Slashdot Mirror
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?
maybe you clicked goatse?
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."
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 ...
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.
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.
The problem is that no matter where we go, MS will come and try polluting that, too. Now that we have a good standard that governments want to use, MS wants a piece of the pie. Are we supposed to just abandon ODF? If FOSS leaves ODF behind, then MS would be the only entity that supports the mandated format (which is exactly what they want).
They can have a piece of the pie ... they just shouldn't get to be the baker.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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?)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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.
Does optimism include ignoring past history and evidence?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Yes, it always does -- otherwise it would be 'realism'
Adopting it as a standard and taking it over and subverting the standard are two different things...
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.
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.