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IBM Slams Microsoft, Calls OOXML "Inferior"
cristarol sends word that Microsoft's accusation, that IBM has sabotaged Redmond's attempts to have the Office OpenXML format approved by the ISO, has drawn a heated response from IBM. Ars Technica has the story. "'IBM believes that there is a revolution occurring in the IT industry, and that smart people around the world are demanding truly open standards developed in a collaborative, democratic way for the betterment of all,' IBM VP of standards and OSS Bob Sutor told Ars. 'If "business as usual" means trying to foist a rushed, technically inferior and product-specific piece of work like OOXML on the IT industry, we're proud to stand with the tens of countries and thousands of individuals who are willing to fight against such bad behavior.'"
I'm not really much for liking megacorps, but it's good to see one -- IBM in this case, for the moment -- that's on the right side.
I think IBM are absolutely right when they say that the customers prefer to have documented open standards which can be supported by a variety of different applications from different vendors.
I can see no case at all to support Microsofts point of view that it's better to use a document format which is supported by only one company that can only be guaranteed to work with their products and where this guarantee is not set in stone and could be subject to change at the whim of the company.
From a business point of view anything which maintains the lock in to Microsofts Office products is good for Microsoft and anything which is truly open benefits IBM and as I said above I think what the customer wants in this case is also the same thing IBM want which means IBM are going to be getting a lot of goodwill for pushing their point of view.
It will be interesting to see just how far MS are willing to go to defend their office lock in and whether they will see sense, give in and rely on Office ( which is a good product IMHO ) to compete on a level playing field with it's competitors.
If only Microsoft concentrated so much on fixing their software as they do in trying to force standards (or with the web - break standards).
Take Nobody's Word For It.
IOW, IBM's 'ulterior' motive is profit, and their profit goals happen to be in alignment with what's best for the IT industry and the greater IT community.
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IBM now sell overpriced services sold at tremendous profit. They'd much rather have open standards that they can use, and profit from consulting you to death wrapping a service layer around them.
Exactly and it's my suspicion that a company whos business model is actually in line with their customers requirements is going to be more successful than one whos business model basically relies on customers behaving in a way which suits Microsoft and attempts to enforce that behaviour by removing the customers choices.
Is that Microsoft Office blows OO.org away. Completely. Microsoft could go with ODF and still compete very well against OO.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
" They'd much rather have open standards that they can use, and profit from consulting you to death wrapping a service layer around them."
Yes, that's very true. But they are OPEN STANDARDS. You don't have to give IBM oodles of money, you can just figure it out for yourself.
IBM will continue to make money as long as there are people (or companies) around who are willing to pay their rates, I'm guessing because they feel they get their money's worth.
Interesting how Microsoft refers to being unchallenged as "business as usual."
Interesting how Microsoft words corruption, bribery and subverting the ISO process as "Business as Usual". In which case, what IBM is doing is very good for the industry - exposing crooks for what they are.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
IBM, despite having lost the OS battle, will win this one. They are the 1600lb gorilla. Their influence in the industry and deep and wide and should never be underestimated. Microsoft would do well not to make an enemy of them.
Bearded Dragon
Yup, and to chime in here - that's the difference in this situation. Let's say IBM gets lots of money for an overpriced service. In this market, there is noone forcing you to use their services. With Microsoft software, however, because they have a virtual monopoly then everyone is forced to use Microsoft's non-open, locked down format.
The quote that was most telling for me was this one, from Tsilas:
"[Mandating open standards in government] is a new way to compete. They are using government intervention as a way to compete. It's competing through regulation, because you couldn't compete technically."
That quote is, frankly, hilarious. Finally they have found that they are uncompetitive in something, and boy do they find this difficult. They've been so used to forcing the market to use their product that when the market finally corrects itself they're not sure what to do. Thus they try to fast-track a technically inferior standard.
The end result is that the exact opposite of what Tsilas asserts is happening. The ODF format is technically superior, but because it won't work with old Microsoft "features" (read: bugs), Microsoft cannot compete.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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Microsoft appears to have a core philosophy that all things in the computer should be mushed together. Every application and device driver should be allowed (and indeed encouraged) to share their innermost secrets with any process that asks. This is the reason for all of Windows' and Office's vulnerabilities. Notice the utter chaos that has ensued when Vista tightened up a few of those "I'm-ok-you're-ok" sharing paths.
One of the problems I have with the whole MS Office file design is that it includes both data and executables in the same file. There is no way to separate the two. Now, I suppose I'm out of step with the rest of the world, but those should be in separate files. As long as the data is fully documented, and has all the appropriate pieces for the purpose (style definitions, mathematical formulae), any program should be able to operate on it. IMHO, we should not be encouraging the mixture of (for example) a spreadsheet document that contains the calculations for a company's PL statement with the code (e.g., VBA) used to control data entry into that document. Simply loading the document should not put someone at risk for malware infection, because it should contain no programs in the first place. I like having powerful macros as much as the next guy, but I believe it has gone too far.If you need that much control, then write a separate program that operates on the data, and keep the data separate.
Here's a wild idea: Replace all the data files (and only data files -- no macros or exe's) on a computer with entries in a SQL database (with appropriate security, of course, to restrict sharing), so any application, from any vendor, can easily read and write it. As Microsoft proved when it tried to put SQL into the OS, this isn't as easy as I made it sound. But this may have more to do with their inability to add the old vulnerabilities into the scheme than making the whole thing work right.
Microsoft wishes to enshrine all of its past mistakes in the new format, and continue its malware-friendly development philosophy. That is wrong, and the Office 2007 file format is too flawed to be seriously considered as a universal standard (intellectual property issues aside). It's good to see a company the size of IBM fight against its acceptance.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Re-worded quote from the comment above: "Most companies out there are All-Microsoft shops -- They won't even consider anything else. Most people care only about their core business, and that isn't IT."
True, but IBM is influential with people who understand Microsoft's abuse. See this quote from the Ars Technica article:
A ZDNet article published late last month quotes Microsoft officials who claim that IBM is solely responsible for ISO's recent decision to deny OOXML fast-track approval. "Let's be very clear," Jean Paoli, Microsoft's senior director of XML technology, told ZDNet. "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."
I'm glad we don't have "business as usual", as defined by Microsoft.
IBM sell hardware and Software too. Open standards allow IBM to suggest its own software and hardware as part of its consultancy :)
Microsoft - not IBM is forcing the initial ulterior motive. Microsoft's biggest money makers are Office and Windows. They've run out of room for Office "improvements" and thus customers don't need to upgrade from the 2000 and 2003 versions. Changing the default file format of the Office programs "forces" users who haven't upgraded to upgrade...note how MS hasn't made a patch for 2000 or 2003 to read the default .docx and .xlsx formats of 2007.
2007 users who don't know better, send these formats to 2000 and 2003 user who can't open them, thereby creating an artificial need to "upgrade."
I think IBM is trying to call MS out on this practice.
That might be the battlefield that Microsoft would like to have chosen but it isn't the one that IBM is playing on. For IBM, the money is in the middleware. For Microsoft, the money is on the desktop.
Before I go on, yes, I work for IBM. What follows is entirely my own opinions and is not a formal statement of IBM policy.
ODF is a huge enabler for middleware document services because it removes barriers at the desktop end and allows significant freedom for customers to choose solutions. IBM already has plenty of XML integration ticking in its products (such as pureXML integrated in DB2 and the Content Manager products) and ODF fits very nicely into that scenario. IBM would like to be able to go to customers and offer a complete end-to-end document/content management system. Why do you think that IBM would produce the Symphony products and integrate Document editing into Lotus Notes 8?
While OOXML also fits into the XML-on-middleware approach, it necessarily ties itself to a set of Microsoft clients because only Microsoft will know what the next version of Office will support with respect to OOXML and even the most assiduous followers of OOXML implementations outside Microsoft will be months (or more likely years) behind the latest OOXML version.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
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