Microsoft Bids To Take Over Open Document Format

what about sends in a Groklaw alert warning that, by PJ's reading, Microsoft may be trying to take over ODF via a stacked SC 34 committee. The article lists the attendees at an SC 34 meeting in July and gives their affiliations, which the official meeting materials do not. (The attendees of the October 1 meeting, which generated a takeover proposal to OASIS, are not known in full.) "Why do I say Microsoft, when this is SC 34? Look at this ... list of participants in the July meeting in Japan of the SC 34 committee. The committee membership is so tilted by Microsoft employees and such, if it were a boat, it would capsize ... Of the 19 attendees, 8 are outright Microsoft employees or consultants, and 2 of them are Ecma TC45 members. So 10 out of 19 are directly controlled by Microsoft/Ecma ... [I]f the takeover were to succeed, SC 34 would get to maintain ODF as well as Microsoft's competing parody 'standard,' OOXML. How totally smooth and shark-like. Under the guise of 'synchronized maintenance,' without which they claim SC 34 can't fulfill its responsibilities, they get control of everything." A related submission from David Gerard points out that BoycottNovell has leaked the ISO OOXML documents, which ISO has kept behind passwords.

Comments

Super slimy.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Let me get this straight:
Sit pouting on the sidelines during ODF standardization
Complain that ODF lacks all kinds of OMG Necessary! features
Hack together your own bloated abortion of a format.
Lie, cheat, and steal your way to its ratification as a standard, never mind that it duplicates functionality of an existing standard, and is of severly troubled quality.
And now: Demand to be placed in charge of maintaining the first standard?

Anything I missed?

Re:Super slimy.

[causality]

Anything I missed?

Yeah: Anyone who can still rationalize working for this company is an asshole.

Sorry, but that is my belief. I've worked for companies before where people quit on principle even when the company's actions didn't affect them personally. And on those occasions the company had done far less than Microsoft has done to harm the community.

It is high time it became a badge of dishonor to be affiliated with Microsoft in any way.

By "affiliated" I hope you include "buying their products". It's easy to forget that Microsoft's business practices are only part of the problem; the real issue is that they continue to be rewarded with profits for this behavior.

Re:Super slimy.

[thetoadwarrior]

It doesn't. It lags when trying to render a tooltip--a tooltip--when you're using Compiz, probably because it's trying to create another X window.

First that's mostly irrelevant to the people for which linux distros want to grow their market and It's probably PEBKAC related seeing how my outdated Linux machine has no problem with it. ;)

Netbeans isn't what my clients who hire me for Java work use--so it's easier for me to use Eclipse like they do. And I don't do Java development for any other reason, so I don't really care.

Then you can't complain. You've opted to do that for the money so it and don't cry or find something else to do.

"Fine" is not the same as "well." You say OpenOffice works fine (I disagree), whereas I say that Office 2003 works well.

Princeton defines Fine as very well or alright. In both instances that gets my point across that it will do what most people will require from it. Now that it we have ODF and OOXML there should be less compatibility issues...aside from the fact Office 2007 is shit (funnily you mentioned version 2003) and a lot of people probably won't move to either format soon. Luckily OpenOffice doesn't do too badly with MS' closed doc format.

I own Adobe CS3. Acrobat works fine for my purposes.

Compare how many copies have been sold of CS3 (hell include the pirated copies too) and compare that to the over all computer owning population. That option isn't available to most people nor would they want to consider it.

You suspect very wrongly; I simply don't have the time to waste on products that waste my time. Linux remains such on the desktop when Windows just works. The Linux-on-the-desktop types don't understand this. "But Linux is better!" Is it better enough to waste time re-learning what I already know and am productive with? At one point, I thought it might be. Then I realized "holy shit, it's not, I made a mistake."

You're the one that sees it so black and white. Where as I get on fine with either system. Linux is safer than Windows. Fact. So for the average idiot it is a logical solution. It runs better on older hardware. Fact. Hence the reason netbooks use it and MS has to desperately keep XP alive to try to compete in a market they didn't see coming. This is again beneficial to the average person who doesn't buy things like Adobe CS3 or a top of the line Macbook Pro (like I'll be doing in the near future).

I use Dreamweaver as a glorified text editor with IntelliSense and quick-preview (and a bit of the CSS builder functionality, which works well). There may be better, but they don't integrate as well with the rest of my tools, and I'm not interested in screwing up my workflow for arbitrary reasons.

I used to do that too but then I realised it was mostly pointless because Dreamweaver doesn't render things like IE or Firefox so there's no real point in using it when most any editor gives you the option to open your work in the browser of your choice. It's not that hot for languages other than HTML and CSS and yes I could do most of my PHP work in a separate editor if I'm doing proper MVC development but why use two programs when I can use one?

Oh, I love this line. I truly do. The GIMP is not as powerful (CMYK says what? Even the new release doesn't really support it--and yes, I do print work as well, so this is something of a vital feature). The GIMP's user interface is unpleasant to work with; the MDI paradigm is more comfortable. (And the majority of film work done is with CinePaint, which forked from the GIMP way back in version 1.x. It's considerably less annoying than the GIMP because they listen to users and implement suggestions. I still prefer Photoshop.)

Cinepaint is still GIMP when you get down to it and once CMYK support, which is com

Exmbrace, extend, extinguish

[Adrian Lopez]

Microsoft must be truly scared by the prospect of widespread adoption of open source office software. The question now is, what can the open source community do to prevent another OOXML-type situation? How will interested parties prevent Microsoft from engaging in its usual "embrace, extend and extinguish" behavior?

Re:Exmbrace, extend, extinguish

[dkleinsc]

Think about what happens if Microsoft Office is supplanted:
1. Microsoft loses 1 of its 2 big cash cows.
2. Businesses have no reason to choose Windows desktops over Apple or Linux, cutting the Windows market in half.

In other words, open protocols + open file formats + improved OpenOffice cuts Microsoft revenues by 75%. They will fight tooth and nail for that.

Re:Exmbrace, extend, extinguish

[GaryPatterson]

"A > B but I won't tell you why."

"Don't tell me the problems you think A has, you're just plain wrong. I won't tell you why."

You're going to need to do more than simply disagree if you want to be taken seriously. Why is OpenXML better than ODF? Why are people wrong about OpenXML being un-implementable?

You may be spot on, but just giving the endpoint for your argument misses the crucial bit where you convince other people that you're right.

If this is true...

[TihSon]

...where is IBM?

Department of Justice

[Enderandrew]

Honestly, PJ should forward all data related to the ISO/OOXML scandal and these latest actions to the DoJ and request they open another antitrust case. I'm not sure there has ever been a more clear-cut case of anti-competitive behavior from MS.

They wanted government contracts

[magus_melchior]

And they were told OOXML wouldn't work, because despite its ISO blessing, there was no reference implementation of ISO OOXML.

So Microsoft is going the other route: subvert and gain control of ODF.

Re:Hold 'em, fold 'em.

[jd]

We laugh at AlexH for thinking that because a bug existed in a calculation, it should be specified and mandated that all future calculations contain the same bug, in case people corrected for it?

Or perhaps at Microsoft for creating non-existent dates.

Or at ISO for creating one of the worst backlashes against a standard I think I have ever seen through their inept handling of the crisis and their blatant disregard for their own procedures.

Or at ODF's board for their suicidal willingness to allow the makers of a competing standard dictate their own direction. (Even if ODF survives - and no guarantee of that - AlexH has already made it clear that the bugs present in OOXML are being deliberately introduced into ODF for "backwards-compatibility" reasons. If ODF becomes a re-implementation of OOXML, who is going to use ODF?)

Google

[oGMo]

Next time some whiner points out something new cool thing Google is doing is really a veiled conspiracy to take over the world, please point to this and tell them to kindly STFU. Microsoft is really evil and they've consistently and continuously done things like this since their inception 25+ years ago.

Acceptance of OOXML Failure?

[JonSimons]

This is a good thing. Microsoft has publicly shown that they have accepted the failure of OOXML, and are now attempting to participate (for better, or for worse) in ODF.

Those that cry "Microsoft is taking over!" -- remember how touted the "open-ness" of the process for ODF has been in the past, and how the contrast of that open process versus the less-open ECMA process has been attempted to be used as one of the many criticisms of the OOXML debacle.

Now the important question is, can an open standard like ODF prevail in face of the juggernaut Microsoft?

I think so. I'm an optimist.

Microsoft's strategy is really stupid...

[tjstork]

The bread and butter of the Windows desktop is the SDK and Microsoft is letting it languish at a time when Linux is working to make inroads. Windows SDK has a lot of faults but it has a model for device independence, and has a lot of good functions with which one could theoretically build a good native code framework around in C++...

but... Microsoft's basically giving C++ the back door treatment at the same time C++ has really become the technology it was supposed to be. There's been a lot of C++ stuff that historically was hard to get acceptance on largely because either the compiler or the STL was buggy and within the last few years, both have just clicked into place. I've long preached that C# and "business languages" are better but as I get more and more into STL, I'm just shocked at how elegant this framework can be. STL isn't perfect but C++0x is going to fix some things so that it can be much, much better.

But sadly (or fortunately for Linux), Microsoft is becoming the GM of software, where internal consistency is more valued than creating any strength of any product. We find that everything is being built to leverage or create an artificial economy around Windows now and the proposition isn't there, just as artificial distinctions between Chevy and Pontiac don't make sense any more either. In fact, its so bad, that, Windows Vista is basically torched because the SDK doesn't have that much more to offer. You would want to upgrade the OS often in Windows to get a bunch more USER controls and GDI features, but instead, the path forward is to abandon everything that made Windows so predominant, and instead drive everyone towards .NET.... why force this migration? why throw away all of that Windows SDK skillsets?

It's like, just from a basic marketing perspective, there's Windows saying that we're throwing away everything you did, and along comes Linux, screaming, "for the love of God we have not one but several C++ frameworks for programming it".