a year.

> As for training, you're reasoning seems to be that if it isn't exactly the same as MS it will cost boatloads more and that's a load of ****.

It is generally true. Most job applicants out there are familiar with MS software and have used it extensively in the past. Ergo, the software learning curve for a new employee is generally lower.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[harlows_monkeys]

Sun does control ODF, through patents. Read the patent license Sun gave when they submitted ODF for standardization. It only covers that specific version, plus future versions whose standardization Sun participates significantly in. That means if OASIS starts going in any direction that Sun objects to, Sun can just step away, and their patents stop development in that direction.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[neil-ngc]

As you probably know, total cost of ownership, while real, is pretty hard to predict in advance. Anyone telling you otherwise is probably selling something.

It is generally true. Most job applicants out there are familiar with MS software and have used it extensively in the past. Ergo, the software learning curve for a new employee is generally lower.

At this point, I think it's a fair argument that the cost of retraining to use OO.o is probably much smaller than the cost of retraining to use Office 2007. Just because a job applicant is familiar with MS hardly means they're familiar with the latest version, which has fewer similarities to Office 2003 than OO.o does.

License fees are tiny next to the cost of operating an IT department and any productivity gains/losses. A handful of guys working in IT will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Even if you have a lopsided ratio and a few IT guys are supporting hundreds of people that is still a one time cost of a few tens of thousands of dollars versus hundreds of thousands a year.

While this is a fair argument, I'd be interested to see some evidence that there's a difference in IT costs between the different suites, and, if there is, is it greater than the total licensing costs. I'm not pathologically anti-MS. I continue to use Windows and Office because it's convenient and makes it easier to switch between work and home, not to mention it allows me to run my games without fussing endlessly with wine. On top of that, I have one Mac on the network, and OOo's lack of a decent Mac version (X term or a very resource intensive Java hack don't count) has left Office as the better option.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[mugnyte]

You may not know this, but licensing fees start high and go up from there. It's not $100. It's many $1000's, especially given OS, database, middleware, tools, backup kits, etc.

  TCO for any single product may be negligible given support costs, but if you have to pay the same on either side, why add more for licensing? Paying for licenses without knowing if the best commercial vendor is actually any better than FOSS is foolish, to me.

  This is where the "cost of support" and "market availability of skillsets" argument arises for FOSS. However, this is also where commercial vendors play a delicate game: get the product in many hands so that folks are skilled with it, but hit price/feature/support point that avoids folks from simply using FOSS.

  For example, college kids are much more inclined to build a server and applications on a LAMP solution than try to juggle all the fees for the MS tools, but then MS offers the "educational" pricing, or free versions of the packages, or single-user, etc. This is just so it can capture mind share and leverage it for market share.

  TCO is an old topic and at the bottom, the price/feature/support points are moving all the time. Also, the skillset availability is highly geographically variable.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[Psych0_Jack]

Sun has an ODF plug-in for MS Office 2000-2007. It's not like using ODF means you are forced to use OpenOffice.org. Isn't that the point of an open format, no vendor lock-in?

Re:must not have been a hard job

[calebt3]

Not to mention OOo's spin-offs and KOffice.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[Stephen Samuel]

It could just as easily be the other way 'round. Right now there's a real battle in terms of OO vs MS Office. I'm not sure that either one is going to win that one hands down anytime soon.

In the meantime, people are starting to learn about open Office and -- for a starving student, even $100 for the MS Office Suite vs $0 for OO is gonna be the difference of a handful of beers, or meals .. or a bus pass.

For starving students, TCO =~ license cost, and -- since very few people are buying Office 2007 right now, learning OO is actually a better investment, in the short term, than learning MSO 2007.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[baggins2001]

Licenses usually run about 250 per computer. When you have only 50 users or less. The hassles usually outway the benefits. One is morale. If you don't pay for it how can it be any good and if it takes me extra time to use it then you don't respect my time, because you won't give me the right tools to do my job.
Also there is the all important ability of file sharing. As of now I know of no version of OpenOffice that allows more than one person to have a file open and make changes to it. That has been supported since Office 2000 and is becoming a dominant issue.
The other problem is that customers and suppliers use MS Office and some will save it in 2007 and mail it to us. There are very few people who have the huevos to ask them to send it back in a readable file format. They would rather go to IT and bitch or to the President and bitch about how they don't have what they need.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[Creepy Crawler]

What's to "learn" with an office suite?

When did you "learn" to use a browser, or did you just play with it for 5 minutes and get the hang of it?

Re:must not have been a hard job

[cmacb]

Cute sig.

You're right though. Most Office users are writing away at their documents, computing their departments next year budget and so on, after just 5 minutes of playing with Word and Excel.

Unfortunately, for the rest of us, this methodology shines through in the results.

Also unfortunately, most of these people never bother to get any better at what they are doing and further go on to preparing Powerpoint sideshows that we have to pretend to pay attention to.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[MrMunkey]

A $100 dollar license fee seems negligible pretty fast Except when you factor that cost per computer (not just employee). At a company size of 100 employees that only have one computer a piece, that gets to be a lot. Office 2007 Pro comes in at $347.99 (according to Amazon anyway... I was lazy to compare prices anywhere else). You're going to run into a cost of $34,799.00. When you're talking about that much money I think that OOo starts looking pretty attractive from a price perspective.

Also considering the level of proficiency, at my company anyway, with MS Office productivity isn't that high on average anyway. Switch them over and add training and you're already more productive.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[filbranden]

The real problem is that corporate high fliers will read it & take it for a "reasoned & studied, impartial report"

I don't think so. Recently with Office 2007 and specially Vista I've seen that companies are really trying to avoid the upgrades as much as possible. Maybe it's the recession, but the thing is that right now companies are really considering not giving Microsoft a load of money for upgrades that bring few worthy features many new problems, and are considering alternatives instead.

Nowadays companies are not blindly eating whatever Gartner et al. feed them anymore.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[filbranden]

Most Office users are writing away at their documents, computing their departments next year budget and so on, after just 5 minutes of playing with Word and Excel.

I wouldn't ever do my budgets with Excel. Specially as I have to buy for my company 850 software licenses that cost $77.10 each, which totals $100,000.00!!!

Re:must not have been a hard job

[TENTH SHOW JAM]

Correct. There isn't a lot to learn. Having said that, I used IE7 for 5 minutes and was uncomfortable with the layout. I returned to a browser that had a similar layout to the original browser I "Learned" (in this instance "Netscape navigator Version 2 I think) And once I was back with firefox I was happy again.

The same can be said of Office. What I want in an office product is features to be layed out in the same way so when I reach out for the "Make this line a header" tool, I'm grabbing the right tool first time. Now I am not a power user by any stretch, but if I spend more time "Learning" where they hid the (up the font size by 2, make bold and underline) key then I am not spending that time writing the paragraph below which contains job related information.

In short make your interface intuitive or if you can't manage that, make it the same as the last one. Office 2K7 managed to break both these rules. Open Office 2 has a very similar interface to all the office products before it.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[Anonymous Coward]

License fees are tiny next to the cost of operating an IT department and any productivity gains/losses. A handful of guys working in IT will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Even if you have a lopsided ratio and a few IT guys are supporting hundreds of people that is still a one time cost of a few tens of thousands of dollars versus hundreds of thousands a year. You have never had to deal with Oracle (specially when clustering)

Re:must not have been a hard job

[rubah]

Yeah, but how many people had to support office 2007, learn how to use office 2007, etc etc etc? From what I've heard it's a little bit different, similar to the way that OO is a little bit different, and the lecturers in class still walked both sets of office users through the differences. What's the difference?

Re:must not have been a hard job

[ragefan]

That is true, no doubt. But it still isnt very cut and dry. What happens 4+ years from now when everyone and their cat knows Office 2007 (not an unlikely scenario) and every new employee needs to be retrained on OO.org? Then it becomes more expensive. No more expensive than when MS replaces ribbons for the next big thing in UI and then having to retrain everyone again. Or if they decide to stop backward compatibility of older file formats again.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[medge_42]

You are right about license fees being minimal consideration but we are talking about an office suite here. The basics are straight forward, any complex requirements might require training, but that is the same for both OpenOffice and Microsoft office and I find it hard to believe that you need and IT department to support it. Database servers and other such systems would be a different and more complex matter, but you can download OpenOffice.org and be productive with it immediately, thus TCO could end up being zero.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[ozmanjusri]

It's no problem de-bunking the report, Burton are obviously in the pay of the monopoly.

Burton are Microsoft boosters from way back.

They did a hatchet jobon Google for MS not so long ago, and when they're not slandering Microsoft competitors, they're out flogging Sharepoint Services.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[canuck57]

License fees dont begin to cover the real cost of software. You need to have an IT department to support it, you have to train users on it, etc. A $100 dollar license fee seems negligable pretty fast when contrasted with the IT budget for a company and any productivity gains/losses that result from using different software.

Spoken like a true MS-Fanboy.

The best software does not not require much support. Users are more adaptable than you might think.

Maybe in the problem is you have had to spend too much time tendering to keeping the fragile ware going. Seriously, Microsoft has built an empire on flaw-ware and dysfunctional coddling.

And about your cost of change, Linux has less of a GUI change than going Vista, so in fact you just argued going Linux. Or for that mater, a Mac. Vista is like no other, big huge GUI change and lots of pricey hardware.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[Anonymous Coward]

AAAAARARHHGGGGHH!

This is totally off-topic, but for the love of god, can someone explain to me what this f'd up Slashdot UI thingy is?

I've been reading Slashdot for years, but some time recently, I noticed that the UI was replaced. This new UI has popped up increasingly in seemingly random ways, and I can't figure it out.

I'm used to being able to sort comments by age, moderation score, etc., but sometimes it disappears and all I get is this thing on the left that lets be control the level of filtering in terms of my "threshold" for moderation scores. Why can't I sort posts?

I've looked in the FAQ section, and tried to poke around and figure it out.

I'm not trying to troll, I'm just totally confused. I'm sure I'm just being an idiot, but I can't figure out what the hell is going on, and for some reason I can't find any explanation for it anywhere.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[symbolic]

What we really need is a study from a reputable source that focuses one the real cost of "re-training" people from Office to OO.org. Seriously - they both do many things in very similar ways.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[Bert64]

But if a lot of companies move to OOo now while there's a compelling argument, 4 years down the line there will be a supply of OOo experienced staff and demand for more, causing people to learn it on their own time prior to applying for work...

Re:must not have been a hard job

[Bert64]

There isn't just the cost of acquiring licenses, there is also the cost of keeping track of how many you have, where they are and that you have enough etc, not to mention recovering licenses from retired machines, which can also soon add up.
With OOo, the license only places terms on distribution, it has no restrictions on how you can use it inside your company, so it doesn't matter how many systems you install it on, you can install it on every machine you have without worrying.
Also if you have any non windows systems, you can still install OOo so that all users will have the same suite..
Same for macs, msoffice for mac is a very different beast to the windows version, openoffice is just the same as the windows/linux versions.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[Bert64]

This is how microsoft force upgrades... Get people to send files in a new format, you can't open it without upgrading.
Why don't you try sending files back to them as ODF? It's actually a more reasonable thing to do on a number of levels (you're only complying with an iso standard, the "upgrade" is free etc)

Re:must not have been a hard job

[hughk]

Most corporates buy their Microsoft software through volume agreements. This means that license fees are a recurring cost rather than one-time. The only place where MS really does seem to have the upperhand is slightly better management/rollout and more functionality (which 70% of users don't use anyway).

Re:must not have been a hard job

[aproposofwhat]

Amen to that.

I've only been working with various computers since 1979, and it took me 5 minutes to figure out how to save a document using the Word 2007 interface.

Talk about frustration!

At least most of the old keyboard shortcuts still work, though - I touch that poisonous GUI as little as possible, and have learnt to tolerate it.

As I said to the guy who mandated it in our company - if I want a gay interface I'll use a Mac, thankyou.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[jimicus]

The real problem is that corporate high fliers will read it & take it for a "reasoned & studied, impartial report"

Perhaps I've had a very sheltered life, but how in God's name does someone become a corporate high flyer without knowing that there's no such thing as a "reasoned & studied, impartial report"?

Re:must not have been a hard job

[jimicus]

I can guarantee right now that, from a training perspective, for anyone familiar with Office 97 through Office 2003, OO.org is going to be a helluva lot cheaper than Office 2007.

You can guarantee all you like, but there are two things that you don't have:

1. The management tools that Microsoft provide for automatically rolling out and configuring Office through things like GPO.
2. A 15 page typed report (which could easily be condensed into 1 page) from some random organisation calling itself "The ---- Group" which agrees with you.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[jimicus]

I'd be interested to see some evidence that there's a difference in IT costs between the different suites, and, if there is, is it greater than the total licensing costs.

These tend to amount to two things:

1. Office has a plethora of management tools to ease rollout and configuration. When was the last time you saw end-users expected to configure Outlook themselves?

2. An assumption that the installation and management of a complete rollout of OpenOffice across a large business is significantly more complicated than the installation and management of a major Microsoft Office upgrade. (It probably isn't because most of the issues are more to do with "how can we manage this project with minimum disruption to the business?" rather than "I can't figure out how to use the product", but analysts seldom live in the real world).

Re:must not have been a hard job

[richlv]

like - "a lot" ?
correct usage of styles, correctly setting indents, margins, automatic indexes, outline numbering...
from my experience, basically nobody knows how to use all of these.
they manually format everything (which bites them HEAVY at any large document), space pages using linebreaks, some even indent lines using spaces.
some know how to insert automatic index, but most of those still manage to break it and instead of fixing their headings or whatever is the source of the problem, they edit the index manually. which, of course, breaks down the road.

and i've just touched some basic things which are required for successful document editing and collaborating. no, people don't know how to use word processors, not to mention other applications. and i'll admit that even though i more or less know my way around word processing, i'm bad at spreadsheets and very bad at presentations. which still is better than most...

Re:must not have been a hard job

[donaldm]

I won't disagree with what you said with regard to license fees and TCO, however the issue is not licensing, re-training costs or TCO it is saving your word processor file in ODF which is a document format and should not require any retraining, hence licensing, re-training costs or TCO is effectively zero.

Now moving from Microsoft Office to Open Office or even Star Office may entail some re-training although to be honest if you can use a Word processor or spreadsheet you can work on just about any Office suite of software. Sure you may not be 100% proficient but lets be honest here how many clerical people use even 50% of Microsoft Office capabilities, so re-training costs to any other Office suite is and should be minimal. I won't deny it, but those people who absolutely must have Microsoft Office because they are a power user are probably going to need re-training the most, not because they need to know what Open or Star Office can do but because they have locked themselves into a mindset of if it isn't Microsoft software then it cannot be good and have a very negative attitude to change.

Any manager who wants any type of re-training for a format is drinking too much Microsoft cool-aid and should be gently shown to a nice padded room for a extended vacation since their credibility and TCO has just flown out the window. :-)

Re:must not have been a hard job

[aussie_a]

(not an unlikely scenario) Its a possible scenario. However people are likely to use in the future what schools use, and schools are likely to use what businesses use. And so if all businesses plan for everyone to use Office 2007 (or some future version) everyone will use Office 2007.

Its sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[boteeka]

You could continue using Office 2003 and use the newer file formats at the same time.

Do you seriously believe that? Come on! We're talking about Microsoft here. Didn't this ring a bell?

Re:must not have been a hard job

[INT_QRK]

So, if Burton Group had any credibility in the past, they just squandered it by allowing this report to pass their QA. If they care to restore their reputation, they will fire the authors and retract the idiotic "analysis" paper that looks like it was written by High School Junior. Good gravy, people!

Re:must not have been a hard job

[Dancindan84]

The problem we've had here at the college I work at (where we have a site license for most things MS) is that the TCO on Office has jumped considerably with the last version. IMO the ribbon isn't a bad idea, but it causes our (many) computer illiterate faculty and staff no end of headaches trying to figure out where stuff is now. For the moment we're holding off on Office 2007 because of it, and it could be a good time for a competing office suite like OpenOffice to sneak in.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[CeruleanDragon]

Well, this depends entirely on who's using it. If you're talking about secretaries and managers that use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. extensively and often need their more advanced features, then yes, TCO skyrockets on them when you have to field call after call of "How do you do this?". You need to train both the IT support and the users and that takes a decent amount of time. Not to mention, as you said, productivity losses and the user frustration. Which is one of the biggest arguments as to why Windows OS is still so widely used. Joe User doesn't have the spare time to figure out how to use a Linux desktop.

But there are other instances where license fees make a world of difference, and I'm working a real-life instance of that right here:
We have ~300 thin clients used by our customer support group (it's our business), all they do is take/make calls and update a ticketing system via a telnet-based text program. Essentially all they really need is some web access, a HyperTerm-like program, and the dialer software for the outgoing automated calls. They do still need Office for things like reading documentation or charts or such things that their manager might send out. There are approximately 400 users (1st/2nd shifters often share/swap workstations), each needing his/her own Office license. At $100 each, that's $40K. OR we could (and are planning on) using OpenOffice (or maybe StarOffice, or something else), we'll see, something free. But see? Licensing == $$$$. Somethings a LOT of $$$. We're looking at expanding beyond 1,000 users within a year or two, so then we'd be up to $100K. Per version. That's a decent chunk of change. It might not seem like a lot to a sizeable corporation, but I'd rather that go into my annual raise, thank you very much.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[Miniluv]

There are such studies, they're just harder to find and cost money to read (since they can't exactly get sponsorship and hope to retain the impartiality). LightReading offers numerous reports on topics in the telecom and networking arena that are absolutely reasoned and studied, and as close to impartial as anything seems possible to be, as just an example.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[nakajoe]

To someone in a position like that, as long as they can do CYA decently well they're fine. Pretense of ignorance works very well.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[tbannist]

They may not have been directly paid for the report. Many of Microsoft's most vehement defenders are merely people and/or groups who make their money off of their MS Consultant role. They're big Microsoft boosters because they have to be to sell Microsoft's wares and bring in their own tidy consulting commision on the sale.

Now obviously this is a huge conflict of interest and should be noted as such in any report, but these people tend to believe that they are immune to any such biases.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[Midnight Thunder]

Nowadays companies are not blindly eating whatever Gartner et al. feed them anymore.

Companies maybe not, but managers on the other hand...

Re:must not have been a hard job

[tbannist]

Office has a plethora of management tools to ease rollout and configuration. When was the last time you saw end-users expected to configure Outlook themselves? Yesterday.

I think small to medium sized companies often don't use any of those tools because they're too complicated and cost too much.

On the other hand, if your company is large enough to need them, the comparison should probably be against StarOffice instead of OpenOffice. Because StarOffice does have deployment management tools...
http://www.sun.com/software/star/staroffice/enterprise_tools.jsp

Re:must not have been a hard job

[MrNemesis]

Perhaps I've had a very sheltered life, but how in God's name does someone equate a corporate high flyer with someone who's capable of analysing data in a critical, rational, objective fashion? ;)

I used to work for a small financial company, who saved a crapload of money by migrating much of our backend over to FOSS (file servers, mail gateways, internal webapps (Plone = rocks) - the company was only 18 months old when they joined and had invested heavily in an MS setup that was going badly wrong due to terrible third party maintenance so we were given alot of free reign with what we (temporarily) broke in order to get to a stable and maintainable platform, which we did. We were later bought out by a huuuge corporate who had a large (100+) IT dept. and were very much an MS shop. Fair few people there who've used Linux (indeed, all the DBAs are RHCE's for Oracle plus we have a couple of pSeries boxes for the big fat DB's and apps, plus we have some Linux SANs and lots of ESX boxes), but the level of ignorance about Linux and OSS in general has frequently been staggering:
If we use Linux, then we have to open source all our data
Open source is just used by people too scared to pirate
There's no-one to support it (this made the DBA's laugh, the RH support contract must cost a fortune)
You can't expect users to have to use a command line for everything?!
Plone and Zope? Never heard of them, but we'll have to get rid of them since they won't run on windows

Now I'm very much a "best tool for the job" man, so obviously it'd be idiocy to attempt a conversion to Linux on any part of the org because everything's too entrenched. But if seasoned IT pros (a job, I thought, that prized rational, critical, logical thinking above pretty much everything else) can't even realise that maybe tht upstart OS has a use in some business niches I shudder to think what the (rule of thumb: generally an order of magnitude less tech acument than the contractors on the support desk) honchos at the top migh act like when presented with a problem they generally don't understand.

Yeah yeah, I must've been born yesterday to equate an IT pro with someone who's rational, critical, logical and technical... ;)

Re:must not have been a hard job

[The Angry Mick]

Perhaps I've had a very sheltered life, but how in God's name does someone become a corporate high flyer without knowing that there's no such thing as a "reasoned & studied, impartial report"?

The same way they believe that all politicians are honest, that all TV news is truth, and that a certain "herbal supplement' will "enhance your manhood".

Re:must not have been a hard job

[Anonymous Coward]

Headline might have read "Burton Group Continues Work as Microsoft Shill".

Love their arguments -- although Microsoft has multiple convictions for monopolistic practices, and although they admittedly have outright *purchased* votes in attempts to buy the OOXML standard -- it will be an "open standard". War is peace, black is white?!? ...Putting on my forecasting turban, I predict the next Burton Group paper will be:
      Zune ready to replace iPod as market leader

Or maybe they'll feature an article on the superior popularity and reliability of the XBOX compared to the Wii....

You could start your own consulting company, just publishing white papers that "call bullshit" on these guys :-)

Re:must not have been a hard job

[harlows_monkeys]

What idiot moderated this as "troll"? Go read the damn ODF patent license from Sun. It is only half a page, and is written in quite clear language, for a patent license, and says exactly what I said.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[zoips]

Initially I was going to say what the hell, but now that I think about it, the weird office icon in the top left doesn't exactly make it intuitively obvious it is a menu. It does look like some kind of pointless decoration.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[skeeto]

monopoly money well spent.

So they got somebody to take that stuff? I would think all the bright-colors and cheap paper would give it away. Time to go to the toy store.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[Finallyjoined!!!]

Time to go to the toy store.

Time to go to the computer store :-)

Re:must not have been a hard job

[Anonymous Coward]

License fees dont begin to cover the real cost of software.

This is even more true in Microsoft's case. I recently helped a non-profit go through a "simple" upgrade. One of the lawyers they deal with had just bought a shiny new laptop with Vista and MSOffice 2k7. Since he couldn't be bothered to learn how to save docs in the older format, he insisted that the two front office computers be convereted to Office2k7 to read his docx files. The Office2k7 software itself was "donated" by Microsoft through their non-profit support program, so he reasoned this was a no money upgrade.

The two front office computers had been running win2k for years and would have quite happily continued to run it with all the other software they needed to run their business. Unfortunately, O2k7 will not install on win2k. Well, XP licenses were also available through the non-profit program, so the lawyer reasoned it was still no cost.

End result: one solid week of upgrade hell! Their IT staff (me and one other person, part-timers) spent that week upgrading both front office systems to XP, chasing drivers and new versions of the software they ran for their business, smoothing out sharing and network problems and then installing O2k7 and showing the staff how to use it. During that week, the front office was barely functional. Total cost for our time (and we gave a break to the place since, after all, they were non-profit) was over $1500. "Free" Microsoft software was no bargain at all!

The real cost in running on Microsoft software does not involve training or acqusition costs; it is the endless amounts of time spent on the upgrade treadmill. The time spent in this fashion does not improve functionality. In the end, all the time spent at the non-profit was just to get them back to the point where they could do the same functions they did for so many years before. It is just time wasted so that the same things can be done on newer, shinier, harder-to-use (this from the two employees in the aforementioned front office) Microsoft software.

There is no sense in it, the only reason for it is Microsoft's continued exsitence and it is a huge drain on resources in an economy that is putting increased emphasis on productivity.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[man_of_mr_e]

At this point, I think it's a fair argument that the cost of retraining to use OO.o is probably much smaller than the cost of retraining to use Office 2007.

Really? Why? Pretty much the only thing of consequence that is radically different in Office 2007 is the file format and the ribbon. The ribbon is just a different layout for the same functionality that was there in Office 2003 (plus new features that are a superset of the existing ones).

OpenOffice does a *LOT* of things non-trivially different than Office does them, while Office 2007 does things the same way, it's just invoked differently. When a user chooses the "Paragraph Options", it looks and acts just like it did in 2003. When they do a mail merge, it works just like it did in 2003. When they create a formula in excel, it's exactly like it was in 2003.

OpenOffice may *LOOK* more like Office 2003, but it doesn't act more like it than 2007 does. It's the actual functionality that requires the retraining, not the position or method of invocation.

I think you're naive if you actually think retraining costs are less to move OpenOffice than to move to Office 2007.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[man_of_mr_e]

That's ridiculous. You've never seen a volume license program, have you?

Most companies pay a set volume license price for their OS, Exchange or SQL CAL's, Office, etc... that is considerably lower than any price you'll find online. We're talking something in the range of $150-200 per computer for everything. You can't go by retail prices.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[neil-ngc]

Have you ever taught courses in how to use office? Some people can just sit down with a program and push buttons until it works. What's more, they use a lot of shortcut keys, so the impact of the interface change isn't all that relevant. The cost of any change for them is basically a small drop in productivity for about a week while they figure everything out. These people are advanced users. It's the average users that are the problem. Most office users, though, while they've adapted to computers, are still uncomfortable with them. You change the location of a button and they'll need someone to actually come over and show them how to use it. For commonly used functions, this is a small hassle, but for functions that are only used occasionally...If it comes up shortly after the rollout, you'll be fine, but further down the road, the average user will think "I know how to do this, I've done it before," and then spend the next 30-60 minutes trying to figure it out before they summon help. Not good for productivity. Having taught Office classes, I'd have to say that any change is going to cause disruption, but for the average user, a change in appearance is going to have a more significant impact than a change in the back end. In both excel and word, the functions used by average users tend to be in the same places (at least prior to 2007) as their OOo equivalents, and so I would that Office 2003 -> OOo would be a less traumatic change in most offices than an Office upgrade. An office full of power users would be a different story.

Re:must not have been a hard job

[baggins2001]

I agree with you. But my users don't. They consider it embarrassing that they would have to ask or tell someone to use another standard using free software. My gosh the ramifications. So much of their psychology is built on:
I need more expensive complex tools to do my work
The problems we are having is because we didn't pay for all of the expensive extensions to do my work
And once we buy the expensive tools for them to do their work we (IT) end up spending all our time explaining how to do our work, basically doing their work for them.
I distinctly remember having a user who didn't want to give up lotus 123, because he new how to make it do everything he wanted it to do. Nobody could show him an advantage of using excel. But eventually we couldn't support it. So he had to use his brain power learning excel. Providing no advantage to the company, in fact costing us license cost and his time to learn it. His time was definitely worth $150+/hour. One of the few people I ever met who I I actually felt deserved that much. But, we've made so much progress since then, hours of powerpoint meetings, 10% discussing the style of the presentation.
It's funny how we evolve. Because of this, I find it totally amazing that we went to the moon and am completely against nuclear reactors being handled in the private sector.

Durr

[Smackheid]

Ars wonders how the Burton authors can so blithely overlook Microsoft's vote-buying in Sweden, while wielding unfounded accusations of chicanery in Sun's direction.

Money, hookers or blow. Probably a combo of all three. Just a guess.

Re:Durr

[Anonymous Coward]

Peter O'Kelly is a friend of mine, and I could not pick a guy whose intellect or integrity I respect more, so I am just blown away by this. Do I believe he really believes what he's writing? Yes. Could a 12 year old find all the holes in this? Yes. I can't figure out the angle. Saying that people have to work with legacy files out there and OOXML does it better than ODF, so that's your answer... it's like saying, the guy already raped you so you might as well marry him. Posting anonymously for obvious reasons. I do not believe anyone bought Pete but damn....

Re:Durr

[Anonymous Coward]

Money, hookers or blow.

And a free laptop, if you're a review blog "author".

Re:Durr

[Smackheid]

Peter O'Kelly is a friend of mine, and I could not pick a guy whose intellect or integrity I respect more, so I am just blown away by this.

Happens to all of us. Good friends and respected colleagues are as fallible as anyone.

it's like saying, the guy already raped you so you might as well marry him

Sounds like a soap opera plot point.

Re:Durr

[Anonymous Coward]

Money, hookers or blow. Probably a combo of all three. Just a guess.

For some reason, I thought you were going to say "choose two".

Re:Durr

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm his better "friend" at MS.

It was the blow, man.

Re:Durr

[Stephen Samuel]

Well, burton wasn't paid for the report, but Groklaw reports that "However, Burton analyst Peter O'Kelly, one of the report's co-authors, is scheduled to make a presentation at an Open XML press briefing that Microsoft plans to hold in the Seattle area on Wednesday."

I'm betting that he's getting paid really, really well for (ahem) "the presentation" that he was, apparently scheduled to give even before he released his "independent" report.

Perhaps he was so excited about getting the Microsoft gig, that he 'forgot to check his facts and logic' before he released his report.

Re:Durr

[FreeGamer]

Or perhaps he went to Microsoft to "get the facts"?

Why

[Ryukotsusei]

Why is this topic still going on? I would think that everyone agrees that pdf is the better standard.

Re:Why

[Anonymous Coward]

Comments like this one make me wish there was a (+1, Troll) moderation option.

Re:Why

[mustpax]

Because PDF is a distribution format, not intended to be edited after the final document is rendered. It's useful to have easily editable format.

Re:Why

[Anonymous Coward]

You're offtopic, not a troll. And I'm not an AC, but I don't want to cancel the moderations I've done to this thread.

After you start the Print Spooler service, but before you start Adobe, go check your printers list. Just look at the icons representing your printers. That's it. You can now start Adobe.

I make it sound apocryphal, but it's not, and this post is not a joke :)

Cheers from friendly /. user 834456.

Re:Why

[WhyMeWorry]

This is the best meta-comment that I have seen in a long time

Paid by Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

With such absurd claims, is it unreasonable to think this "study" is paid by Microsoft?

Re:Paid by Microsoft

[Grishnakh]

Not necessarily. There's a lot of companies out there, including Burton, who are MS "partners", and earn all their income by pushing and supporting MS products. They don't need to be explicitly paid off to spout pro-MS FUD; they stand to profit through increased use of MS software, so they're happy to spout FUD for free.

For instance, if McAfee published a report that said that Linux and MacOSX are highly susceptible to viruses, and that virus infestations of such machines are common, it'd be pretty obvious that they didn't need to be paid off by MS to say these lies. Their entire reason for existence is the poor security and virus susceptibility of the Windows platform, so it's in their best interest to make people believe Windows is the best platform, and that every computer should have anti-virus software installed.

And Craig Burton worked for Novell, right?

[postbigbang]

Didn't he and Judith Clark get sacked for something? Hmmmmm. And Novell might be in whose pockets these days? http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/08/01/01/0354229.shtml might shed some light.

Indirectly *could* be a problem...

[ricebowl]

"ODF is controlled indirectly by Sun,"

While I can't agree with this being a problem due to Sun's having influence over the development, I could perhaps understand it to be potentially a problem due to the indirect nature, in that there is no central guidance. Whereas with MS software there is, potentially, a focused development path (I'm not trying to be modded funny, honest).

"MS Office is cheaper than OpenOffice.org,"

Ummm...no. I...no. The costs involved in OO.o are only, I think, due to the training issues for staff familiarised with MS Office. And I don't think that the cost of training each user, with group seminars, would be more expensive than the per-user license for using MS Office in a corporate environment.

Ah, corporate shills. They're funny guys...

Re:Indirectly *could* be a problem...

[Shados]

For your second point, over time, you're right, no. But on a one shot deal, the cost of training employes is insane. Group seminars are stupidly expensive, plus you have to pay the employes during that time too... that makes enterprise licenses of Office virtually insignificant.

Especially for extremely large corporations, who have "unlimited" license packages... that is, they pay a flat amount for the entire organisation, regardless of how many licenses you use. In those scenarios, you get a new employe, you install Office on the machine, no question asked. If you're using anything else, you need to pay to train em.

I worked for a while for such a large corporation (without naming it, let just say, top 10 in revenue in the world). Now, it wasn't related to Office, but for most of the employes, learning ANYTHING would involve such a seminar, or hiring a third party training to come to the office, or something. Personally I'd think these people should be fired (so its probably a good thing I'm not in charge of HR), especially since this was in IT, and I don't see how you can be a good software developer if you're unwilling to learn new things on your own, but whatever.

Everytime we wanted to introduce something new, it costed hundreds of thousands of dollars. The training budget for a year could pay for every single software license used in the company (including expensive stuff like SAP and various ERP packages...yes, we had a lot of em, with 7-8 digit contracts on each) for half a decade.

Now, if you're in a 10-30 person company and you can hire a trainer for the group for less than 1-2 grands, and you're not in the software undustry (and thus MSDN Premium isn't an efficient option), then definately go with the training, and tell MS to kiss your shiny butt. Currently, I work for a small software firm around that size, and compared to the rest of the cost of doing business, switching from Office to OO.o (and we barely use Office) isn't even worth, money wise, the time it takes to install it.

Re:Indirectly *could* be a problem...

[rtb61]

The cost of training employees is the same as the cost of retraining them with forced upgrades due to document incompatibilities. You do not ever pay M$ 1 licence fee in point of fact Ballmer stated that M$ intends to update windows and office every two years, in the typical working life of an employee that represents 40 licence fees, and 40 retraining sessions, oh sorry I forgot the server 20 more licence fees and exchange 20 more licence fees, and the support kits (the real help files and the manual that you can't download for free) 20 more licence fees. Now add archive document conversion costs, document conversion costs with other companies incompatible format (M$ specifically won't help).

Open office of course is still the cheapest way of producing PDFs, or a document format that you know the person at the other end will be able to access with out being forced to spend any money. So your point about training is that you are complaining that schools do not teach Open Office and force companies to spend the additional cost, hmm, quite a valid complaint and something that should definitely be acted upon. When public schools are clearly favouring one companies product and disadvantaging other companies products something definitely needs to be done, especially when there is a free open source product with a standardised document format, a very interesting point you made.

As for your small software firm, you mustn't be running a very good server perhaps you should switch to Linux, as an Open office install can be automated as a cron job with barely any effort at all, and it would take far far less time than the time lost from receiving just one incompatible document from a client.

Re:Indirectly *could* be a problem...

[Shados]

My point was that the Open Office install wasn't even worth considering, because the license costs of Office are insignificant.

For the rest, I'll leave it at: new Office versions don't require retrainings (the UI may change, but the stuff you'd actually TRAIN someone on doesn't, as opposed to switching to Open Office: the UI is similar, but the core changes).

And you probably missed the memo, but usually companies don't buy "licenses" of MS products. Its subscription based, which is why its insignificant: you can keep the money invested until its time to shell out, little by little. Doesn't make a big difference when its your spending acount with 500$ in it, but it does when its a large company that invests considerable amount of money. It also comes with full constant support, so YES they'll help yout out with integration and all that jazz, and even send one of their engineers over if you really need help.

Not counting the fact that money spent on software is usually deductable as business spendings. (So is training though, so thats not a point in favor of one or the other, it just shows how little the end cost is in the end).

Now, I'm sounding like I'm advertising for MS: I'm not. I'm just trying to point out how insignificant license fees are compared to the big picture (thats why they actually sell at all...)

Re:Indirectly *could* be a problem...

[nguy]

Currently, I work for a small software firm around that size, and compared to the rest of the cost of doing business, switching from Office to OO.o (and we barely use Office) isn't even worth, money wise, the time it takes to install it.

Sounds to me you're short-sighted. You already know that MS Office will make radical UI changes, MS Office will make radical format changes, and MS Office will force upgrades. MS has to do that because that's how they make money. OOo development, on the other hand, is user driven and backwards compatibility and continuity are a much bigger concern.

So, if it's training and support costs you're worried about, OOo is the obvious choice.

Not aimed at us...

[tech10171968]

At first blush I wondered how Burton could get away with such absolutely ridiculous claims (OOo costs more than MS Word?!?! WTF??!!). But then I realized: the target of this report isn't going to be Slashdot readers, experienced sysadmins, or anyone similar - our collective knowledge can see the BS from a mile away, and some Slashdotters I know actually know enough of what they're talking about to debunk the report all by themselves. No, the intended audience is going to be those folks who may lack the IT knowledge but still control the purse strings (CEO, COO, CFO, et al). They don't know any better so it's going to be easy to fill their heads with FUD and have them take it as gospel. The data may be incorrect but, by the time anyone else find that out, the damage will have already been done.

Is this not false advertising ?

[Alain Williams]

Reports like this, paid for by M$, and made visible to those who may base purchasing decisions are tantamount to M$ advertising it's products.

In the UK the Advertising Standards Authority governs advertising and, amongst other things, insists that it not be misleading.

If we can firm up the paid-for-by-M$ link that we can take M$ to task for breaking the rules. Can anyone prove the link ?

Re:Is this not false advertising ?

[gc8005]

It's not a paid-for link. Burton Group does not do vendor-sponsored research. http://www.burtongroup.com/AboutUs/BurtonFaq.aspx#vendorpolicy Q: What is Burton Group's vendor-independence policy? A: We take pride in our vendor independence. More than 80 percent of our customers are enterprise organizations, and our uncompromising commitment to be an unbiased advocate for the enterprise customer guides all of our work. Since our founding in 1990, we have not published vendor-sponsored research of any kind. We cover relevant vendors and products without regard for vendors' subscription to our services. We maintain complete independence from vendor agendas, providing unbiased assessments of markets, vendors, and products. In keeping with our mission, we provide technically in-depth, independent research and advice for the enterprise technologist.

Re:Is this not false advertising ?

[Archtech]

"In the UK the Advertising Standards Authority governs advertising and, amongst other things, insists that it not be misleading."

But what's the point of advertising if it isn't misleading? That's exactly what it's for - to mislead people.

Re:Is this not false advertising ?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Advertising Standards Authority is paid for and run by the advertising industry themselves.

They are not there to get rid of misleading advertising.

They are there to do the absolute minimum about the most blatant breaches, solely in order to avoid having a government body foisted on them which might actually end up applying the rules as they should be applied.

Don't hold your breath while you are waiting for the ASA to do anything worthwhile about this.

Baseless Accusations

[hardburn]

A shame that you can't access the original PDF report without a particularly invasive registration process. They could be sending that information on to terrorists groups looking for new recruits.

Broad accusations aside, I know Slashdot invented the 'RTFA' acronym, but it'd be nice if we could read the original without having to take Ars' word for it or having to reveal our company's annual revenue range. After badly mangling that Sony wireless USB thing, I'm not inclined to trust Ars without the primary source.

Re:Baseless Accusations

[ciotog]

Well, according to a blog post of one of the authors, "Burton group won't spam you":
http://pbokelly.blogspot.com/2008/01/burton-group-whats-up-doc-odf-ooxml-and.html

"OOXML improved many problems of DOC."

[maxwell demon]

I personally prefer problems to be solved instead of improved. But obviously the Burton Group actually likes problems, but doesn't consider the problems of .DOC as good enough, so they are glad that OOXML contains them in an improved form.

Adapt or adopt ?

[eulernet]

adapt
          make fit for, or change to suit a new purpose; "Adapt our
                    native cuisine to the available food resources of the
                    new country" [syn: accommodate]
          adapt or conform oneself to new or different conditions; "We
                must adjust to the bad economic situation" [syn: adjust,
                  conform]

adopt
          choose and follow; as of theories, ideas, policies,
                    strategies or plans; "She followed the feminist
                    movement"; "The candidate espouses Republican ideals"
                    [syn: follow, espouse]

Re:Adapt or adopt ?

[maxwell demon]

Well, if too many companies adopt OOXML, the other must adapt.

The study is informative

[initialE]

It informs me to add "The Burton Group" to the list of bullshit propaganda organizations. Seriously, who are these guys?

Re:The study is informative

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they should stop trying to branch out and just sell clothes... http://www.burton.co.uk/

Re:The study is informative

[Anonymous Coward]

I couldn't even read the study due to not wanting to register with Burton. Does anyone have a link to the pdf?

Re:The study is informative

[Tablizer]

It informs me to add "The Burton Group" to the list of bullshit propaganda organizations. Seriously, who are these guys?

Since they probably take bribes pretty easy (since they likely took MS's), It should be fairly easy for a lowly reporter to bribe one of the employees to spill the beans on how MS bribed them and have a nice little story under their belt.

Wild Claims

[kidcharles]

Their reasons include things like..."MS Office is cheaper than OpenOffice.org" The Burton Group, obvious whores who will say anything in exchange for cash, also said yesterday that "up is down" and "black is white" at the behest of Bizarro.

Re:Wild Claims

[Bryansix]

The Burton Group, obvious whores who will say anything in exchange for cash, also said yesterday that "up is down" and "black is white" at the behest of Bizarro.

They were then killed at the next Zebra Crossing.

What about training users for new office version?

[walterbyrd]

As I understand it, going from office-2003, to office-2007, requires more training than moving to OpenOffice.

BTW: I've worked in IT for 28 years. I never remember any company, spending any money, to train anybody, to learn any office product. I thought you supposed to pick that up by yourself.

Knee-jerk reactions

[PCM2]

I know everybody wants to immediately jump to the conclusion that the Burton Group is in Microsoft's pocket, etc., etc., but while it is perfectly appropriate to question the methodologies and motivations of analysts' research, in my experience the Burton Group is as much of a "good guy" as an analyst firm gets. If you've ever been to one of their conferences, they are packed to the gills with useful information, and their analysts generally come off as being genuinely knowledgeable.

That said, I'd love to see the Burton Group get rid of the registration requirement on this PDF so I can see what they actually say. TFA is mostly paraphrasing, and I'm not certain they are taking every comment in context.

Some folks on here seem to be taking issue with the statement that ODF is "indirectly controlled" by Sun. But, as far as I understand it, that's pretty much the case. Last I heard, the vast majority of work on OpenOffice.org is done by Sun employees. The codebase is just too complex for amateurs to get their heads around. You could argue (and many do) that OOXML is directly controlled by Microsoft ... but for all I know, not having read the paper, the Burton Group never disputes that. Maybe they're just saying that anybody who insists on using ODF because Microsoft has a disproportionate influence over OOXML is fooling themselves, because the same can be said (to an extent) of ODF.

The Burton Group's greater concern seems to be that Sun has a conflict of interest here. What is the purpose of ODF? Is it to empower users? Or is a means for Sun to erode the profitability of core Microsoft products? If the latter, does it make sense for a corporation to support it on that basis? Maybe you'd argue that it does make sense. Me, I'm not so sure.

As far as ODF "only supporting a fraction of what enterprises need," well, that's probably true. I doubt that ODF was ever designed to define a standard for everything that enterprise customers do with their office suites. Be that as it may, if an ODF application suite does not support all of the features that an enterprise might want, does it make sense to conduct a mass migration to a new office suite on the basis that the new suite uses document formats that are "open"? In other words, the Burton Group seems to be making the age-old case for sticking with the status quo, even given the understanding that it represents a capitulation to "vendor lock-in." Many customers may decided that open file formats just aren't worth the trade-off.

You can call it cynical, or self-interested, or just plain lazy, but given the opportunity to participate in a revolution, there will always be some people who will say, "No thanks." Some of them might be deluded. And others may merely be acting in their own self-interest. If they are deluded, however -- and sticking with the status quo really means trading long-term best interests for short-term interests -- then isn't it up to us to convince them of their mistake? Calling them "shills," claiming that they were paid off in "hookers and blow," and all the other stuff I see in this thread, doesn't strike me as a very effective way of making the counter-argument.

Nor, in fact, does the Ars article. It doesn't seem like a "thorough debunking" to me; more like a fairly well-reasoned opinion piece/editorial/blog.

Re:Knee-jerk reactions

[walterbyrd]

Let's suppose that ODF is indirectly controlled by Sun, and OOXML is directly controlled by msft. Why is it that the indirect control by Sun is cause for alarm, but the direct contol by msft is not cause for alarm?

Why is it relevant that Burton never disputed msft's direct control? Does that make msft's direct control of a supposed open standard all right?

> What is the purpose of ODF? Is it to empower users? Or is a means for Sun to erode the profitability of core Microsoft products?

Why not both? Is google trying to erode msft's marketshare by financial supporting mozilla/firefox? Should I reject firefox on that basis?

ODF is open, OOXML is not. By using ODF, I can insure my documents will always be readable, and avoid vender lock-in. If that's helpful to Sun, so what?

Don't forget, ODF can be used with msft products. And if msft chose to do so, msft could support ODF just as much as Sun. Msft is also free to contribute to the ODF standard. Therefore ODF does not give Sun any competitive advantage.

Re:Knee-jerk reactions

[Omnifarious]

Wow, a well reasoned comment that for the side I'm not on! :-)

I am not intimately familiar with either ODF or OOXML. I am passingly familiar with both. I also have an understanding of the culture of the communities they come out of.

As for ODF, I know Open Source. And I know the proprietary Unix world before it. And while Open Office is mind numbingly complex, the source is out there and I consider the source the ultimate arbiter of any protocol or file format. Standards documents are merely high quality documentation and not definitive. Additionally there are various other implementations that interoperate with Open Office via ODF to a greater or lesser extent, and I know there will be a lot of pressure to make that support more complete as time goes on.

And while Sun might be the major contributor to Open Office, they don't have the same kind of control that Microsoft has over Microsoft Word. And the existence of other interoperable implementations decreases the effect their influence on Open Office has on the ODF document format.

I also know the culture that OOXML comes out, though not as well. It's clear that Microsoft bought ISO votes, and this behavior is not unusual for them. It's clear from even a casual reading of the standard that it will be impossible to create an interoperable program without access to proprietary Microsoft source code. It's even clear that Microsoft themselves couldn't create an interoperable version without using their own source code. For example I doubt anybody knows how Word 97 formatting works in detail except to know that a particular block of Microsoft proprietary code implements it. Microsoft also has a strong history of having 'standards' they claim are open, but actually require Microsoft proprietary technology in some way to implement.

So this mysterious report by this well-respected group is interesting to me as they seem to be telling me that everything experience has taught me is all wrong. The kind of broad sweeping changes in both cultures required for my experience to be rendered obsolete surely couldn't happen without my notice. My first impulse is to figure out if they were paid to do it. My next impulse is to figure out if they have a strongly self-interested reason to do it. The latter appears to be the case. No matter how respected they might be, their bread and butter is threatened if Microsoft Office significantly diminishes in importance. I would expect the legion of string theory theorists to (initially at least, until the more intellectually honest ones among them really took the time to understand things) call anybody who questioned string theory a crackpot regardless of whether or not they were right, and I would also expect a company who makes the majority of it's money from the existence of the Microsoft Office ecosystem to react similarly, no matter how respected they are.

So until they can produce this mysterious report for public perusal, comment and dissection, I think that believing it to be total hogwash is completely justified by past experience and knowledge of the players involved.

Re:Knee-jerk reactions

[pimpimpim]

Some Knee-Jerk reactions indeed, very well said. But "Troll" or "Flamebait" would also have been a good description of your post there.

There is no "status quo" in keeping with .doc. The internals of .doc, .ppt, .xls can and will change at Microsoft's will. You should have been long enough at slashdot to have read about this (or was there a UID yardsale that I missed out on).

The non-openness of these formats creates immense and costly problems for the users (companies and employees). I once had a talk, edited on several versions of powerpoint, shown on a laptop from someone else, where half the figures rendered as big, red, crosses. Imagine that on the talk for a multimillion dollar contract.

If you don't believe in the support from Sun for ODF, then just believe in the support from IBM. And even if their support wouldn't last, you would always be able to read the ODF files because the format is open. An industry-wide open format is important for users, and has immense economic advantages over the closed or open formats from Microsoft Office. Even if Microsoft Office can write to OOXML (except certain dates because they aren't rendered correctly...).

Re:Knee-jerk reactions

[Chris Burke]

Maybe they're just saying that anybody who insists on using ODF because Microsoft has a disproportionate influence over OOXML is fooling themselves, because the same can be said (to an extent) of ODF.

I'm not sure if anyone is literally concerned solely with influence and the degree thereof.

The closely related topic, on which there is a 100% binary on-off difference between OOXML and ODF is that Sun may dictate the standard, it is comprehensible to anyone and thus anyone can write software to read/write it, whereas Microsoft dictates the standard and is the only one capable of fully comprehending and implementing it. THAT is the issue that many have with OOXML, that it's faux-openness. It's a "standard" which depends entirely on Microsoft's proprietary implementations.

Conflating those two issues to make it sound as though one kind of "influence" is the same as the other would be what I'd call a major failing of the study, if not a sign of bias.

Re:Knee-jerk reactions

[filbranden]

Some folks on here seem to be taking issue with the statement that ODF is "indirectly controlled" by Sun. But, as far as I understand it, that's pretty much the case. Last I heard, the vast majority of work on OpenOffice.org is done by Sun employees. The codebase is just too complex for amateurs to get their heads around.

Not true. While Sun "indirectly controls" the development of OpenOffice.org, the file format is owned by Oasis, which is a "not-for-profit consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society" (according to their own website). Although Sun is a member of Oasis, it's not alone there, so Sun will never be able to hijack the file format all by themselves, because the other members won't allow it.

Among the other members of Oasis is IBM, which, with its Lotus Symphony office suite, has interest in ODF as well. So, for the sake of the argument, IBM has as much interest and power to control ODF as Sun has. But none of them can do anything without the consent of the other (and even other members), since the file format is not owned by any of them.

As far as ODF "only supporting a fraction of what enterprises need," well, that's probably true.

Oh, yeah... ODF doesn't support, for instance, the enterprisey feature of autoSpaceLikeWord95.

It's completely BS that ODF doesn't support what enterprises need. This is just the kind of FUD that Microsoft tries to push. They include new "features" in their office suite (and all their software) and sell them as "what the enterprise needs", when in fact it's just to increase the lock-in. I'm glad to see that most enterprises are starting to look at Vista and Office 2007 for what they're worth, they're seeing that it's not worth to upgrade, and they're starting to look at alternatives.

What are these features that "enterprises need" anyway? VBA? It's going away in Microsoft as well.

Re:Knee-jerk reactions

[azrider]

Among the other members of Oasis is IBM, which, with its Lotus Symphony office suite, has interest in ODF as well.

Among the other members of Oasis is Microsoft, which declined to participate in the process as regards ODF.

If Microsoft, which proclaims interest in interoperability was telling the truth in the matter, they would (and could) have added their $.02 to the process which resulted in ISO/IEC 26300:2006 (also known as Open Document Format ).

Re:Knee-jerk reactions

[Anonymous Coward]

"Among the other members of Oasis is Microsoft, which declined to participate in the process as regards ODF.
If Microsoft, which proclaims interest in interoperability was telling the truth in the matter, they would (and could) have added their $.02 to the process which resulted in ISO/IEC 26300:2006 (also known as Open Document Format )."

Not only that, but Microsoft twice formally voted to approve OpenDocument. They approved OpenDocument as an OASIS standard, and then again later on as an ISO standard, each time after a lengthy review period during which Microsoft offered no comment of objection at all. "Approved" in this context means "we agree that this is suitable for its intended purpose".

Not only that, but Microsoft knew the intended purpose of OpenDocument (which is interoperability for Office documents) because Microsoft were invited to attend the OASIS subcommittee which designed OpenDocument, but Microsoft refused. In effect, although they did not participate in the design meetings for OpenDocument, they knew its intended purpose, and twice formally approved it as meeting that purpose after a lengthy public review.

Not only that, but when OpenDocument first became an ISO standard with Microsoft's approval, Microsoft said they were not going to implement it because there was no demand. When later it became evident there was in fact demand, Microsoft only then began to disparage the ODF standard they had twice approved, and instead of implementing it now that their initial excuse had disappeared, they instead tried to foist a different incompatible and un-approved "standard" on the world.

Re:Knee-jerk reactions

[Your.Master]

> Let's suppose that ODF is indirectly controlled by Sun, and OOXML is directly controlled by msft. Why is it that the indirect control by Sun is cause for alarm, but the direct contol by msft is not cause for alarm?
>
> Why is it relevant that Burton never disputed msft's direct control? Does that make msft's direct control of a supposed open standard all right?

Absurd strawman. Nobody said that. What he's suggesting Burton was saying is the exact opposite. Why is MS's control cause for alarm but Sun's control is not? That is why it's relevant.

> And if msft chose to do so, msft could support ODF just as much as Sun.

They do support it (though "just as much as Sun" is subjective...and probably not quite true): http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=5F3A7CD5-6E9E-4439-B375-4391ADFD2BBD, and the actual open source project: http://odf-converter.sourceforge.net/.

Also, just because MSFT can conceivably contribute to the standard does not mean that Sun does not have competitive advantage because of the standard. I'm not saying they absolutely do, but your syllogism does not follow logically.

Re:Knee-jerk reactions

[Tony]

Maybe they're just saying that anybody who insists on using ODF because Microsoft has a disproportionate influence over OOXML is fooling themselves, because the same can be said (to an extent) of ODF.

If that is what they are saying, they are just plain wrong. Sun has influence over ODF because they participate in the ODF working group. They *participate.* They don't control, though they do have a lot of input, being a highly-skilled bunch of folks.

Microsoft doesn't have a disproportionate amount of control over OOXML-- they have *absolute* control over OOXML. They have reserved to themselves the right to modify and change the standard themselves. No-one else may even participate. So, that's not "disproportionate." That's absolute.

The difference is painfully clear, and impossible to miss. I would say, "Impossible to ignore," but I have heard this bit of misinformation often enough.

What is the purpose of ODF? Is it to empower users? Or is a means for Sun to erode the profitability of core Microsoft products?

So far, ODF is the only open standard editable office document format available. Period. There are no others. Several competitive office suites support ODF, not just OOo/StarOffice. Microsoft could also support ODF, if they so desired, and if they truly had an office suite that would win in the free market, it would. Sun is not barring them from participating in the ODF OASIS working group, nor from adopting ODF as their standard office format. It is Microsoft who refuses to play.

There is *no* product that supports OOXML. Even MS-Office 2007 doesn't save to OOXML specifications; Microsoft isn't even compliant with their own proposed standard. So then the question is not, "Is this Sun trying to erode Microsoft's profitability?" but, "Is this Microsoft trying to maintain their own profitability at the expense of the user?" And also, "Does ODF in its current or proposed form meet the needs of the users?"

In the end, the *only* thing that empowers the user is a freely-available, open standard to which vendors adhere. Otherwise, they have no power whatsoever. They are subject to the whims of someone else. And in this case, the "someone else" has demonstrated a substantial lack of respect for the users, choice, and the free market.

Re:Knee-jerk reactions

[Tablizer]

If they are deluded, however -- and sticking with the status quo really means trading long-term best interests for short-term interests -- then isn't it up to us to convince them of their mistake?

The financial concept of future value suggests that shorter-term thinking is not always bad. IT'ers often dismiss the discounting of the future via Future Value, but I'm not sure we should, at least not entirely.

Re:Knee-jerk reactions

[IvyKing]

The closely related topic, on which there is a 100% binary on-off difference between OOXML and ODF is that Sun may dictate the standard, it is comprehensible to anyone and thus anyone can write software to read/write it, whereas Microsoft dictates the standard and is the only one capable of fully comprehending and implementing it. THAT is the issue that many have with OOXML, that it's faux-openness. It's a "standard" which depends entirely on Microsoft's proprietary implementations.

One option for ISO ratification of OOXML is to make the standard only apply to the non-propietary portions of OOXML (i.e. not for gems like 'space as done by Word 95') and have a utility that checks for violations of that standard. I don't see MS going for that.

Re:Knee-jerk reactions

[Anonymous Coward]

"I know everybody wants to immediately jump to the conclusion that the Burton Group is in Microsoft's pocket, etc., etc., but while it is perfectly appropriate to question the methodologies and motivations of analysts' research, in my experience the Burton Group is as much of a "good guy" as an analyst firm gets."

I really don't know about "wanting". I'd have thought one was more-or-less forced to come to that conclusion based on the claims the Burton Group had made. The following, which Ars quotes, is a particularly egregious example.

"Considering the global scrutiny applied to ISO and other standards processes, plus the fact that Microsoft is even more closely scrutinized because of its position as a convicted monopolist, it would be self-defeating for Microsoft to attempt to subvert the standards processes or somehow establish an intellectual property-based advantage for itself in order to thwart other vendors seeking to exploit OOXML," the report says.

What the Burton Group is doing here is trying to convince its readers that Microsoft wouldn't "subvert the standards processes"; but the fact of the matter is that it did. Let's remind ourselves of one example of that--the ballot-stuffing:

In order to get ISO Fast Track approval, OOXML needs to win at least a two-thirds majority vote from the countries involved in the vote. Inexplicably, a number of countries recently upgraded their status to the "P" level, at which point their votes on the OOXML issue becomes the most influential. In August, the number of "P" status countries swelled from 30 to 40, with Cyprus, Turkey, Lebanon, Ecuador, Pakistan, Uruguay, Venezuela and Trinidad-Tobago among those joining the party at the last minute.

This kind of thing should be known by anyone claiming to speak, as the Burton Group is, with authority on these matters. Either the Burton Group is doing something deeply dishonest here, or it is woefully and culpably uniformed on matters it presumes to speak on. Neither option speaks well of it.

Re:Knee-jerk reactions

[mattpalmer1086]

No no no. ODF is an *OASIS* standard. Sun does not control it:

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office

Please can we get this clear:

ODF != Open Office.
File formats != Applications.
Open Information Standards != Open Source Software

Re:Knee-jerk reactions

[Omnifarious]

I think it's clear in my post that I do not equate ODF with OpenOffice. I mention that there are other interoperable implementations. But I do think it's clear that OpenOffice is currently the major implementer of ODF, and as such has a major influence on the standard.

And while Open Source Software is not the same thing as Open Information Standards, I do not think you can have one without the other. I've rarely seen a standards document that really and truly described all the nuances well enough to implement the standard in a clean room. The real documentation has been code that implements it. I think all standards should require an Open Source program that fully implements them as a way of documenting the standard.

Re:Knee-jerk reactions

[fwarren]

I know everybody wants to immediately jump to the conclusion that the Burton Group is in Microsoft's pocket, etc., etc.,

No, I question the intellectual honesty of the Burton Group. I hardly think their conclusions are objective. I don't even think they believe what they are saying. They are intentionally dishonest because ODF will not work with sharepoint and Office 2007 does. So to continue having a thriving sharepoint market. They are LYING. Saying things they know are not true, distortions of the truth and are not technically correct. In the hopes the PHB's will read their drivel and continue buying Microsoft Products. Thus allowing them to continue selling sharepoint support and serevices.

Notice I said "Office 2007" not OOXML. It is a dead end format if ISO approves it. By design, it is only intended for Office products to WRITE to it. No one else will be able to read those files, or write their own files in OOXML format. Office may not even be able to read OOXML. But that wont matter. All that matters is it is an ISO approved format for long term document storage and interoperability.

Re:Knee-jerk reactions

[mattpalmer1086]

Ah - sorry for the confusion. I read your comment about open source and ODF, and that's well, a red rag to me. I'm on a bit of a mission to disentangle open source software from open information standards in people's minds right now.

Reference code can be useful, and I guess it pretty much has to be open source to be useful for this purpose. But any standard complex enough to need such clarification will need complex code, which can contain its own ambiguities! Even if there is code that people think of as a good reference for a standard, the standard must be the final reference, IMHO.

Re:Knee-jerk reactions

[jayp00001]

Let's suppose that ODF is indirectly controlled by Sun, and OOXML is directly controlled by msft. Why is it that the indirect control by Sun is cause for alarm, but the direct contol by msft is not cause for alarm?

Neither should be casue for alarm. I think they were simply saying that the features and codebase are not controlled by general debate.

And if msft chose to do so, msft could support ODF just as much as Sun. Msft is also free to contribute to the ODF standard. Therefore ODF does not give Sun any competitive advantage.

Microsoft does have a plugin that they are working on see:
http://odf-converter.sourceforge.net/index.html

Re:Knee-jerk reactions

[fwarren]

An industry-wide open format is important for users,

What is even more important than an open format. Is that the software is open. People can make available on line all versions of OpenOffice or Abiword or Koffice.

25 years from now, if you have an Openoffice 1.0 document that you need to open. And OpenOffice 12 does not render it right. No problem, in a VM run Slackware 10 and OpenOffice 1.0 and work with them. All 100% free and legal.

25 years from now if you have a Microsoft Word 95 document and Office 2035 can not open it what do you do? Well since you don't own a copy of Office 95 nor a copy of Windows 95/98/XP. You will have to break the law to even run Windows XP with MicoSoft Office 95. That is if you could still FIND a copy. You already can not buy a retail copy of Windows 95 or 98? Does any current Microsoft license even allow you to uninstall Windows XP and run Windows 95 or Windows 3.11? If there is no support now for a 13-15 year old Microsoft products, what chance do you think there will be for a 35 to 45 year old product? Long term, with free software being legal to distribute. The changes of finding 30 year old Open Source software will be much higher than being able to find 30 year old Closed Source software. The law is not a barrier to Open Source software. It is to Closed Source software. Publically making available Closed source Software is not legal. And yes, I am talking specifically talking about Microsoft OS's and Microsoft office. If you think I am wrong. Please post a link to where I can legally download a copy of Windows XP and Office 2003.

Re:Knee-jerk reactions

[PCM2]

Wow, a well reasoned comment that for the side I'm not on! :-)

You know, I'm repeatedly dismayed by the fact that some people on /. just can't seem to get their heads around the idea that I don't require everybody else to agree with me. In fact, it's when everybody on /. seems to be saying the same thing that I start to suspect that what they're saying might not be totally correct. ;-)

My first impulse is to figure out if they were paid to do it. My next impulse is to figure out if they have a strongly self-interested reason to do it. The latter appears to be the case. No matter how respected they might be, their bread and butter is threatened if Microsoft Office significantly diminishes in importance.

I'm not sure that's true. I'm not familiar with the names of these particular analysts, but at least in the past, the Burton Group was primarily concerned with stuff like identity management and privacy, Web services/SOA, network and telecom, network security, etc...areas where Microsoft is a player, sure, but not necessarily a prominent one. If anything, I'd say they're more likely to be in the pocket of Novell or Sun than of Microsoft...but they make a point of saying they're "vendor neutral," right on their homepage.

Re:Knee-jerk reactions

[Omnifarious]

*nod* It appears you're right, which makes it all the more puzzling. Their report still flies in the face of everything I know about the industry and the players involved. They had better have a really thorough, rock-solid report or I'm going to tend up deciding they're either incompetent, serving their own interests, or in somebody else's pocket.

Ars Technica has a reputation and history too. And while they tend to be pretty friendly to Open Source and those ideals they aren't as rabidly one-sided as Slashdot has had a tendency to be. Not that I consider that to be a problem with Slashdot mind you. I like Slashdot for what it is. But it's still true that Slashdot has a tendency to have a certain editorial bias in the articles and to a much lesser extent in the comments as well.

But Ars Technica also has a reputation. And many points in their article do fit with my experience, even if it's hard to find solid justification of them due to the fact that the report isn't publicly available. Their offhand comment about the Burton Group having a strong self-interest also seems to not be justified.

It's a very puzzling situation.

Re:Knee-jerk reactions

[man_of_mr_e]

Their report still flies in the face of everything I know about the industry and the players involved.

Have you considered that maybe what you know is wrong?

Sun and IBM have been mounting a massive disinformation campaign against OOXML for the last 2 years. 95% of what people reiterate about OOXML (often word for word) comes straight from people who are in the employ of a Microsoft competitor, and who have a lot to gain by Office's failure to standardize it's format.

Meanwhile, companies like IBM have been working dilligently to influence standards bodies negatively against OOXML. For instance, the Kenyan response was written almost entirely by an IBM employee, who just so happens to be the vice-chairman of the german ISO body.

see http://notes2self.net/archive/2007/06/22/quot-there-is-no-reason-to-be-browbeaten-into-thinking-that-there-should-only-be-one-document-format-quot.aspx

While there is likely much mud to be slung on both sides, my point is that what you probably know about this situation is likely filtered through biased eyes. Not to say that this report is or isn't valid, but more than likely your opinion on this matter has been expertly manipulated by people with a monetary incentive for their side to prevail.

Re:Knee-jerk reactions

[man_of_mr_e]

Actually, Sun does have absolute control over ODF. Apart from the fact that Sun employees are not only the chair of the committee, but make up nearly half of the committee members, the OpenOffice file format that was donated to OASIS, and is the basis of ODF, was licensed under the strict provision that Sun only licensed their patents (or rather promised not to sue) to ODF implementors as long as they continued to participate in it's development.

So, if Sun doesn't like what OASIS is doing (hardly possible given the sheer numbers of people on the committee, but still), they need only threaten to walk away and effictively kill any future version ODF if they don't get their way.

see http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/ipr.php and note particularly the clause that contains this phrase: "or of any subsequent version thereof ("OpenDocument Implementation") in which development Sun participates to the point of incurring an obligation"

Wait a minute...

[Anonymous Coward]

it'd be nice if we could read the original without [...] having to reveal our company's annual revenue range. You mean that you register on those sites using REAL data?

Re:What about training users for new office versio

[jorghis]

Thats true, you do generally have to pick it up yourself. The cost comes in the form of lost productivity from all the time you spend trying to figure out how to do new stuff or why something doesnt work the way you think it should.

Maybe, maybe not

[walterbyrd]

Burton claims that they never got money from msft. Burton could be lying, but I think it's just as likely that Burton is being honest about that.

I think that most consulting companies don't like disruptive f/oss stuff. Maybe Burton has a good releationship with msft, and likes the status quo. Maybe Burton hopes to do more business with msft, or msft partners in the future?

Re:Maybe, maybe not

[Stephen Samuel]

(At least) one of the authors of the Burton report is giving a presentation at Microsoft's PR blitz tomorrow. I'm betting that he's getting paid a tidy sum to do so. I wouldn't be surprised if the other author of the report gets a similar boondoggle in the not-so-distant future/past.

These lucrative contracts, of course, have nothing to do with the slant of the 'independent' articles.

They are *not* both open standards

[walterbyrd]

The OOXML specification refers to other specifications which are closed - i.e. "do this the same way it's done in Windows-95." Also, OOXML standard is to be controlled by a msft proxie group - ECMA.

Re:Meh....

[CSMatt]

It is important because the ODF standard came first, yet Microsoft blatantly choose to, once again, ignore an established standard in favor of their own solution.

Re:Meh....

[grcumb]

I'm tired of the whole OOXML/ODF pissing match. Who cares? I mean, really, they both do almost exactly the same thing, in almost exactly the same way.

Absolutely, one of them strives to provide a format useful and usable by any maker of office software, the other strives to provide a format useful and usable by any maker of office software, so long as it's Microsoft.

Almost exactly the same.

The only real difference is the XML schema, and do I really, either as a consumer or as a programmer, care about that?

Agree 1000%. It's just a schema! I mean who cares what it does or where it comes from. I say the same about books, too. My literature prof wanted to fail me because I read Mein Kampf instead of War and Peace, but I was all like, dude, what's the problem? They're both books!

They're both open standards which any party can use. Well, open enough -- do I really care who who controls modifications to it?

Word! How come we keep getting our shorts in a knot about who controls our information? Next thing you know, some shirty, smelly little ACLU pinko is going to come along and start complaining about access to information and whining about data interchange and what will our grand-children say about us when they see the mess we made of everything just so we could keep some corporate fat cat in his limo for another few years!

Who needs this Open shit, anyways, huh? Sharing? Highly over-rated.

Re:Knee-jerk reactions - DISCONNECT

[Anonymous Coward]

Some folks on here seem to be taking issue with the statement that ODF is "indirectly controlled" by Sun. But, as far as I understand it, that's pretty much the case. Last I heard, the vast majority of work on OpenOffice.org is done by Sun employees.

You have a huge disconnect right there.

OpenOffice is not OpenDocument. There are multiple independent implementations of OpenDocument-based Office suites and programs that have absolutely nothing to do with OpenOffice or Sun. KOffice is the most complete example of this.

Sun may control OpenOffice, but they do not contol OpenDocument (ODF). Sun have representation on the OpenDocument committees, but by no means control. OASIS is the sponsor of, owner of owner and has control over OpenDocument, not Sun.

The Burton Group's greater concern seems to be that Sun has a conflict of interest here. What is the purpose of ODF? Is it to empower users? Or is a means for Sun to erode the profitability of core Microsoft products?

Your basic premise is incorrect, so all of your meanderings from that point forward are way, way off the mark. Sun do not control OpenDocument.

Secondly, even if your "conflict of interest" musing is correct (conflict with what I might ask?) ... ask yourself how can Sun possibly hope for a successful anti-Microsoft strategy via OpenDocument that relies on Microsoft itself not implementing ODF. How can Sun possibly hope to force Microsoft not to implement ODF properly? No, Microsoft has done that all by itself, and just simply refused to implement ODF ... that refusal is not Sun's doing. If ODF is successful, and Microsoft have no decent support for ODF in their MS Office product, and hence lose profits ... then Microsoft have only themselves to blame for not supporting ODF.

Finally, in what way is Microsoft's OOXML not thouroughly tarred with the brush that you try to paint Sun with? To see this, turn your question around. Your question becomes: "What is the purpose of OOXML? Is it to empower users? Or is it a means for Microsoft to eliminate the possibility of open free-market competition with core Microsoft products?"

As far as ODF "only supporting a fraction of what enterprises need," well, that's probably true. I doubt that ODF was ever designed to define a standard for everything that enterprise customers do with their office suites.

Why on earth would you claim "that's probably true"? You have absolutely no support for such a speculation. Put it this way ... here is a lsit of software that implements ODF:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_software

OK, what need is there that businesses might conceivably want that is not covered many times over by that list of applications?

...controlled indirectly by Sun...

[dotancohen]

"ODF is controlled indirectly by Sun,"

Oh, and who controls OOXML? Someone you trust more than Sun?

That's the "training", yes.

[Joce640k]

And the "cost" is the time you wasted doing it.

Re:What about training users for new office versio

[Galactic Dominator]

I've been in IT nearly the same amount of time, and yes generally new hires are supposed to pick up using the office word processor/spreadsheet on their own time. Preference is given to prior experience.

However, switching existing software requires retraining even for relatively minor changes. That's always been done on the company's dime(e.g. IT payroll, outside classes, OJT), IME.

Re:What about training users for new office versio

[merreborn]

I never remember any company, spending any money, to train anybody, to learn any office product. I thought you supposed to pick that up by yourself.

"Picking it up yourself" has a real cost in lost productivity.

Here's a hypothetical. You upgrade 300 workstations to the latest version of Office. Your employees spend the whole day after the upgrade just figuring out the new software. That's a man-year of productivity lost.

Even though you haven't budgeted anything for formal training, you've just paid your employees some number of tens of thousands of dollars to train themselves.

And in reality, it probably takes most people more than 8 hours of experience with an application to get up to full speed.

Re:What about training users for new office versio

[blair1q]

With a little formal training, Excel becomes a serious tool.

The parts of it that you can "pick up by yourself" amount to glitzy version of SuperCalc.

Re:Ron Paul

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. RIF.

Re:What about training users for new office versio

[mortonda]

Thats true, you do generally have to pick it up yourself. The cost comes in the form of lost productivity from all the time you spend trying to figure out how to do new stuff or why something doesnt work the way you think it should. Which is quite a high TCO for MS Office, IMHO. Getting Word or Access to do what I want is like witchcraft sometimes. ;)

Burton Group=Microsoft Puppet

[schestowitz]

Latest example:

"Midvale, Utah-based Burton Group said that the report was neither commissioned nor paid for by Microsoft. However, Burton analyst Peter O'Kelly, one of the report's co-authors, is scheduled to make a presentation at an Open XML press briefing that Microsoft plans to hold in the Seattle area on Wednesday. Also speaking will be multiple Microsoft executives involved in the Open XML standards-ratification effort."

More examples here

Not quite...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the submitter, or one of them. It looks like bits of my submission were merged with the other one to form this article. Glad to see the editors don't mind a little fair use to improve their submissions :) I don't really give a damn if I get attribution.

Anyhow, there's no real apparent money trail on this one in terms of Microsoft buying or commissioning this study. It looks like it's just a fanboyish study from a group that does Microsoft Sharepoint consulting. So they have a dog in the fight, but there are no obvious ties linking them to Microsoft.

In other words, even if I suspect Microsoft, there's no way to prove that they're behind this, so it's simply better journalism to focus on the obvious flaws: there IS a rather broad pattern of manipulation (though not outright vote buying) in the OOXML "standardization" process, they have nothing but speculation about Sun's allegedly bad motives, it IS an objectively crappy standard, etc. There's no reason even to try throwing flimsy allegations their way when there are so many solid ones.

So I don't think know of any way to prove that Microsoft was really behind this study than the fact that it's flawed, and I wouldn't press the issue unless there's some proof. But that's just me.

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

Read the report

[v3rgEz]

It's free and they don't spam you, and Ars Technica oversimplifies a lot of points or just plain misrepresents them. I won't get into how much the Slashdot summary distorts the Ars Technica coverage ...

The report states that ODF files can't due all the things OOXML does, which means it won't meet the needs of most large, established enterprises. If you've ever worked on professional-looking reports, or worse imported reports, you'll realize this is pretty quickly obvious.

HOWEVER, the reports two takeaway points are: Both XML-based standards are a huge step in the right direction that allow capabilities for the enterprise impossible with proprietary formats that aren't easily readable.

The SECOND takeaway point is actually that Google docs and other SaaS might make this format war moot, which is anti-Microsoft if anything.

Go, read it yourself

Re:Read the report

[dvice_null]

> Both XML-based standards are a huge step in the right direction that allow capabilities for the enterprise impossible with proprietary formats that aren't easily readable.

Only other is a standard (ODF). OOXML is just a proprietary format (as long as it can contain binary blobs that are not documented) that isn't easily readable (6000 page specifications and the undocumented parts) for which Microsoft is trying to buy (they already confessed this) a standard.

Funny way not being biased

[Anonymous Coward]

>Industry debate about the relative merits of OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Ecma 376 Office Open XML (OOXML)

So why do they in their own summary mention OOXML as an Ecma standard, but fail to mention that ODF is an ISO standard?

Re:Funny way not being biased

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, that one was amazing, how come I missed it? I wish I had mod points...

For those who didn't RTFA, that's the opening sentence on the report download page.

Re:Not quite... no, quite.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyhow, there's no real apparent money trail on this one in terms of Microsoft buying or commissioning this study. It looks like it's just a fanboyish study from a group that does Microsoft Sharepoint consulting. So they have a dog in the fight, but there are no obvious ties linking them to Microsoft.

Surely you are kidding. You can't be serious.

Sharepoint has "zero tolerance" for ODF ... by design. The Burton Group is by your own words "a group that does Microsoft Sharepoint consulting".

If ODF is successful, and it becomes widely and internationally used for its designed role of document interchange, then Sharepoint would become essentially useless, and the Burton Group would be out of business.

"but there are no obvious ties linking them to Microsoft"

Ya gotta be kidding!! Their whole business depends on Microsoft and OOXML succeeding and OpenDocument failing. You simply cannot get a stronger or more obvious "money trail" than that.

And unfounded assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be laboring under some misinformation.

First, ODF is an international standard already. It was unanimously approved. Not so MSOOXML. It's trying to become one. Feb. we find out.

As a standard, anyone can use it, including Microsoft. It's not tied to any one application or even to Open Source. The new EU Commission investigation of Microsoft will be looking precisely into the question of whether Microsoft's version of XML interoperates sufficiently well with competitors and if not, why not. Others ask why there is a need for MSOOXML to do pretty much the same thing ODF already does, and if there are further things that need doing, why isn't Microsoft putting them into ODF?

As a standard, ODF's no longer under the control of any one vendor, not that it ever was. OASIS is the entity that controls it, and the technical committee is co-chaired by an IBM and a Sun employee.

ODF isn't OpenOffice. It's a format, not an application. Anyone can use it and many do. But it's the applications that use it that do what companies want done. The format standard just makes it possible for everyone to be interoperable, and yes, that is important to businesses, but also to governments, who want to be sure in the future that documents stored can be accessed readily without any proprietary strings. Proprietary companies don't always survive, after all. So, yes, ODF does exactly what a format is supposed to do.

So, that's why people are calling the article FUD. Because it is.

Money or time, its all cost

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Even if people don't attend specific training courses and spend money on these, there is still ramp-up time learning a new product and time == money.

I fully agree though that going to Office 2007 is a huge step compared to going to OpenOffice.

Re:Meh....

[Randolpho]

It is important because the ODF standard came first, yet Microsoft blatantly choose to, once again, ignore an established standard in favor of their own solution.

So? How many folks fork open source projects because it doesn't fit their needs? How many just do it their own way themselves? MySQL is open source... PostgresSQL is open source... should I stick to MySQL just because it came first? (Ignore the fact that Postgres came first, please. :) ) <Br/><br/>

Have you looked into the whole HTML 5 vs XHTML 2 debate? ODF vs OOXML is pretty much the same thing. As long as they're both standards and both standards are supported by browsers, does it really matter if one wins over the other? <br/><br/>

Not really. Why? Because there will be HTML 6 or XHTML 3. There will be ODF 2 or OOXML 2. Or something else. It doesn't really matter all that much, and arguing about it ad nauseum doesn't do all that much. Get busy with the conversion and move on, says I.

sure, just like...

[nguy]

Whereas with MS software there is, potentially, a focused development path (I'm not trying to be modded funny, honest).

That's like saying that central planning is obviously better than a market economy, and we all know what the outcome of that was.

Easier rebutal

[Anonymous Coward]

Works-around for compatibility should be added to the application, not to the document format!

giggle:

[Stephen Samuel]

TFA read:

Open XML is "more complex than ODF, but it's not unnecessarily complex for the contexts it was designed to address," Not unnecessarily complex?!!? freaks! The recent Errata for OOXML is almost six times the size of the full ODF documentation -- and, even then, OOXML docs are missing critical parts!

I'm surprised that the authors don't expect to get laughed out of the hall when they present this report -- even if it is on Microsoft soil.

Use MS-OOXML and reduce confusion

[nadaou]

To reduce the (probably intended) market confusion over the pedigree of the format names, it would be nice if people used "MS-OOXML" to differentiate it from ODF and OpenOffice.

[repost]

qwerty

[Sithgunner]

qwerty

Re:qwerty

[Siridar]

Yes.

Yes it is.

MS Paying their customers?

[flyingfsck]

Wow, I didn't realize that business has become so bad for MS that they now have to pay people to use MS Office, but that is the only way it can be cheaper than OOo.

ODF is _not_ controlled by SUN.

[Stephen Samuel]

Last I heard, the vast majority of work on OpenOffice.org is done by Sun employees. You are obviously confusing ODF with OpenOffice.Org. OOO may be have a lot of SUN influence, but OOXML was developed independently of that process. Although it was based on the original OOO XML-based file format, it underwent extensive editing before it was accepted as a standard, and OO had to be changed to fit those changes. ODF is now controlled by ISO, and the various organizations that produce conforming software are expected and intended to follow that lead.

OOXML, on the other hand, is just a (rather grotty) documentaion of the format that MS back-ended onto Office 2007 (it's not even the default format) ssssssssssssss -- and even though Microsoft claims control of the format, they're not even willing to bind themselves to use it in the future.

This is a really clear case of the coal calling the steel black. (not even the pot calling the kettle).

Re:ODF is _not_ controlled by SUN.

[mattpalmer1086]

ODF is controlled by OASIS, not ISO. A version of ODF has been approved by ISO as an ISO standard.

Just like if Microsoft OOXML gets ISO approval, ISO wouldn't control OOXML - they only get to put their badge on a version of it and call it an ISO standard. Microsoft would still control development of OOXML.

(sorry - repeated this in a few places in this discussion, but I'm on a mission to get these facts straight. Then we can criticize OOXML if we like!)

Re:ODF is _not_ controlled by SUN.

[Stephen Samuel]

My bad, but the principle of my point (thankfully) still stands. (Getting facts straight is generally a good thing when you're complaining about someone else having them (maliciously) wrong.)

Money trail

[wiredlogic]

There has to be a money trail leading back to Microsoft. There always is when someone else is pumping their FUD. It may be indirect or a promise for future investment but it has to be there. No rational analyst can conclude that a standard that says things like "format the way Word95 does it" is worth promoting as a common document format.

Somebody claiming to be Burton posted on Ars forum

[bersl2]

Frankly, though, I'm skeptical that he is who he says he is.

Re:Meh....

[Fnord666]

Agree 1000%. It's just a schema! I mean who cares what it does or where it comes from. I say the same about books, too. My literature prof wanted to fail me because I read Mein Kampf instead of War and Peace, but I was all like, dude, what's the problem? They're both books!

I think we need a Godwin's Law ruling on this one. Anyone?

Sun indirectly controlling ODF

[smartdreamer]

Sun indirectly controlling ODF

That is really nice. I didn't know ODF was solar powered. Open energy source rocks.
Think green. ;)

Wait...

[Xenographic]

So, you're blaming Ars and Slashdot for not being able to read and argue with the story, rather than the analyst group who put up that registration bit? Besides, Ars isn't the only source reporting that the study touted OOXML over ODF. There aren't really any good arguments that'll do that, so why should it be so hard to believe that they used bad ones? Weren't we warned earlier with that ODF roadmap that Microsoft was preparing a pro-OOXML media campaign?

Finally, if their arguments are so great, you'd think that they wouldn't be hiding them behind some wacky registration link, wouldn't you?

Re:Wait...

[hardburn]

No, I'm complaining generally that getting to the primary source is needlessly annoying, and that I've recently become more skeptical of Ars as a secondary source.

In any case, I find it a struggle to find any worthwhile reason to support OOXML, but I'm not all that excited about ODF, either. It only seems interesting in a "We're not Microsoft" sense.

Re:Wait...

[mattpalmer1086]

The reason to support any genuinely open, implementable information standard, whoever it's from, and whatever its about, is because it gives us more choice to work with *our* information, using whatever tools are appropriate for us. It frees *our* information from a particular vendor.

It increases competition in the software marketplace, giving all of us more and better tools to work with, and forces prices for common functionality down over time. I think those are good enough reasons to care.

Re:Wait...

[hardburn]

Not when 40% of documents in a given office could be served just as well by plain TXT, 70% of the remainder could use RTF or HTML, and anything else done by PDF. I'm sure that you'll always be able to point to feature X in ODF as something PDF doesn't have, but how much does feature X really matter?

Open Source redundancy is still redundancy.

Re:Wait...

[mattpalmer1086]

I didn't mention documents specifically - I talked about reasons to support open information standards in general.

As far as documents go, if you're saying that we already have some open document standards (txt, rtf, html and pdf), then you're right. However, they don't cover even half of what people typically do with documents - and two of them are certainly about final publication, rather than direct editability. What about versioning, comments and track changes, tables of contents, indexes, outlining, templating, style handling, text flow, margins, headers and footers, page numbering, tabs, cross-references, bookmarks, mail merging, etc.? If the formats you mention were up to the job, no-one would care about ODF or OOXML - we would all just export our DOC files into TXT, HTML, PDF or RTF and it would be job done. But they aren't, and people don't.

Oh - and I will keep repeating this until people get it - documented information standards have nothing to do with open source software. You know, how those JPG, BMP, PNG and GIF files have nothing to do with photoshop or paint shop pro, or paint.net, or the Gimp, or Word, or Open Office, or Internet Explorer, or Firefox, or whatever. Isn't it nice that both proprietary and open source software can work on *your* information, without fear of corruption or arbitrary change, and stored and exchanged in a standard, documented, open format!

Re:Not quite... no, quite.

[Your.Master]

Yes you can. A stronger or more obvious money trail would be a cheque from Microsoft with "for the article putting down ODF" on the memo line.

You can't fault Microsoft for somebody actually liking their products, even if they like it because they make a business out of using/supporting it. Fault them on some other practice, I'm sure you can find a legitimate one.

Is this specific enough for you?

[walterbyrd]

1) OOXML is not open, ODF is open. OOXML specs refer to other closed specs.

2) ODF is controlled by ISO, OOXML is controlled by msft, and msft *now* claims that msft will never give ISO control. Rather msft wants to give control to the ECMA - a group controlled by msft. This directly contradicts what msft first promised.

3) ODF is used by several different organizations. Anybody is welcome to freely use ODF. OOXML is used by msft, and novell - due to a very sneaky and secretive document.

4) OOXML is only being considered for an ISO standard because of msft bribing and ballot stuffing.

Re:Is this specific enough for you?

[mattpalmer1086]

ODF is controlled by OASIS. A version of it has been approved as an ISO standard.

OOo *does* cost more

[Tony]

(OOo costs more than MS Word?!?! WTF??!!)

Yes, OOo costs more than MS-Office. Here's why.

MS-Office is the dominant office suite. MS-Office 2007 saves documents in a format that OOo can't read. Therefore, most people are saving their documents in a format OOo can't read.

Now, every time an IT guy has to go to a desk for the user who called and said, "I can't open this document," and then the IT guy has to go *back* to the office, get the clue-bat, return to the desk, and forcefully whonk the user with the clue-bat, and say, "It's in MS-Office 2007 proprietary format, you imbecile-- you can't open it with anything else!" and then the user has to order a copy of MS-Office 2007 (which doesn't come cheap, my friend), it *costs the company money!*

So it's easy to see how OOo is more expensive than MS-Office.

Re:OOo *does* cost more

[thommym]

This is only true if you blame the costs for incompatibility on the part following open standards.

Re:OOo *does* cost more

[jimicus]

This is only true if you blame the costs for incompatibility on the part following open standards.

Out here in the real world, you have to be pragmatic.

Granted, incompatibility is Microsoft's fault. But I'd be more concerned with answering the question "what works?" rather than "whose fault is it?".

Not really

[Tony]

Your employees spend the whole day after the upgrade just figuring out the new software. That's a man-year of productivity lost.

I don't believe this, even for a thousand users of the office package.

Actually, I see 1,000 employees who've lost time reading /. (or Perez Hilton), playing Solitaire, pimping their MySpace pages, or just staring off into space pretending to work.

In one given day, most people productively *work* only for a couple of hours.

Who really cares about document formats?

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly enough information about .DOC is avaliable in the public domain that anyone who cared enough could write a document converter.

The world uses ms word and any other word processor thats worth a damn has had the ability to easily read and write MS word format for quite a few years now.

Why is it that almost every day for the past year there is something about some ODF OO*XML* format war? Aside from some philosophical open format argument does this really effect anyone?

Microsoft tactics

[kawabago]

Two things Microsoft has never had, good ideas and scruples.

Parent is AC

[gd2shoe]

As said by an AC. That's even funnier!

Debunked?

[Anonymous MadCoe]

In my book debunking means looking at someone's statement. And then methodically showing that it's not true. This can be done by showing the truth is different, or showing that the reasoning is flawed.

This article IMHO just stated that things are different, but does not provide a better founded truth, nor does it show the flaws in the original reasoning in a methodical way (again it's just stating the opposite).

I would not call this debunking, I would call it disputing.

My 2 cents...

Email them

[cybergen007]

I would like to ask eveybody to goto this adres: http://www.burtongroup.com/Contact/EmailForm.aspx?emailID=62> and let them no that you do not agree to their research. For example OpenOffice is free. How on earth is Office cheaper?

Re:What about training users for new office versio

[richlv]

not to mention that they actually do not learn to use it, just cope with it.
30 pages of manual formatting ? good ! once generated, later manually edited index ? great !
mixed outline, paragraph and manual numberig ? wonderful !
so after some documents have been edited by several such persons, the mess in there is incredible. as a result quite a lot of time is spent hunting weird glitches and manually fixing them over and over again. and in the end there still are problems left. total time spent - a lot more than one day. more like at least one day every week for most emplyees.

compatibility over time and between systems

[Grampaw Willie]

compatibility over time and between systems is important to us customers but is hated by manufacturers

as a result it is important for document formats to be standardized by ISO or ANSI

requests for change must be made public and slowed up so that everyone has a chance to implement -- so that backward compatibility can be assured

certain document types need particular care:

• PDF
• HTML
• rtf
• txt
• Comma Delimited
• address book

there are likely a few more

these formats are so important to our data that support of these formats cannot be trusted to software companies. the specifications for these documents needs to become open, international standards so that

• documents can be exchanged between disparate systems
• archive documents can be retrieved from the past

Source code is what you did

[Anonymous Coward]

Documentation is what you should have done.

Which is why MSOXML isn't documentation. "Do it like WW95 did it" isn't documentation: it doesn't tell you what you SHOULD be doing.

Re:What about training users for new office versio

[tbannist]

I see the problem here. It's not witchcraft, it's voodoo. You need to sacrifice more goats.

Analysts also recommended to buy SCO ...

[gotan]

... when it traded at 200 times of its current value.

They more often than not just copy the PR of the businesses they "analyze", don't bother checking their facts and firmly believe in the biggest players if they're not in their pockets anyway.

LMAO

[conureman]

The tone of the report seems so factual. This is the hardest I've laughed since Jon Stewart had to start writing his own stuff.

Upgrade

[conureman]

"Most job applicants out there are familiar with MS software and have used it extensively in the past. Ergo, the software learning curve for a new employee is generally lower."

"Most job applicants out there are already familiar with MS software and have used it extensively in the past. Ergo, the software learning curve for a new version of office is astoundingly steep."

There you go, fixed it.

Re:Meh....

[fwarren]

It does matter.

Right now NOTHING even writes to MS-OOXML. Once it is a standard MS can change and implement it as they want. At that point Office may be able to save to that format. it won't be the default format. They may change it or even remove support for it at a future point.

Then due to the fact that there are blobs of binary data in it, in propriety Microsoft formats. Others are not free to implement code that reads or writes these formats. These formats are not publically documented. Let alone public standards.

Who else will ever be able to read MS-OOXML? Who else will be able to write to it? Only Microsoft. At least when you are talking about xhtml or html5 it is possible to create a browser that can read and render both formats.

Have you tried it?

[michaelwigle]

Out of curiosity, have you (or anyone else reading this) tried it? I ask only because I tried installing it on Vista and O2K7 install and it didn't work. Still won't recognize the file format and won't open it if I force the issue. Just curious to see if others have had that experience or if it was just a random glitch on my system.

Re:What about training users for new office versio

[dzurn]

The only thing worse than training an employee and having them leave ...

...is not training them and having them stay..

Wet blanket.

[baboo_jackal]

OK so I think there are really three separate but related pieces to this discussion:

1) The total, over-time cost of using OOXML versus ODF (technology, training, support, and software upgrade costs).
2) The long-term effects on our ability to read and use business documents over long (in the IT scope, so maybe a decade) periods of time.
3) The actual capabilities, and the value they provide to current end users, of OOXML versus ODF.

To be honest, I'm most interested in the last one. Here's an assertion made in the original study:

Overall, ODF addresses only a subset of what most organizations do with productivity applications today. ... ODF is insufficient for complex real-world enterprise requirements
TFA doesn't address this at all, and to be honest, this is kind of the most important thing - if ODF really doesn't fulfill the needs of its users, then the other two points are moot, because unless this isn't true, the necessary critical mass of users won't adopt ODF. Point is, the *first* thing that needs to be hashed out is whether or not ODF provides equal or greater capability for businesses to work with electronic documents than OOXML.

It's aimed at organisations with office politics

[jesterzog]

No, the intended audience is going to be those folks who may lack the IT knowledge but still control the purse strings (CEO, COO, CFO, et al). They don't know any better so it's going to be easy to fill their heads with FUD and have them take it as gospel.

This is a report to justify a decision already made -- it's not a report to investigate fairly and without bias. Besides the occasional ignorant manager you've already mentioned, I think the more important target for this report will also be staff in organisations where office politics are commonplace. This is exactly the kind of report that's useful in cases where managers and/or IT staff have already made up their minds to stay with Windows/Office for a shallow reason that suits themselves without having considered the organisation, and simply need to find documentation to justify it to whoever queries them, and are in a position to be able to hide or talk down any reports that debunk or claim the opposite.

Perhaps it's because they're already trained in these products and aren't keen to learn new ones, maybe they'd lose their jobs if the company moved away from Microsoft, or perhaps they just like being flown to Microsoft training events and given shiny toys and free alcohol every year. Whatever the reason, there are a lot of people who like using Microsoft because it's Microsoft, and are happy to use whatever flaky means are necessary to justify it. The same is often true for OSS or just about any other technology, to be fair.

I agree

[gr8scot]

I wish slashdot allowed edits. : /

Teh 'Preview' button just isn't enough for careless people.

Re:Meh....

[Randolpho]

Right now NOTHING even writes to MS-OOXML.

Office 2007 does, but I get your point. Mostly, however, that's a marketing choice on the part of Microsoft's competitors rather than an implementation issue. Yes, OOXML has a complex XML schema, but it's quite possible to write to the format.

Then due to the fact that there are blobs of binary data in it, in propriety Microsoft formats. Others are not free to implement code that reads or writes these formats. These formats are not publically documented. Let alone public standards.

I'm not sure I follow you here. Are you saying that OOXML has proprietary MS formats for its binary data? I was led to believe OOXML follows the Open Packaging Convention which, although written by Microsoft, is amazingly similar to ODF's packaging; both being, essentially, a zip collection of XML files and binary files, the binary files being images, movies, or code.

What proprietary binary blobs are you talking about? Now, I'll admit that you could embed, say, a .WMV file in an OOXML file, which is a proprietary Microsoft binary blob, but you could also embed that .WMV file in an ODF file. Or you could embed a .MOV file in either format, which is a proprietary Apple binary blob.

Who else will ever be able to read MS-OOXML?

Anybody with a zip tool like GZIP or WinZip and a text reader like EMACS or Notepad.

Who else will be able to write to it?

See above.

Only Microsoft.

Again, I'd like to know what those proprietary binary blobs are. If they exist, sure, you might be right. But all evidence is to the contrary.

At least when you are talking about xhtml or html5 it is possible to create a browser that can read and render both formats.

And it's quite possible to create a word processor that can read, write, and render both ODF and OOXML. Hell, both Microsoft and Sun have plugins for Word 2007 that do that. Are they full translations? Probably not always, 'cause there *are* major differences in the way things are organized in the schema.

But they do render the issue moot, in my opinion, hence my original "Meh" post. What do I really care, as a consumer? Not a hell of a lot -- I can work with either format I choose, and as long as I don't need the fancy bells and whistles that don't translate well, I can translate between them pretty much without pain.

What do I really care as a programmer? Not a lot, as long as I can figure out the XML schema for either format when I need to mess with them. Thankfully, there is plenty of documentation on both sides on the subject. I already have the tools to get into both formats, in the form of zip reading code and XML parsers. Will I get more pain trying to program against OOXML? Probably, because it's a more complex format. Does that really matter in the long run?

Not really.

Re:Meh....

[fwarren]

The point is you "cant" figure it out. The only party that can figure out and implement OOXML properly is Microsoft. There are things in OOXML like "do spacing like winword95". There is not place to look that up, you would have to reverse engineer it.

As for binary data. The XML is a wrapper around 64 bit encoded binary objects. Many of these structures are structures that are found in current Microsoft file formats. The problem is even with the specifications being made available, which Microsoft has announced today they would be doing. They have patented it in such a way any implementation you would write to work with the structure must be licensed from Microsoft or else you will be violating the patten.

Also, Open Source has not been invited to play. The license for looking at what documentation is available prevents you from implementing this in GPL'd software.

OOXML is a ruse. It is a smoke screen.

1. It was named to confuse people. Office Open XML is meant to sound like "Open Office XML". After all if you thought it was an Open Office format you would love and embrace it. Instead of treating it like Microsoft's bastard child.
2. It was never designed to be fully implemented. It is designed to be an ISO standard. So you can say "I have met the requirement of being able to archive documents in an open format OOXML is an open format".
3. It does not qualify as an open format. Face it, you can't perfectly open up a Word 95 document in Office 2007. That is a 12 year time frame. Microsoft is always pushing a new format to lock users in to there product. Backward compatibility is not in their favor. In 10 years time, you will not be able to open up a OOXML formated document saved today. Which will make it worthless as standard.
4. As a standard it is intentionally to complex. There are several program that can already open / save to ODF. With that software being free. 20 years from now, you can still find and download it. Or even look at the old spec and write something that can work with ODF 1.0.
5. There is only ONE set of software that can even work with ODF. It will not be available in the future. You cant buy/legally get a copy of Office 95. What would make anyone think there will be a legal way to open up an OOXML file saved in 2007 and have it look correct in 2020? Where would someone get Office 2007 then?

Re: Study Touting OOXML Over ODF Is Debunked?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, OOXML = Office Open XML. Read the wiki and get a clue.

Just because it has Open in the name doesn't mean it actually is. In fact, even under the Licensing section of your wiki it doesn't claim that it's "open", they simply called their "Covenant Not To Sue" an "Open Specification Promise". How about this, here's an "open" recipe for Coca Cola:

Ingredients:
Carbonated Water
CocaCola Secret Ingredients
Step 1) Mix Carbonated Water with CocaCola Secret Ingredients
Step 2) Enjoy!

That's every bit as open as "useWord2002TableStyleRules" or "useWord97LineBreakRules" options in OOXML from your own link. If you can correctly process a microsoft-made OOXML document without this information, then you should have no problem at all making your own soft drinks.