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Microsoft Believes IBM Masterminded Anti-OOXML Initiative
mahuyar writes "Microsoft executives have accused IBM of leading the campaign against their initiative to have Office Open XML approved by the International Organization for Standardization. 'Nicos Tsilas, senior director of interoperability and IP policy at Microsoft, said that IBM and the likes of the Free Software Foundation have been lobbying governments to mandate the rival OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard to the exclusion of any other format. "They have made this a religious and highly political debate," Tsilas said. "They are doing this because it is advancing their business model. Over 50 percent of IBM's revenues come from consulting services."'"
Is that the pot calling the kettle black? If Microsoft is pulling out all the stops to steamroll their way to the front, I find it incredibly hypocritical of them to call someone else out on a counter.
So sad, that such a tiny little garage shop like Microsoft should be beaten up by the big bad IBM.
Anyone else think that this sounds like whining?
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
You know how I know there's no God. Because if there was, a lightning bolt would come from the sky and blast this guy to smithereens.
After all the revelations of Microsoft's attempts to poison the standards process by buying votes, to accuse someone else of some dirty campaign is so hypocritical and immoral that one has to stand in awe of the kind of twisted mind that could produce it.
I thought only SCO's pathetic supporters with their claims that Groklaw was an IBM front were this warped, but Microsoft, congrats, you've produced the same specimen of irony-meter destroying beastling.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
IBM believes that Microsoft masterminded the Pro-OOXML Initiative.
...what you engage in yourself.
IBM executives have concerns microsoft of leading the campaign against their initiative against microsoft's initiative to have Office Open XML approved by the International Organization for Standardization.
But, Nicos Tsilas, senior director of interoperability and IP policy at Microsoft, said that IBM and the likes of the Free Software Foundation have been lobbying governments to mandate the rival OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard to the exclusion of any other format.
IBM responded with, "They have made this a religious and highly political debate, worse than we did" "Yes, we ARE are doing this because it is advancing our business model. But, over 50 percent of microsoft's revenues come from abusing and INsulting services against their customers needing a way out."
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Seriously, we've seen plenty of stories right here on Slashdot about Microsoft trying to buy the vote. Sweden comes to mind. And frankly, you can't call it lobbying when all you are doing is pointing out that Microsoft's "open" format is not actually open.
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
I do believe the likes of Google and Sun were firmly on IBM's side in pushing back against MSOOXML. Goes to show, it takes a group effort to stand up against a monopolist.
For putting aside vendor difference and suggesting that IBM be recognized for their alleged efforts. For, in my mind, campaigning against bad spec does indeed make one masterful.
After all, who isn't running OS/2 on their thinkpads these days, or typing on Model M keyboards? And the IBM PowerPC chip - now that's a popular chip for the mainstream market if ever I saw one!
Yep, I'm sure the guys who sold us all on "I just totally warped my files" would be capable of blocking a Microsoft initiative... When I think powerful and successful marketing, I know I think IBM.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
IBM clearly deviated from established and acceptable protocol--buying and intimidating voters.
TODO - Insert Creative/Witty Signature
There is only one company to blame and it's Microsoft. If it had been a decent spec and unencumbered people would have respected it despite the author. This spec though did not deserve the light of day.
If it wasn't for their 'IP policy,' we wouldn't have half the problems we do with 'interoperability.'
I don't care why you're posting AC
Whether ODF is or not is quite besides the point. Microsoft has tried to make this about ODF vs. OOXML, when in fact it should be all about Microsoft's unimplementable file format (at least by a third party) and the dirty tricks that it has used in its attempts to get it ISO certification so it can try to sell Office as an "open standards"-based application suite to the increasing number of governments who want an open document format to assure long-term readability of documents.
Quite frankly I think that the very idea of someone submitting a protocol or file format to an international standards committee without one example of a third-party implementation is ludicrous.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So wait...
Microsoft is crying about this, this is not fair?
Are they... losing this battle? Is this their last defence?
I sure hope so!
Dependency hell? =>
In this post and the posts above and below it I have an interesting discussion with someone who says essentially the same thing.
Personally, when it comes down to it, I don't care who is behind the standard as long as the standard meets certain *ahem* standards. Mainly I want inter-operable implementations from more than one vendor, and I would like at least one implementation that's fully Open Source and considered the reference implementation.
ODF meets all of those requirements. OOXML meets none of them. I don't think even Microsoft could make an implementation of OOXML in a clean room without using any of their other source code.
So, I care not one whit for the political machinations behind it all. All I care about is having a standard that's really a standard. Putting the political machinations to the fore is a mistake, and Microsoft is trying to capitalize on that to create a smokescreen that obscures the real issue, which is that their 'standard' is awful and unimplementable.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Thanks to IBM lobbying, we'll all be using EBCDIC-XML for our documents.
Anyhow, not that it matters, but the truth seems to be the latter. Several groups and entities were opposed to OOXML, including many FOSS organizations like the FSF. And also IBM. Given IBM's money, perhaps it acted more than the others, I have no idea. If IBM did anything underhanded or unethical, then that would be very wrong, regardless of the worthiness of the goal. But, as it happens, Microsoft was caught buying votes, not IBM, so these accusations of Microsoft's are just ridiculous.
This should be a highly political debate - otherwise we encourage our Governments/Schools to continue to waste our taxes. If Microsoft didn't lobby such institutions then it would not be a political debate.
Calling Free Software a religious movement is a dubious and cheap slur against a movement.
Classic FUD.
I love my pubic goods..
Sounds like Hitler crying that Britain and France were entirely to blame for the war that started after they invaded Poland.
Infuriate left and right
A specification 6000 pages long is probably another factor. Heck, try to get something that is spec compliant from a 100 page specification is hard enough, but with 6000 pages you must be smoking something good to even expect compliance. Good specs are easy to implement and understand, but then again I doubt Microsoft was even expecting anyone to be able to implement OOXML.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I don't see msft accusing IBM of "dirty" campaigning.
The problem is that another company may be campaigning at all. I mean, how friggin *dare* they! Doesn't IBM know that msft has a sacred right to all PC OSes and office products?
IBM has already shown itself to have the unmitigated gall to donate IBM's own code to Linux. This prompted msft to fund caldera to file a bogus lawsuit against IBM. According to the original lawsuit, caldera owned UNIX, and therefore anything that ever touched UNIX was also owned by caldera.
Yet, it spite of being punished, IBM has still not learned their lesson. To do anything that might obstruct msft is an absolute sacrilege! Msft is understandably appalled. Msft will not accept this horrible injustice silently. Msft wants the world to know just how completely unethically IBM is behaving.
I mean, to try and compete with msft! Of all the bloody nerve
There you have it folks. No more discussion required and everyone who's defending Microsoft is welcome to leave apologies as replies! This is just more of them using money to try to brand their software as some sort of open standard when it isn't.
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
Well. I strongly participated in the antiooxml campaign here in Mexico against ooxml becoming an iso standard. I did this because there is already a fully supported, open, non-patent-encumbered standard covering the whole domain of what ooxml proposes, so it makes more sense for the industry, no matter how strong is microsoft in it, to support the other standard. It is within microsoft's reach to support the iso standard we have now and they did not present any reason whatsoever for its support or adoption in the industry.
I can tell you now that IBM had nothing to do with it. Its just that many smaller foss vendors see in microsoft's initative a way to further their bussiness model in detriment of ours. We are consulting shops, we live on services and providing added value around them and open source software. To have a patent encumbered iso standard that can only be safely and completely supported by one software vendors not only hurts us, it hurts all of our client's choices in the market.
We dont mind integrating MS products in solutions, when it makes sense. Microsoft wants things done their way, weather it makes sense for the client or not. I find this unacceptable as the market is quite capable of providing good alternatives for microsoft software and fileformats and just letting the dominant set their own standard as a public one, with strings attached, hurts customer choice. The customer would be much better if microsoft simply supported ODF in their products. This way they can compete with their (yes, i do mean this) SUPPERB office product on the basis of it being better, not on the basis of them having a monopoly.
Its interesting to see how microsoft has been searching for "the linux enemy". One guy or company that, if they manage to hurt, theyd be hurting the whole movement to the point of crippling it. This year their "linux enemy" is IBM, who is in a great position to benefit themselves from FOSS (being that they are the earlyest of the high end and rich adopters of foss). But they dont get it.
Even if IBM signed in blood tomorrow to use exclusively microsoft software, that would not have changed things on our ISO vote. Microsoft is hurting US, not IBM. US: smaller companies providing consulting without having to give anyone a dime for essentially nothing (which is the current microsoft-owned IT bussiness model). US, who have invested in developing a FOSS expertiese so that we can leverage its cost advantage in front of a microsoft dominated, license driven market.
Perhaps things have gone so far for microsoft, that they dont realize that taking on opensource is not taking on sun or ibm, its taking on US. Thousends and thousends of engineers and entrepreneurs that are opinion leaders when it comes to technology supplies, that are choosing NOT to pay the microsoft tax when it comes to deliverance of IT products and services.
And US thousends have both the numbers and the technicall expertiese to determine where and how their bloated ooxml turns into a useless piece of (insert your own insulting language here) xml , when compared to the ODF standard that has already much more time in development and real world testing. I mean, its THERE its already working, its already dominant in the non-ms industry (meaning all office suites from larger vendors support it). The cost for MS tu support it is really close to nil, while the cost of all the rest of the market to support microsoft's format would be much more. If overall cost for the industry is any kind of meassure, then iso support for OOXML is just plain stupid.
So no, Microsoft, its not "IBM". Its everyone in the world that does not live or want to live on your products and shady bussiness practices.
NO SIG
So? Real competitors compete. I understand that Microsoft isn't used to real competitors, so doesn't recognize one when it sees one.
But until Microsoft can complain about evidence that IBM is competing with Microsoft illegally, or even actually unethically (as Microsoft has routinely been demonstrated to do), this just shows that Microsoft can't compete on a level playing field. Which of course is exactly why Microsoft needs to get OOXML installed, before it's too late.
--
make install -not war
"They are doing this because it is advancing their business model. Over 50 percent of IBM's revenues come from consulting services."
The only way that this could be true is if MS's OOXML format somehow locked out competitors in the consulting services industry. Hmmm... Is MS not arguing for the dropping of OOXML? It sure sounds like it.
All's fair in love & war. Sometimes business is like war. IBM was the Microsoft of its day. They've got a longer history of dirty tricks than just about anybody out there.
So how do you destroy a competitor, legally, soaking up goodwill from the programmer community all the while? Commodify your Competition's Product! Sun was pushing Java big-time for awhile. So why would IBM help it by funding Eclipse? Because by doing so, they commodify Java development environments, eliminating a potential revenue stream for Sun. Eclipse is a weapon against Sun! Why do you think they named it "Eclipse!?" What does an Eclipse do?
It's one thing to pull dirty tricks. It's another thing to be able to pull dirty tricks on the dirty tricksters. It's yet again another thing to do all that, and win the goodwill of the community at the same time! So, by opposing OOXML, IBM is hurting Microsoft, opening up a potential market for consulting services (There has been a fair bit of money to be made in automated document processing for government!) and winning kudos from us Open Source community to boot.
Bravo!
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
-- Mahatma Ghandi
So, we're definitely in the third phase now...
"Hey, Microsoft. You fight like a girl!"
Actually, yes. There is a great deal of controversy around the Kenyan national response.
Two IBM employees are listed in the authors metadata of the PDF files submitted by Kenya. Not so coincidentally, Kenya also had one of the largest number of comments submitted.
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
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Microsoft should never have submitted this. ECMA should never have accepted it. If IBM does everything they can to prevent this standard from happening, they are doing the world a huge favour.
Everybody already knows that Microsoft has been playing dirty. This is just their attempt to say 'everyone is doing it'. If they can spread enough FUD, most people will just turn around in disgust and most of them will just be muttering something about 'What a mess, I guess everyone's hands are dirty to some degree' without trying to understand the difference between bribery on one hand and advocacy on the other.
Think global, act loco
Yeah, but.. " Microsoft executives have accused the rest of the world of leading the campaign against their initiative to have Office Open XML approved by the International Organization for Standardization. " doesn't have the right spin.
I've downloaded and looked at the MSOOXML spec and I thought it was some kind of insult. I seriously invite everyone who has ever read a spec, and who still doubts how bad this one really is, to download the 38 Mb PDF file from .. oh wait.. it's not there anymore..
now probably from ECMA-376 and you probably want the ZIP file "ECMA-376 part 4" (warning, 32 Mb) and also get the 2000+ pages of errata from ECMA which the countries have to read in the next 2 weeks before they get to have a final vote at the ballot resolution meeting.
You want the file titled "Office Open XML Part 4 - Markup Language Reference.pdf".
A copy of the 2200 page PDF file of criticisms can be downloaded from here.
Frankly, you can get a good laugh out of all the stuff about 1900 and 1904 date systems (response 43, I quote CH-0007
) and the mathematically wrong CEILING function (response 30 p. 121),
But I believe this is the one "killer question" that the BRM should consider discussing for those 5 days: Response 31 on p. 122 (211) to questions BE-0001, CH-0013, CL-0001, DE-0119, KR-0001, NZ-0003, PE-0010, ZA-0003
Basically, AFAIK, the comments are "We already have ODF, why do we need OOXML?" and the proposed solutions are of the gist "Develop OOXML starting from ODF". This is ECMA's response:
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
It's OS/2 payback time. Have to laugh.
How often has MS done it to others. They did it to Borland, WordPerfect Corp, Novell, the Lotus people, the DB can't remember their name people, and yes to IBM.
"DOS is not done 'till 1-2-3 won't run" was the saying it those days.
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few"...
IBM's actions benefit many, while Microsoft's actions benefit few. You can't expect corporations to behave like charities, IBM's actions are better than most.
Taken to it's ultimate conclusion, consider the end result of IBM's action:
All software people use day to day is free, and some help can be obtained online for free.
For everything you might want to do, there is a choice of applications which all interoperate using standard formats.
For businesses who want accountability and someone they can demand immediate help from, there are still consultancy services but they are now capable of providing more complete support (code fixes etc).
Home users would get software included when they bought a computer, and would get it supported by geeky friends/family, just like they do now... they would get a much larger selection of software included tho, and be able to install newer versions (or have the geeky friends do it) for free. The customer would get a lot more for their money, and have a choice of software just like they currently have a choice of hardware.
Companies selling computers would still provide support to their customers, just like they do now.
Microsoft are the only ones who would lose out. Unless you receive money from Microsoft, it's almost certainly in you're interest to support IBM's actions.
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I wasn't there, so I have to take the word of other people. But none of the historians I read have ever written about tabulating machines in the equipment that was seized in the extermination camps' offices. Black's book dissolved after the threat of a defamation lawsuit.
Fantasy: http://ferrisfantasy.blogspot.com/