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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

"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.

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: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.