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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.
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?
Probably because IE6 is irrelevant.
maybe you clicked goatse?
"A related submission from David Gerard points out that BoycottNovell has leaked the ISO OOXML documents, which ISO has keep behind passwords. "
OK we slashdot their servers. Now what?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
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?
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Create their own standard. Companies, organizations, and individuals can create standards away from this. It is not like this is the only option. Take what you have and go play somewhere else, leaving Microsoft to theirselves. I imagine though, Microsoft buying in is needed more by the people in these standard organizations than Microsoft needs their seal of approval.
Look at WhatWG and W3C. Concepts are important, but the Internet treats censorship (on MS's part) as damage and will, naturally, route around it. People get angry, publicity is gotten, groups are formed. MS is shut out of the new goodness.
(Just for the record, I think that censorship quote is horribly snarky but I'm using it anyway)
I might be able to shed some light on this. Rob -- CmdrTaco -- Malda asked Netcraft, here's a transcript of the conversation:
NETCRAFT: We're confirming that we have answered the phone. ... *click* *whhhrrrrrrr*
TACO: Hi, Rob Malda here. How's it hangin', still skewing your server figures in favour of Microsoft?
NETCRAFT: Our shit is good, Netcraft confirms it! Netcraft also confirms that we're still counting GoDaddy parked domains and MySpace accounts as full sites, IIS FTW!
TACO: Errr, ok. I was actually phoning to ask a question: is it worth developing for IE6, or should we dump it like a rotten BSD category?
NETCRAFT: IE6 is dead, Netcraft confirms it! So is BSD!
TACO: Thanks a lot, I think. Bye.
NETCRAFT: This conversation is over, Netcraft confi
So you see, IE6 is dead. Netcraft confirms it! And the winner of the award for "Most Roundabout Way of Repeating a Tired Slashdot Meme" is ...
...where is IBM?
In B.C., our fascism is green.
Putting this just above the article on paranoid Linux distro seems like there's a conspiracy.
Actually there is a reason. They announced plans to incorporate native ODF support into Microsoft Office starting with a free service pack early next year. Now, granted, they don't need to be on a standards committee to work with a standard, but Microsoft has always been quite involved with standards committees for technologies that they utilize.
With the release of Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) scheduled for the first half of 2009, the list [of supported file formats] will grow to include support for XML Paper Specification (XPS), Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.5, PDF/A and Open Document Format (ODF) v1.1.
http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/may08/05-21ExpandedFormatsPR.mspx
This could be a bad thing. This could be Microsoft trying to abscond with the direction of the format for their own favor. Or they could be trying to close a number of known gaps, such as a complete lack of standard spreadsheet functions.
Subject. Between this and the weasel-word butchering of "open source" MS is trying to pull off I have just about had enough of them. ...if Bill Gates goes to Hell, will he be forced to use Ubuntu on a SPARCStation as the BSD daemon prods him with a pointy little pitchfork? With a loop of Richard Stallman's rancid songs playing in the background?
~Eien no Inori wo Sasagete~ Searching for my Hatsumi...
Being involved with a format is one thing, microsoft are already members of OASIS, and have been invited to join the ODF committee many times over the past few years and always refused, tho they may have joined it more recently...
Trying to take control of it is quite another matter, as the format should remain neutral and not be controlled by a single for-profit corporation.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Maybe we should create our own standards committees. And work out a way for them *not* to be corrupted.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
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.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
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.
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
Globalization crushes poor people, I'm in favor of it.
You must be a lot of fun at parties.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
A million Davids can kick the ass of one Goliath. What rocks should we use? Ideas?
I'm a bloodsucking fiend! Look at my outfit!
How about ENFORCING anti-trust law!
(bada-bing)
The DoJ couldn't get a proper remedy. I have faith that the EU will.
Failing that, the public will eventually recognise Microsoft for the destructive, self interested criminals they are, and will shut them down.
you had me at #!
No, Microsoft is still out to make a buck by stabbing anything in its way. That's how it started, that's how it grew, and that has been its very successful strategy. Why anyone would think that they would change what has worked very well for them is beyond me.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Sure Apple has done some things that ware bone-headed and just plain wrong but nothing they've done remotely compares to what Balmer et al is trying to pull here.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Somehow OOXML has managed to survive long enough sucking on the juices of the ISO host and now it's time to swallow the better performing competitor. True market forces at play, except it's no market forces and it will ruin everything. But who ever cared about that at Microsoft.
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.
Adopting it as a standard and taking it over and subverting the standard are two different things...
Nobody argued that MS should hijack the standard. It should be the other way around: Instead of trying to make ODF suitable to MS Office, they should make MS Office work with ODF as it is.
This sig is intentionally left blank
It's not a single niche app that's missing, it's that almost everyone has a niche app they need that is missing or not quite there. Exchange, AutoCAD, and Quickbooks as a set cover a whole lot of users, for example.
Duh. The reason they want to control the standard is so they can force it to change, again and again.
The reason MS doesn't like open standards is not because they're crazy or evil (which actually they might be, but that's not the reason, here) but because file formats are the key to upgrades.
When you can change a file format so that older versions are incompatible, you can create a situation where 100 million people with word 2009 start getting new files from 1 million people with word 2010. The 100 million people cannot read them. They complain, they gripe, then THEY UPGRADE.
A file format which stays the same breaks this model, and that would reduce MS revenue by a colossal amount. They can't allow that. So they need to control ODF so that they can keep changing it.
I get some sort of popupthingy when scrolling over them in Opera to, can't really figure out what it should be. I wouldn't say the whole page looks bad though, regarding looking bad in IE6 I'd consider that more of a feature than a bug anyway. The less compliance with IE6 the better.
; A related submission from David Gerard points out that BoycottNovell has leaked the ISO OOXML documents,
; which ISO has kept behind passwords.
So, what was the terrible secret that ISO were hiding??
doh, ff3 and the new-ish /. layout gives me problems getting to the story 'read more' link and somehow it ended up here. Sorry.
Microsoft still sucks for this next phase of their _destroy ODF_ policy and/or plan. Very much so indeed.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Isn't MS doing exactly as suggested in getting involved with ODF to make the format suitable for use with MS Office?
No
Not quite - PJ and others suggested that MS should get behind ODFs acceptance as an ISO standard.
Right now we have MS basically screwed official ISO standardisation by providing a document format they can't do properly themselves - and now they're trying to control the other format, which then they could change and disrupt however they wanted without ISO having any say in it -- after all, ODF isn't ISO...
and keep on developing 0DF and promote/advertiste OO and its derivitives more and more while improving MS vs ODF compatability. Just like anything you need to build a brand name that people will recognize and then Office will eventually drop in numbers. Might not be anytime soon but hey thats what it takes.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Yes, and IBM decided to leave SC34 in protest, so no wonder just microsoft was represented. Anyway SC34 is stacked.
As of Microsoft it would be wise to support ODF and ignore all the FUD.
Not controlled by a company? Exactly, and that is going to happen. No single company will control ODF.
You nailed it and never even mentioned it. MS has their own competing standard and should NEVER be allowed to sway standards governing bodies as long as they have their own competing standard. Of course, their plan is to get in, change things so they are the progenitors of the ONLY standard. This is MS's monopolistic practices in action. It needs to be stopped immediately or standards bodies should immediately reject all MS proposals outright... or both.
It's fine to argue that you have a better method, it's altogether a different beast to prove it. So far, MS has been unable to prove anything but that they are a predatory and monopolistic business entity that needs to be put to rest so the rest of the world can get along in peace.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
And Rex Jaeschke works for Microsoft, right?
Or they could be trying to close a number of known gaps, such as a complete lack of standard spreadsheet functions.
The solution to this (OpenFormula) has been pending final quality control for a year or so, but the drafts are complete enough that the major ODF-capable programs implement more recent drafts.
I imagine that this mess involving so many players in the standardization community is not very helpful for getting things done.
If I can quit friendships over them using Vista, you can quit your job over being forced to "wear a bikini in a hail of bullets". Especially if you're male. ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Awesome. :-)
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Who put ISO in charge?
They are one standards organization, there are several others?
Question: What/who give a standards organization credibility?
Answer: The community of users.
The ones with dissenting opinions need to embrace a different standards organization.
The real issue here is running on a single platform. Just because the engineering department needs $5000 machines running windows and Autodesk(I run autodesk software. I have powerful machines for the real work, and a macbook pro for home use), does that mean everyone in the office does? Certainly, one would not say everyone is going to have a $5000 machine, so why Windows? You can argue exchange, but exchange is a solution to a problem, not the only solution to a problem. Ultimately this solution, which is CPU and management intensive, is going to be replaced by a better one, and MS has no incentive to crate it. As far a quickbooks, office spplications, etc, these either have comparable products on Linux, or emerging solutions that are OS independent.
No, the issue is not applications. The issue is MS site licensing. If once wants to site license, then it is customary to license all machines, even if they do not run MS software. And if you pay for it, you might as well use it. MS keeps the corporate license cheap enough to keep companies from fleeing, which means the common person is not exposed to other, maybe better, solutions.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
It's also an anti-trust issue in that these machinations should play very badly before an anti-trust investigator, as should have the OOXML debacle itself. As somebody already on the wrong end of rulings in the US and Europe, Microsoft is acting like a convicted gangster getting drunk and shooting up the bar.
The only way they can stay out of jail is having the best lawyers money can buy and substantial purchased political influence (that may change quickly with a more accountable government in the USA). And nobody likes that kind of dangerous, unstable bully. Sooner or later, their past catches up.
you had me at #!
Lucy. Charles Schultz FTW!
"Awww. Be nice and quit bashing Microsoft"
(... Microsoft does yet another unbelieveable act)
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Probably because IE6 is irrelevant.
More like a large steaming pile of excrement.
Steaming piles of excrement are totally relevant when discussing Microsoft with First Post trolls.
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
re: Quickbooks being "the Pointiest of HB wanker programs that aren't even needed" - have fun invoicing for that day of digging ditches with your double-entry ledger. I've worked at small businesses that tracked all their billing and accounts on paper, and I'll stick with (an ancient, internet-independent version of) Quickbooks for my consulting business, thanks.
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".
This is my sig.
This could be a bad thing. This could be Microsoft trying to abscond with the direction of the format for their own favor. Or they could be trying to close a number of known gaps, such as a complete lack of standard spreadsheet functions.
There's a problem MS needs to fix: it's too easy for the competition to implement their standards.
They need to adjust the standard to include items that are impossible for anyone other than MS to implement.
For example to paper certain sections such as "do X like Office 2003"
And include better support for opaque binary blobs and objects.
Without opaque binary blobs and objects in a document, how are they supposed to make all documents' true ODF output lock many things in as vendor-proprietary objects?
You know.. things like section headers, and special effects, "document richness" features, that should be made to not be possible in the competition's software.
Vendor lock-in features (that MS would believe) ODF badly needs.
Will someone PLEASE call the Department of Justice complaining that they are abusing the market place again?
Since it's entirely in our hands what prevails. Vote with your wallet. Never buy another Microsoft license. Campaign at your workplace for open tools. Don't stop until your data is safe again.
you had me at #!
What they need to do is "make MS Office interoperable with standards".
Now do you see? If you want to support a standard, you just go ahead and support it. You don't go paying a lot of soft bribes and stacking committees... The real agenda here is removing ODF as a competitor. The real money to be made, now and forever, is making sure your data is in a Microsoft-controlled format. Why is everyone so slow to catch on to this?
Microsoft only ever had one idea: Be the only option. (Not "Be the best option," or even "Be a good option.") Everything else follows from that. Competition isn't something they are prepared to do. They wouldn't know how. They just need everyone locked in. (Incidentally, this is why quislings like de Icaza are so dangerous and disingenuous, by pretending this is not the case.)
you had me at #!
RTF markup always struck me as TeX-inspired.
But your idea is right on: We must make choices that don't involve Microsoft. This is much easier now than people think, in 2008, when we have many better, mature alternatives.
you had me at #!
...not you. Netcraft confirms it!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I find it fascinating how little knowledge need to have a lot of opinion. Did you ever stop & think about what ISO did? Without ISO and its national counterparts, we would either still trade firewood or have a different organization which goes by a different name, but does the same.
Yes, the OOXML mess was just that: a mess. One wants to scream and shout and shake sense into people.
But to imply that ISO outlived itself over this, believe it or not, relatively small issue.. I don't think so.
This is the list of defects that odf still has, according to the SC4
Considering ooxml has much more and much serious problems, I'm starting to think this will end just like the dis29500(ooxml) standardization process.
*sigh*
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know." -- Mark Twain
They don't care. The Administration is busy handing the keys to the Treasury to large banks and insurance companies on Wall Street. The next administration won't be any better, since both McCain and Obama were in favor of the bail-out.
Yes, so it is time that governments insist on the conditions offered and codify "open standards". Read this letter to the EU from 2004.
Autocad is really no everyday use for normal desktop users. Exchange is a server application. Quickbooks is not even the market leader.
So what is missing is a mature video editor and the Adobe suite.
All these problems can be solved with money.
Because only a complete turd uses IE6 so it' just completing the theme.
Does anyone have the email address?
This is anti-competitive behaviour which ties in with earlier complaints. As the EU is rather concerned about a level playing field they will look at this in the context of earlier events - I have no doubt they will start asking questions.
MS is really playing with fire here.
Insert
I only think the list is a bit longer in this case something like: First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then they try to embrace you, then they try to extend you, then you win, profit (ok last one for the slashdot-crowd)
New things are always on the horizon
So much for protesting. If IBM's objective was to protest the OOXML decision, this was the wrong thing to do, giving Microsoft a wedge into ODF. If their objective was to protest the existence of ISO itself, though, I guess a lot of people are paying attention.
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
None are drop-in replacements (which would be necessary); none are as good. Exchange has no open-source competition worth mentioning. Zimbra is closest, but it's not as good.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
No idea. It is just what they do, what ever the reason.
Seriously -- How is the parent post off-topic?
The thread here is about MS abusing its market position, again. The grandparent post, currently marked "3 Insightful", asks for folks to get the Justice Department involved. The parent post, currently marked "1 Offtopic", notes that the government is apparently not interested in actually cracking down on corporate abuses, as evidenced by the $700bn handout to the financial sector. This speaks directly to the concerns of the grandparent post, and is within the bounds of an appropriate response.
So what gives? Is this more of the same old "I don't agree so I'll down-mod" mod abuse? Or has someone really missed the connection between the parent and the grandparent?
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
The GP here makes the claim:
When MSO 2007 first came out, the relatively clueless IT wannabe at my wife's school had it installed on all computers, mid-school-year, without letting anyone know. Now, all the wailing and gnashing of teeth among the staff about the dumb UI changes aside, the default file format was MSO 2007 -- including new, MSO-2007-only features. Files my wife sent to herself at home, where we only have MSO 2003, sometimes could not be opened. It wasn't until some time later, after folks figured out about the so-called "Compatibility Mode" for saving files, that this particular problem was worked around.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
the ones with brains that is.
im really, really wondering what they will be able to say at the wake of such blatant filth playing by microsoft.
really, im honestly asking, is there anyone who thinks there is ANY part to microsoft left that can be referred to with respect now ?
Read radical news here
lol, sounds like my, "Oh fuck it let's remove all friends using MSN from my adium contact list"-attacks.
I guess that's why I feel so alone :(
PS: Open is good, but let's be realistic about the requirements of the average software shop.
There is no need to run Exchange at all. There are a number of mail servers that work better and scale easier. There are a number of shared calendar and shared address book solutions, too. It's not all open-source, either, as Novell has Groupwise which is perfectly workable.
AutoCAD is a good point, although CAD software on Linux is consistently improving.
QuickBooks (which IMO frankly sucks, BTW) and PeachTree are the real deal-killers on a Windows-free office for many. GNUCash or any simple double-entry ledger program do not compete with this sufficiently. Once there's a full-fledged small to medium business accounting package for Linux then that's a significant hurdle down. Yes, I might be able to run PeachTree through Wine or CrossOver. No, I'm not willing to call Sage with a nightmare support ticket some day only to be told my installation can't be supported. That's reason enough to have Windows installed on one VM or physical machine per office. QuickBooks or PeachTree handle data and processes too important to overlook.