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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.'"
One big corporation bashing another... Get your popcorns and watch the show. Personally, I prefer Godzilla... yyyyyiii... *sound of Godzilla*
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.
When a company that used to be a monopolist is now one of the staunchest defenders of openness, I really do hope there is no hidden agenda here.
IBM used to make overpriced hardware sold at tremendous profit until that little upstart microsoft came along and elegantly used their own weight against them in a classic game of corporate judo. It may just be that IBM still smarts from that or it may be that they've really 'seen the light'. This is good news, personally I'd like to see the transparency of these committees and their members go up a notch or two, too much potential for procedural trickery still exists.
MP3 Search Engine
An I.T. motto in the hands of an idiot is a dangerous thing...
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.
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
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
'If "business as usual" means trying to foist a rushed, technically inferior and product-specific piece of work like DOS 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.'"
"Oh wait, maybe we're not. Not yet. Give us a couple of decades or so..."
IBM has gotten its act together, or at least its rhetoric. When will Microsoft join the rest of us in the 21st century and stop foisting rushed, technically inferior and product-specific work? What will it take, Microsoft's version of the Microchannel?
-mcgrew
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Maybe it's like oatmeal.. but like oaxmeal instead of oatmeal, cuz if it was oatmeal then it would be made of oats.
which is totally what she said
Our management forced us from subversion to clearcase. I am not impressed. Most painful was the loss of the goal stat-scm in subversion that allowed me to (with a few keystrokes) weekly publish the results and standings of all the classes, members and files in the projects. We're talking heat maps, personal performance, unit test case coverage and just about anything--ANYTHING--you could ask for in metrics. And the amount of work I did to achieve that functionality was negligible. On clearcase, I can't even get a lines of code count. Nothing.
So off I went looking for ways to interface with the clearcase VOB to poll this data from the server. Wouldn't you know it, I came up empty handed. I called up my toolsmith and he told me I was trying to "make ClearCase something it's not." It was clear then, I was working for the tool, the tool wasn't working for me. If you are the 'staunchest defender of openness' don't you think you'd publish specs on how to communicate and gather meaningful data from the ClearCase server & VOB for your users? If they do, I haven't found it. Don't even get me started about ClearCase having a dying embrace on my piece of crap Windows work box's kernel land. Why that needs to be modify kernel files (for some reason it shows up in my control panel) to be installed, I'll never know.
Don't get me wrong, you're right in that they've come a long way. Hell, look at how they defined UML 1.0 and opened that up. But there are some types of files in Rational Rose that I still can't figure out how to write or produce in a reporting manner.
So until they open their file formats and communications protocols (I really hope it's just a matter of not having it adequately documented), please don't go around titling them among the 'staunchest defenders of openness.' They may have that title commercially but I could list a number of individuals in the open source world that would easily win that title.
I support the software as a service model and believe that all our tools should be shared and open source. IBM promotes that in certain areas as best I can tell but there is definitely room for improvement.
My work here is dung.
Trouble is, that sounds like "oakmeal", which is what woodworms have for breakfast.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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)
I'm definitely liking the stance IBM is taking here. OOXML clearly has some serious problems and its a relief to see that regardless of Micrsoft's perceived power, they can't muscle their way into ISO standards. However, I'm still eagerly awaiting IBM to fully embrace this open ideal they're talking about.
Free the OS/2 codebase.
OpenOffice is good enough for most tasks and the cool charge you have to pay for each bum on a set using MS Office begins to look more an more like waste, specially with a recession being talked up by the media.
If there is a real crunch a lot of people will question why they should continue to use MS office if there are plenty of options out there cheaper or free.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I hope Microsoft's Windows' frames are made of oak..
which is totally what she said
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Godzilla may have thrown chairs, but he didn't have such a potty mouth: Ballmer Throws A Chair At "F*ing Google".
You're assuming that Microsoft wants to compete. It's much easier and more profitable to dominate a market by lock-in than to compete in the market. Not to mention the fact that Microsoft's main competitor right now is not OpenOffice but its own earlier versions of MSOffice. One way they force people to upgrade is to change the file formats so your old MSOffice won't open documents from a newer version. They couldn't do that if they had to stick to a standard format.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
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.
...it's time to resurrect the term "IBM compatible?"
Seriously, this phrase is a throwback and an oversimplification, but it has built-in acceptance among a certain age bracket.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
IBM sell hardware and Software too. Open standards allow IBM to suggest its own software and hardware as part of its consultancy :)
Bull. IBM are making a big play on Open Source. Yes they make money from it, but so do Novell, Red Hat et al.
IBM are a services company at heart. Of course they will support an area into which they can expand their services. Only an idiot wouldn't do this. But it doesn't mean support of Open Source is fleeting or anything. Microsoft are heavy supporters of Intel/AMD based computers. Why? That's the platform that supports their business model.
Get over it. IBM's involvement here is in the interests of Open Source and it is a Good Thing (TM).
Duncan
This term is very much still in use. It just doesn't have anything to do with PCs.
(Hint: Mainframes)
Of course IBM are making a big play on Open Source. They are terrible at making software and marketing it. They've learned in the 80's that they're not good at the ISV thing, and struggled mightily in the early 90's until they could find a way to bump up those services number and lo and behold Linux comes to their rescue. Funny how they weren't pushing other *nix OSes until a 'free' one came along, LOL.
The software side of IBM is a service company at heart because everything else died.
As for your statement "Of course they will support an area into which they can expand their services" you're simply re-iterating my point. IBM is in this 100% for the money. Just like they used to be in the operating system business, then the ISV business (remember, hack, lotus?), and finally they're in the services business and now they're all about 'open source.' They're support for open source will last just as long as they can make profits off of it, no longer.
People, like yourself, need to stop attributing anthromophic properties to public companies. They're not good, they're not evil, they're in search of the (once) almighty dollar. That's it. The minute you become a public company that's the only thing that matters. Look at Google for an example. The wool has finally come off of many people's eyes and they realize that Google aren't the "good guys" (they're not "bag guys" either) they're a large powerful public company entirely motivated by greed and the need to make a profit.
If you don't realize that public companies only care about one thing, you're being naive. Now, when these companies make profits they sure throw around money and resources for the sake of PR, but you can rest assured that if the profits dry up, so does the committment to "open source."
Get over what? I'm not stuck on anything, you sound like a fanbois. You simply can't help but attribute 'values' to public companies whereas I see them exactly as they are. Companies owned by stockholders who care only about their investments.
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They only like Open Source because they benefit financially from it, no other reason.
And?
IBM appears to be one of the few surviving "last generation" companies former Labor Secretary Robert Reich writes about. They seem to have some appreciation at the highest corporate level that the long view has real value, and that corporations are to some degree responsible for the well-being of the society in which they operate. IBM's stand against the clearly-inferior OOXML standard indicates that they understand long-term viability sometimes means sacrificing a bit of short-term profit.
This is a lesson Microsoft has never learned.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Translation: "We would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for that pesky megacorp!"
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
IBM is fighting lock-in by OOXML. Google has MSFT on the defense in the internet services arena. Linux has a dominate presence in the server space. Mozilla is a growing and viable alternative to IE7 and Apple, though a bit player in TOTAL sales, is making strong gains in the desktop market and the iPod continues to stomp the Zune. Sony and Nintendo have ensured that Xbox won't make real money for years to come, if ever.
I suggest MSFT has fallen victim to a classic blunder. The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: you can't fight an entire industry, even if you're the biggest punk around.
And what? I'm simply pointing out that they, IBM, like to pretend they're the good guys when they're just another public company. I like that their greedy self interest benefits open source, but they're full of when they try to assert they're trying to do anyone but themselves some good.
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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.
"Of course IBM are making a big play on Open Source. They are terrible at making software and marketing it."
Tell that to the enterprise sector that lays out billions each year for IBM Software. Oh, sorry, you're a consumer or a SME? You aren't the target audience.
"They've learned in the 80's that they're not good at the ISV thing, and struggled mightily in the early 90's until they could find a way to bump up those services number and lo and behold Linux comes to their rescue. Funny how they weren't pushing other *nix OSes until a 'free' one came along, LOL."
Err, there's this little ting called AIX you might want to look up. Also OS390/z/OS's POSIX caabilities and UNIX compat layers.
"The software side of IBM is a service company at heart because everything else died."
IBM is a massively diverse company that sell all sorts of things. This is because they recognise the market fluctuates and different divisions will profit at different times. Services bring in a hell of a lot of money, but then so do software sales. Billions.
Is that Microsoft Office blows OO.org away. Completely. Microsoft could go with ODF and still compete very well against OO.
But Microsoft doesn't want to compete with OO. They would much rather have a monopoly based on a de-facto document standard that is incompatible with other software. After all, you make more money with monopoly sales and monopoly markup than you do in a competitive market, even if you're the market leader.
If Microsoft fully supported ODF, then it may happen that a great deal of people who would not consider anything but MS Office today due to requiring Office compatibility would decide that OO does what they need well enough and has the right price. Already many people who don't require perfect MS Office compatibility have made the same decision.
And if you don't need MS Office, then maybe you don't need MS Windows. The entirety of the Microsoft business model is built upon these two monopolies reinforcing each other by being incompatible with anything else. If either of these monopolies is broken, if software compatibility means that MS Office or MS Windows are merely choices rather than requirements for the majority of people, then MS' days of dominance are over.
This is absolutely bog-standard MS thinking, it's how they've operated for the last twenty-plus years. They always prefer to monopolize over compete, and only compete when absolutely necessary (with very mixed results).
So that's all there is to understand -- competition is anathema to MS, and they will protect their monopolies at all costs. ODF, an actual standard juxtaposed with their de-facto standard, threatens their monopolies. They will fight against supporting it tooth-and-nail.
The enemies of Democracy are
"Tell that to the enterprise sector that lays out billions each year for IBM Software" - This would be the enterprise sector that knows what it's doing, right? LOL. Using EJB where is shouldn't be. Using Windows where it shouldn't be. Using a variety of hammers for a variety of problems that shockingly all look like nails? By this type of reasoning the billions of dollars laid out each year for Microsoft Windows must be from informed users who know what they're doing, right?
As regards AIX, no offense, but AIX is based upon System V. Are you trying to suggest that IBM engineered something new with it?
I'd love to hear from you about what software IBM makes billions of dollars own that it developed...?
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> I'd love to hear from you about what software IBM makes billions of dollars own that it developed...?
IBM's software division - never mind the rest of the company - is easily the 2nd largest software company on earth. Bigger than Oracle and SAP put together, I think.
AIX has very little original UNIX code left in it. Ever hear of MVS - it's been around since the 1950s and is still widely used, even if re-named. How about DB2? I believe IBM actually developed SQL, and RISC. IBM has actually research labs, and real scientists doing basic research - think you will find that at msft?
> Micro$oft pretends to want an open format but really wants an 'open but biased' format
OOXML is not 'open but biased' OOXML is not open - period. But you made a valid point about msft being full of sh!t.
> IBM pretends to like Open Source, but really makes an enormous percentage of their income from services directly related to such endeavors.
WTF? If open source is helpful to IBM's business model, then IBM is not "pretending" to like open source. Furthermore, why should IBM support any standard that is not helpful to IBM's business model? However, unlike msft, IBM is not calling a closed standard "open." And IBM is not involved in bribery and ballot stuffing to pushed a proprietary system though the ISO process while called that closed standard "open."
LOL, AIX was built on System V, so you think that after 21 years of modifications even though everything was built upon System V and the kernel and OS are still Unix, that means IBM developed AIX by itself? I guess that means that if someone took Linux and worked on it for 20 years but it operated virtually identically even though bug fixes made the lines of code not identical, they built their own operating system.
IBM's sofware division? What's that? You mean the product offerings in their services division?
Nobody said they didn't invent anything, they've done tons of great research and still contribute strongly to research. Nobody said they didn't do anything worthwhile, I simply asked what software they wrote do they currently make billions of dollars on? The answer? NONE.
They aren't a software company. They buy software companies. They don't innovate products, they embrace, extend, and charge you for support. Why do you think they aren't in the consumer level software business? Because they're terrible at it. Why are they in the services business? Because they're good at it.
Who cares what Micro$oft is doing.
All you IBM fanbois are the same. You think that because I belive that IBM is self serving and hypocritical when pointing the finger at other people that I'm a fan of Micro$oft. I'm not. I just call a shovel a shovel.
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Being an all-MS shop is irrelevant because more and more companies are switching to server-side applications for their needs. It started with Content Management Systems and database front ends, and with google docs the public at large is beginning to get a glimpse of office on the server.
And this next generation of applications is going to be OS-agnostic-- you can run WAMP just as easily as LAMP, and you can view an html-based application on any browser on any type of desktop/kiosk/cell phone/... . That is really all that IBM and many others want: interoperability so that customers can choose the solution that is best regardless of who everybody else has chosen.
They want this, of course, because their systems are better and they know that companies will move to them.
weirdest thing I ever saw: scientology advertising on slashdot.
A recent Danish study into conversion between ODF, DOC and OOXML concluded that MS Office was the best at dealing with all of those formats. So Microsoft need have no real fears that people will leave Office immediately if ODF was widely adopted.
http://dokumentformater.oio.dk/
But it still makes sense that Microsoft are unhappy with ODF and want to push OOXML. ODF is controlled by OASIS, and would allow much greater competition in the office software market. In the medium to long term, the Office software monopoly could be broken - if they failed to innovate and compete, that is.
yes. is nice.
Q: What's the difference between a mainframe and a high-capacity, legacy-compatible application server?
A: About fifty grand.
I'm here all week, try the Hawaian salad.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"LOL, AIX was built on System V, so you think that after 21 years of modifications even though everything was built upon System V and the kernel and OS are still Unix, that means IBM developed AIX by itself?"
AIX today is massively more capable than Sys V was 21 years ago. This is not a case of bugfixes. If you actually worked with multiple UNIX flavours you'd get to know the differences. The fact that they still have a lot in common says a hell of a lot about the companies that make them and the benefits of Open Standards.
"IBM's sofware division? What's that? You mean the product offerings in their services division?"
It's huge, don't be an idiot. IBM have some of the best software on the planet. Yes, they do buy a lot of it in, is that whay you're so bitter? Did your company get bought out and you got booted?
"Why do you think they aren't in the consumer level software business?"
Because there's more money to be made selling custom solutions to large enterprises. You can't afford IBM.
"By this type of reasoning the billions of dollars laid out each year for Microsoft Windows must be from informed users who know what they're doing, right?"
The difference is that Windows users are a herd that buy cheap equipment they know nothing about, whereas IBM purchasers employ their own specialists and make lengthy, well informed decisions with acceptance criteria and full on contracts.
"As regards AIX, no offense, but AIX is based upon System V. Are you trying to suggest that IBM engineered something new with it?"
1. Yup, there's loads of stuff in AIX you won't find anywhere else
2. I didn't say it was new, I was merely responding to your asinine comment that IBM were not pushing UNIX before Linux.
"I'd love to hear from you about what software IBM makes billions of dollars own that it developed...?"
And I'd love you to STFU and stop twisting my words. Yes, IBM acquire a lot of companies and their software. That's not all they do though, they continually research new techniques and they employ tens of thousands of software engineers on existing and new products within the company.
"Windows users are a herd that buy cheap equipment they know nothing about, whereas IBM purchasers" - Man are you naive or clueless. In many cases these are the same people. There are large corporations that use Windows not only for their desktop systems but to run other IBM products. I love how they make "well informed decisions" on one hand are are "a herd" on the other. Seriously, dump the fan club and join reality where they're both companies hawking anything they can for a dollar.
Regarding AIX, so you *are* or *are not* claiming that IBM wrote AIX themselves...? If you *are* saying that well, you're wrong, they built it on System V. If you *are not* saying that, well that goes to my original point on that subject.
Regarding my "assinine comment that IBM were not pushing UNIX before Linux" they weren't pushing Unix they were pushing AIX. You really need to make up your mind. You want on one hand to claim that IBM wrote AIX as if it was their software but at the same time you want to take my point that IBM didn't push other UNIX OSes which they would have had to pay other companies for until 'free' Linux came along and say that IBM was pushing Unix...? It's not assinine, it correct and you know it. IBM only push Linux because it costs IBM nothing and they rake in money. They don't "care" about Linux beyond the money it makes them. They don't "care" about open source beyond the money it makes them.
"STFU"? What are you 15 years old? LOL. Grow up kid. Some day when you get out of school and have some engineering experience you'll realize several things:
(1)Operating Systems are tools in a toolbox, nothing more, nothing less.
(2)Public companies are like nations - they don't have friends, they have interests.
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I have two problems with calling this open. First, Sun leaves themselves an out. The grant only covers 1.0 of ODF right now. It only covers future versions if Sun participates significantly in their development. This means that Sun, not OASIS, has the final say in how future versions of ODF develop. For a standard to be open, it should be a standards body that has final say over how the standard develops, not a single company. If OASIS decides to do something in, say, ODF 2, that Sun is opposed to, all Sun has to do is walk away, and ODF 2 is dead in its tracks.
Second, this license does not allow for private forks of the standard. On of the hallmarks of something being "open" is that people can adapt it for their needs. If I need a document format for something that isn't quite ODF, I am not allowed to make my own internal format based on ODF.
"join reality where they're both companies hawking anything they can for a dollar."
Where did I claim any different?
"Regarding AIX, so you *are* or *are not* claiming that IBM wrote AIX themselves...? If you *are* saying that well, you're wrong, they built it on System V. If you *are not* saying that, well that goes to my original point on that subject."
I'm saying neither, that the world is a maze of greys and you'll grow up some day to appreciate that. It was based on System V, there is a lot of new development in there that's all IBM.
"Regarding my "assinine comment that IBM were not pushing UNIX before Linux" they weren't pushing Unix they were pushing AIX."
Yup, a type of UNIX. You said they weren't pushing *nix. If you want to interpret that as a strict regular expression then no, AIX and *nix would not work as a pattern match. However the more common usage of the term *nix (or more properly *NIX) is to mean any of the UNIX operating systems, of which AIX is one. And which IBM have been pushing for a long time, certainly longer than Linux.
"You want on one hand to claim that IBM wrote AIX as if it was their software"
I didn't make the claim that they wrote Sys V, I make the claim that they have put a lot of new development into AIX since it was branched. What do you mean by "as if it was their software"? Do you mean that they wrote they first line? No. Do you mean that the bulk of what's in AIX now is their code? Well yes, it is.
"You want on one hand to claim that IBM wrote AIX as if it was their software but at the same time you want to take my point that IBM didn't push other UNIX OSes which they would have had to pay other companies for until 'free' Linux came along and say that IBM was pushing Unix...? It's not assinine, it correct and you know it."
What you said originally was:
"Funny how they weren't pushing other *nix OSes until a 'free' one came along, LOL.
Which is just plain wrong. And it's asinine that you keep trying to argue otherwise.
"IBM only push Linux because it costs IBM nothing and they rake in money."
And where did I claim otherwise?
"STFU"? What are you 15 years old?"
Nope, wrong again, this is getting to be a habit for you.
"(1)Operating Systems are tools in a toolbox, nothing more, nothing less."
Indeed. Once again, please point out where I said differently.
"(2)Public companies are like nations - they don't have friends, they have interests."
And again, show me the post where I said otherwise. I didn't. I said they make lots of money and they make decent software. very different propositions. Plug your brain in before your next comment.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
"Where did I claim any different?" - You do realize this is a thread about IBM's hypocrisy about open source and being the "good guys", right? Oh, wait, you're one of those posters who doesn't get involved in a thread you just get in on something you're interested in and carry on a sub-thread. Ok.
:)
"Yup, a type of UNIX. You said they weren't pushing *nix. If you want to interpret that as a strict regular expression then no, AIX and *nix would not work as a pattern match. However the more common usage of the term *nix (or more properly *NIX) is to mean any of the UNIX operating systems, of which AIX is one. And which IBM have been pushing for a long time, certainly longer than Linux."
I said they weren't pushing other Unixes because it would cost them money, you are either playing stupid or are attempting to split hairs. On one hand you want to pretend that AIX is not largely made from System V, and other the other hand you want to claim its UNIX when it suits you. In order to remove the possibility of you playing stupid, let's make this crystal clear for you as it was for everyone else "IBM's only interest in promoting Linux is that it doesn't cost IBM anything to base their service work on." So, back to the point of why I even mentioned this in the first place - are you suggesting that IBM's interest in Linux is based upon anything other than the costs it does or does not inherit from deploying Linux?
"I didn't make the claim that they wrote Sys V, I make the claim that they have put a lot of new development into AIX since it was branched. What do you mean by "as if it was their software"? Do you mean that they wrote they first line? No. Do you mean that the bulk of what's in AIX now is their code? Well yes, it is."
To use your favorite type of response - "Where did I claim that you said they wrote System V?" LOL. Of course they put development into it, that wasn't the point. You're the one who brought up AIX as an example of IBM developing operating systems, was the purpose of your doing so to attempt to discredit my assertion that IBM are poor at ISV work or that they didn't push "other" *nix OSes before Linux (which I have, hopefully, now made painfully clear was not mean to include any IBM operating system as this would obviously have been 'free' for them)?
Af for measuring what the bulk of AIX consists of, if you're talking the OS, not tools, how do you propose to measure that? Ignoring the fact that it is irrelevant given that IBM have spent 24+ years extending System V.
"What you said originally was"
Oh, well, that explains it. You were obviously confused into thinking that I was trying to make a point about IBM pushing an operating system that cost them no money to deploy or support versus operating systems that did (which would, by default, suggest operating systems they *do not* own themselves.) Sorry, I should have been clearer for your sake.
"Nope, wrong again, this is getting to be a habit for you."
LOL, very adult of you. You must be 14.
"And again, show me the post where I said otherwise. I didn't. I said they make lots of money and they make decent software. very different propositions. Plug your brain in before your next comment."
You always retreat into the same poor rhetoric. Does every statement someone makes to you have to be a direct refutation of your exact words. Here we are in a sub-thread of your making arguing, presumably that you believe IBM makes *BILLIONS* on software (presumably every year) and *BILLIONS* on services (you can adjust those figures if you believe they're wild generalizations of your actual usage of "billions".) You didn't say they made decent software until just above. You claimed that software sales bring them billions. I disagree.
So, unless you're still confused about my assertion about IBM's 'love' for Linux, we basically just disagree on your supposition that IBM makes billions on Software.
I get the feeling You're 'never wrong'...
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so why the feck did you bring it up in the first place?
Because I have friends who are qualified to judge, and they've told me this and I trust them. Yes, I could go seek them out and ask them three dozen annoying questions about exactly which features the format doesn't support, but then:
1) I'd be being a jerk to friends of mine
2) Everybody on Slashdot would just shoot them down by cherry-picking what counts as a "feature" and what doesn't. Like the grandparent did.
Either you're an idiot, you're lying or it's a WAG.
I'm probably an idiot, but I'm not lying. Also, I hope I'm not a WAG. I don't even know what that is, but it sounds bad.
Comment of the year
And no, "Space this like Word 95" does not require an extension.
Why should anybody even try to name them when you're just going to cherry pick which features are features and which aren't? Calling BS on that.If you're going to call BS on my statements I'd like to direct your attention to this page, in particular to the autoSpaceLikeWord95 element (which can be found on pages 1378-1379 of the Draft 4 for OOXML if you really like reading 6,000 page document format specs). http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=2007011720521698
Then you reveal that you actually don't know of features that ODF doesn't support that Microsoft "requires" but you have "friends" who you trust who tell you what to think. It's always easier to argue your case when you actually do your own primary research and don't rely on hearsay. The rumour mill is active enough without people posting allegations without facts. Oh damn - I've just realised I'm posting this on Slashdot...
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
P.S. WAG - Wild Assed Guess, most likely. Just a WAG you know ...!
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Christ, you're totally missing the point.
Look, here's one of the features missing from ODF: "autoSpaceLikeWord95." You just admitted it, you've actually pasted in a link to where it's described in the OOXML format.
And yet you don't think it "counts" for some reason. So why should I being a jerk to get you a list of features when you're just going to arbitrarily decree that they don't "count" towards your list? Why would I waste my time?
Comment of the year
> Perhaps you should define what *you* mean by open as 'Open XML' is an 'open standard.'
Parts of the standard say stuff like "do this the same as it's done in win95" but the win95 format is closed. Therefore, OOXML is not fully open. Also, msft can change the format whenever msft choses to do so. The EMCA are just a bunch of msft rubber-stampers.
> My point isn't to try to make Micro$oft look better, it's to point out the hypocrisy of IBM trying to make Micro$oft look like "the bad guys" when IBM are exactly the same.
You are trying to drag IBM down to msft's level, and that is not fair in this case. IBM has not lied about ODF being open. IBM has not subverted the process by bribing and ballot stuffing. IBM has not launched a massive PR campaign to twist the facts.
If IBM is acting in it's own self interest, so what? That of itself is not unethical. It's only when you start lying, cheating, and stealing (like msft does rountinely) that it becomes unethical.
So is saying that both companies are at the same level is pure bullshit.
Clear enough?
> IBM's sofware division? What's that? You mean the product offerings in their services division?
Over $18 billion in revenue in 2006.
"IBM's entire software portfolio posted revenue of $18.161 in 2006 versus $16.83 billion in 2005, representing a year over year growth of 7.9%."
I don't know total 2007 revenue yet, but forth quarter looks strong.
"IBM's Software Group had fourth-quarter revenue of $6.3 billion, an increase of 12 percent compared to 2006. WebSphere revenue climbed by 23 percent; Information Management sales, 11 percent; Tivoli software, 19 percent; Lotus, 7 percent; and Rational, 22 percent, compared with the same quarter in 2006."
Before I go on, yes, I work for IBM.
... enabler for middleware document services...
Yeah, we can tell by the way you said
Nobody else can spin out buzzwords like that!
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
Exactly, follow the links to IBM's own data and you'll find that nearly everything sold as software is from an aquired company. The 'software division' at IBM is exactly what I claimed it is, nothing but a licensing group. They're exacty the same as SIEMENS. They buy a company, re-brand and package, and sell it. They don't write their own products. The last software products of note from IBM were DB2, AIX, and OS2. I don't know much about DB2's history but AIX was built directly out of System V and OS2 was built by Micro$oft! LOL. Even the presentaiton manager was built by Micro$oft.
IBM even mentions that the the revenue numbers for software come virtually exclusively through services engagements, meaning in many cases the customer did not choose the software, they chose IBM and IBM's services chose the software. None of which is germane to my point, which is still valid, that IBM is entirely interested in Linux and open source purely from the point of view of services revenue. That's it.
They're not the good guys, they're not the bad guys, they're the same as every other publicly traded company.
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To me key quotes were:
"Jean Paoli, Microsoft's senior director of XML technology" :
IBM's Sutor response :
Nuff' said: IBM won the war of words.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
I really wish the market forces would hurry up and deal Microsoft the reality check it deserves. I'd like the non-IT users of word processors, spreadsheeters and hobby database creators to realise that Microsoft Office isn't the only application around where you can write documents and calculate your company's P & L statement. Then those customers may actually CHOOSE their office apps for themselves, instead of Microsoft TELLING them that "you must use Office or you ain't being productive". Companies can choose to keep all of their documents in ODF format - freeing up the choices of office application that their users/customers/supplies use to create and share information. The most important thing to the non-IT user is their data and being able to share that data - not the app that helps them create that data.
Just go away troll
Isn't this what IBM's stance has always been? I don't see how this is any different. IBM has been fervently pro-ODF. Here's them spouting more pro-ODF lingo.
I personally think they're wrong; ODF is just as product specific. It's designed around the feature constraints of OpenOffice just as OOXML is designed around MS Office.
Besides, all of the bitchly compatibility code in OOXML would prove to be a huge boon to the industry if ever correctly implemented, whereas ODF would require manual kludging of an endless mound of legacy documents because it's so "clean-room". Chances are the implementation required to properly bring all the proprietary legacy documents smoothly into ODF in an automated manner would likely bring ODF closer to the 6000 pages of OOXML. ODF is, in this sense, less complete, in sight of its real world purpose.
Not that I care-- I'm not spending any money on MS Office... I'm just tired of having to convert my documents back and forth in order to get work done across platforms. One specification would be nice- I think it would work best if we just implemented the one that's being used in the dominant office product.
They pretty much say we won't bring a lawsuit on you unless you do it to us first.. You have a problem with this?
But I would have end with,
"...and Steve has a tiny wiener."
There you go. Microsoft says don't use it. It's not a feature. It's a half-arsed experiment that Microsoft couldn't get right. Your argument is getting thinner by the second. Perhaps you shouldn't believe those friends and spout off before checking your facts first?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
> Exactly, follow the links to IBM's own data and you'll find that nearly everything sold as software is from an aquired company.
First, you are completely wrong, IBM has developed tons of software. Second, as usual, you are trying to the change the subject. Typical msft shill.
You proclaimed - wrongly - that IBM's software division was trivial. I pointed out - correctly - that IBM's software division is huge.