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."'"

Comments

Wait

[Adradis]

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.

Pity the poor little Microsoft

[KublaiKhan]

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?

Hmmm...

[MightyMartian]

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.

Re:Hmmm...

[MightyMartian]

What precisely has IBM or the Open Source community done that was unethical? Revealing the bribery that Microsoft was using? Revealing how incredibly bad and unimplementable OOXML is? Going to various partners and agencies and spilling the beans on what Microsoft is up to?

If it wasn't for these things, it's quite possible that OOXML, a group of file formats which no one without in-depth knowledge of Microsoft's older proprietary formats could hope to implement on an independent document platform, would have got ISO certification, and the next time some government decided "We must use only open document formats", Microsoft would walk up with Office 2007 or whatever comes next, with a file format which in fact would continue to chain said government to Microsoft software, and probably get away with it.

Re:Hmmm...

[Romancer]

I would go so far as to say that IBM actually used the proper cahnnels for these efforts as well. I would also like to point out that Microsoft did these exact same things and more.

Voting for or against something is actually the important part of holding a vote.

Lobbying national bodies is the standard for attempting to have your products considered.

Both Microsoft and IBM did these things, so why is Microsoft whining about them when they stepped over some lines on this subject and IBM didn't.

That's all right...

[26reverse]

IBM believes that Microsoft masterminded the Pro-OOXML Initiative.

Re:That's all right...

[ShieldW0lf]

Microsoft wanted a standard basically amounts to ISO certified vendor lock in. They wanted it because it supports their business model, which is getting paid for the standard office functionality installed on every computer on earth, forever.

IBM wanted a standard that allows them to mix and match their own office software, MS office software, or any other office software together as part of a larger solution based on their clients needs. They wanted it because it supports their business model, which is doing analysis of a specific businesses needs and helping them put together a complete information infrastructure.

The thing is, the reason the International Standards Body exists is to make IBMs business model practical and prevent companies from successfully operating with Microsofts business model. It doesn't do this because it has a business motive though. It does it because the people of the world value their autonomy enough to have united behind this goal.

So, basically, Microsoft are angrily accusing IBM of being good corporate citizens of the world in this particular regard.

You belive about others...

[KokorHekkus]

...what you engage in yourself.

Pot calling the kettle black

[businessnerd]

Why don't we look at this in reverse and see how ridiculous it looks...

Microsoft and the likes of the Microsoft's lobbyists have been lobbying governments to mandate the rival OOXML standard to the exclusion of any other format.

Wait a minute....that's not ridiculous at all! That's f%#&ing reality!

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.

Microsoft is to blame

[alextheseal]

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.

Re:Microsoft is to blame

[Romancer]

Holly crap!

FTA:

"Let's be very clear," Paoli said. "It has been fostered by a single company -- IBM. If it was not for IBM, it would have been business as usual for this standard."

Business as usual? With all the corruption we've seen on the process, business as usual seems kinda sucky for the people when left in the hands of Microsoft.

Re:Microsoft is to blame

[ozmanjusri]

Apparently the spreadsheet spec says nothing about how formulaes are supposed to work for example.

Stop spreading this FUD.

Microsoft introduced it way back in 2006, and it was debunked immediately.

There's only one side fighting dirty. Microsoft keeps trying to spin this as though it's evil competitors trying to hurt poor little MS.

It's not.

It's Microsoft fighting its own customers desire for free formats. Competitors don't pay monopoly rents for locked in products. Customers do, and Microsoft wants to keep it that way.

Microsoft is crying like a little baby?

[sucker_muts]

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!

Not incredibly dumb astroturfing?

[Omnifarious]

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.

Very Unprofessional

[kripkenstein]

Ah, Microsoft isn't even speaking with one voice here:

"Let's be very clear," Paoli [Microsoft senior director of XML technology] said. "It has been fostered by a single company -- IBM. If it was not for IBM, it would have been business as usual for this standard." [...] 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. So which is it, 'IBM, and IBM alone', or 'IBM, the FSF, and a few others'? These two opinions just end up sounding like rants; this is what happens when everything isn't run through the company PR office (a surprising oversight here, actually - very unprofessional).

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.

Re:Very Unprofessional

[ozmanjusri]

Who caught them?

A lot of people.

Finland's EFFI demonstrated the overall level of vote-buying with their analysis of corruption levels in P countries.

Both the FFI and IBM rep present at the Swedish meeting protested about the vote stacking there.

In Portugal it was the Sun and IBM reps who lodged complaints because they were denied a vote due to a "lack of chairs".

Everywhere you look there have been a litany of complaints about vote stacking and rigging of committees.

Rephrased..

[fictionpuss]

Microsoft are stating that:

1. There is a legitimate business model around supporting Free Software - which IBM demonstrates
2. End customers who use that Free Software are able to perform their work duties as well or better than those who would use MS Office - otherwise they would not be in competition to Microsoft (#1)
3. Standards bodies and Governments (of the people) should back OOXML/MS Office (of a corporation), which would encourage sales of MS Office, even though Free Software (of the people) is already up to the task (#2), and there is no key economic stimulus motivation (#1) (for the people) to do so

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.

No accusations of "dirty" campaigning

[walterbyrd]

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

IBM Does This! Intelligently, using Open Source!

[StCredZero]

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!

Re:How is IBM subverting the process?

[man_of_mr_e]

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

Re:It's about the public good as well.

[fritsd]

Everybody who cares to look already knows that ODF is about IBM's business AND the pubic good.

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

"Software bugs should be fixed, not exported by ISO standards to the programs of competitors."

) 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:

Proposed Disposition

There are currently several XML-based document formats in use, each designed to address a different set of goals or requirements. These include ISO/IEC IS 26300 (ODF), China's UOF, and ECMA-376 (DIS 29500 Open XML). All these formats have numerous implementations in multiple tools and multiple platforms (Linux, Windows, Mac OS, hand-held devices).

The Ecma Response Document from the Fast Track 30-Day contradiction phase for DIS29500 addressed the question of harmonization by explaining the differences between the ODF and Open XML formats as follows:

"... one must recognize that creating a single "merged" format to address the user requirements of both ODF and OpenXML is a much more difficult goal--one that is hindered by fundamental obstacles comparable to what one might encounter while merging HTML and ODF or HTML and PDF. This is because of sheer difference of scope, feature and architecture. Ecma believes that one format cannot simultaneously meet the requirements that would come from the merge of the two formats and the stringent requirements of backward compatibility that drive the design of OpenXML.

First, while both formats share the high-level goal, to represent documents, presentations, and spreadsheets in XML, their low-level goals differ fundamentally. OpenXML is designed to represent the existing corpus of documents faithfully, even if that means preserving idiosyncrasies that one might not choose given the luxury of starting from a clean slate. In the ODF design, compatibility with and preservation of existing Office documents were not goals. Each set of goals is valuable; sacrificing either at the expense of the other may not be in the best interest of users.

Second, the resulting differences are not merely variances in scope that could be resolved by adding capabilities to one or the other. They are structural and architectural in nature