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ODF Alliance Warns Governments About Office 2007 ODF Support

Posted by timothy on from the please-sub-in-the-new-bullet-points dept.

omz writes "The ODF Alliance has prepared a Fact Sheet for governments and others interested in how Microsoft's SP2 for Office 2007 handles ODF. The report revealed 'serious shortcomings that, left unaddressed, would break the open standards based interoperability that the marketplace, especially governments, is demanding.'"

41 of 312 comments (clear)

  1. So, which is it? by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Malice, or simple incompetence? Given Microsoft's track record, I can believe either one.

    I know there are a lot of smart people working for Microsoft. But somehow it's as if there's a reverse gestalt phenomenon going on in their company - the whole is less than the sum of the parts.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:So, which is it? by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    2. Re:So, which is it? by Omniscient+Lurker · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Governments buy software, ergo are part of the customers (aka marketplace)

  2. what's good for the goose... by spyrochaete · · Score: 4, Funny

    Just wondering, is Microsoft warning governments about OpenOffice's .DOC support?

  3. It's already been stated... by Surrounded · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That the standards created for the ODF formats are no where near perfect.

    In fact, the ODF specification for spreadsheets doesn't state where formulas should go in a document. Something OpenOffice and Microsoft handle very differently. Because of these loopholes it's possible for software deveopers (Not just Microsoft) to do what they think is best instead of follow the standard.

    What the OpenOffice and Open Source communities should be doing is working to resolve these loopholes so Microsoft and other developers can follow.

    1. Re:It's already been stated... by simplu · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Doesn't seems strange to you that only Microsoft handle it very differently?

      --
      L.
    2. Re:It's already been stated... by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Already done, spreadsheet formulas are being specifically addressed in ODF 1.2. But in 1.1 there was already a set of conventions for handling formulas, and Microsoft were the only ones out of all the ODF 1.1-using applications that couldn't follow those conventions. In fact their implementation even specifically violated one of the bits that was in the ODF 1.1 spec: the spec calls for cell names to be enclosed in square brackets, while Microsoft's implementation omits the brackets. Then you have just plain malicious stuff like actively removing formula information that's present. Even if you can't parse the formulas, XML makes it easy to preserve what was there. Every other implementation behaves that way: if they can't understand the formulas at least they leave them intact for applications that do understand them. Microsoft's is the only implementation that deliberately removes formulas from the spreadsheet.

      What annoys me most about Microsoft's pseudo-support is that it had to be deliberate. They had to actually expend additional effort to be this incompatible. If they'd simply been lazy and taken the easiest way out, they would've been far more compatible with everybody else than they ended up being.

    3. Re:It's already been stated... by LO0G · · Score: 5, Informative

      If you can believe Microsoft, they're not the only ones. Lots of ODF implementations have interoperability issues.

      Doug Mahugh at MSFT has been blogging about this: http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2009/05/09/1-2-1.aspx
      and

      http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2009/05/13/tracked-changes.aspx

    4. Re:It's already been stated... by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 5, Informative

      Pretty much, yes. Bear in mind that Microsoft already has code that does handle the spreadsheet formulas correctly. The plug-in that Microsoft itself commissioned and that they own the code for not only preserves the formulas, it correctly parses and interprets them so that cells get recalculated properly as data changes and it correctly writes changed formulas back out. All Microsoft had to do was to not do all the work a second time. And even if they had re-done the work, the XML parser automatically populates the DOM with the formula strings and the internal implementation in Excel already can preserve arbitrary metadata from external formats even when it can't interpret it. All they'd've had to do is not touch things the user hadn't edited and the preservation would've happened automatically. I do this all the time when dealing with XML code, to the point where I have to make a deliberate effort not to write data-preserving code.

    5. Re:It's already been stated... by denis-The-menace · · Score: 3, Insightful

      MS would probably claim that OpenOffice is GPL-licensed and therefore is legal "poison" to their copyright to Office for their developers to look at the source code.

      Where as, all they had to do is look at a *document* that OO created and mimic it.

      --
      Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
    6. Re:It's already been stated... by tjwhaynes · · Score: 5, Informative

      The others are open source projects, and can look at each other's code. MS can't, or they'd have to open source their code.

      This is a completely misleading statement and totally misses the point. Well done!

      You don't need to look at the source code to see what other products do. You just need to look at the ODF files they produce. Indeed, given the licenses of the products that implement ODF, you can obtain the copies you need for testing FOR FREE.

      Similarly, while your legal department might bar you from reading competitors code for fear of copyright co-mingling, there is nothing to stop you employing a third party to go look on your behalf and write a report on what was done. So you can have your cake and eat it.

      Cheers,
      Toby Haynes

      --
      Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
    7. Re:It's already been stated... by neomunk · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Or they could ask the proper author (I don't know who owns the copyright on that particular portion of OOo) for a license to do so. I betcha that someone interested enough in OOo's future to write a save/load algorithm for it would let Microsoft use it (in part or in whole) for Office. Complete compatibility between the two program suites would work heavily in OOo's favor, for reasons that seem obvious (to me) and that I won't go into to avoid creating a tl;dr situation.

      Maybe if someone out there knows anyone (or is on) the OOo team drops the idea of a public offer to give Microsoft a special license to their already working code, some traction could be gained, or at least some light could be shed on the willingness of Microsoft to rectify the situation. I hope they are honestly willing to achieve cross-compatibility, but my guess is that that is likely too optimistic.

    8. Re:It's already been stated... by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If the standard is strict like other open standards, and they still fail to be compatiable[sic], I wouldn't "apologize" for them.

      Please. The standard is just fine for any honest company trying to make a product that works. It just wasn't written as an ironclad legal contract to keep MS from playing dumb and intentionally breaking compatibility.

      Actually, if you read another comment on this article, you'd see that other applications actually didn't handle the standard all that well like you claim.

      Other comments? I don't have to because I actually bothered to read about the topic before discussing it. There is one other compatibility problem among the programs tested and it is because one of the programs is using the newer version of the spec. Saving from OO as ODF 1.1 is compatible. Thats completely different from being incompatible with every other program implementing the same version of the spec.

      "Free code". You do realize that many of those "free" code samples are licensed that would require Microsoft to open source Office or portions of Office.

      Please educate yourself before trying to argue. There is a working plug-in for MSOffice licensed under the BSD license so MS can simply copy and paste if they want. They've done it before with BSD code.

      This is about a standard that was weak and failed to state everything clearly.

      Bullcrap. This is about a standard that is fine for any honest company and about one company intentionally trying to break things to harm competition.

      Asking any company to follow it is insane.

      Yeah, except nobody else had any real problems including small hobbyist groups. Believing your crap is insane. In fact, your position is so unbelievable, I strongly suspect you're an astroturfer. You have a history of all of 13 comments, almost all of which are defending Microsoft. You're either a paid shill or you really drank to kool-aid.

    9. Re:It's already been stated... by alexborges · · Score: 3, Informative

      Plenty: google doc, koffice and another MSOffice plugin.

      The lead of odf posted an interoperability table: ONLY MSOFFICE is completely incompatible to ALL of the other implementations.

      --
      NO SIG
    10. Re:It's already been stated... by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 5, Informative

      There's a lot more than 2 implementations. Besides OpenOffice and MS Office there's AbiWord, KOffice, Google Docs, WordPerfect Office X4, IBM's Lotus Symphony, the Sun ODF plug-in for MS Word and the BSD-licensed ODF plug-in for Word that Microsoft funded and hosted on SourceForge. That last is important, BTW. Not only is Office 2007's implementation of ODF incompatible with OpenOffice, it's incompatible with Microsoft's own other implementation of ODF.

    11. Re:It's already been stated... by harlows_monkeys · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Doesn't seems strange to you that only Microsoft handle it very differently?

      It isn't just Microsoft. IBM's Lotus is also incompatible with OpenOffice. That post explains in detail why MS made the choices they made.

      Also see his later post on 1+2. Office and Lotus agree it is 3, but OpenOffice thinks it is 1 in some cases.

      Here's what is really going on: for the first time, someone is actually using ODF who cares about consistency with existing documents, and making predictable behavior. Since ODF currently is ridiculously underspecified, this is revealing a lot of problems with how prior implements interpreted things.

      ODF 1.2 will nail down many of these areas--and significantly increase the size of the ODF spec. When eventually the ODF spec is actually somewhat complete, so that independent implementations can be reasonably interoperable without requiring implementors to look at the OpenOffice code to find the "real" spec, it's going to be in the ballpark of the size of the OOXML spec.

    12. Re:It's already been stated... by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Standards are created to make sure something, like software, can output a verifiable item that others can use.

      Standards are created to HELP people to create interoperable software. Interoperability is the goal, not compliance. If it isn't the goal, MS is breaking the law. They have to be compliant with competitors by law, not follow standards.

      If you have a standard that says to do certain things, but makes no mention of others, you don't just copy your competitor.

      You don't know what a "reference implementation" is do you?

      Microsoft followed a standard and because OpenOffice or anyother program can't actually open it always, you blame the company for following the standard set out?

      Yes, I blame them because they went out of their way to play dumb and implement the standard in an incompatible way and they broke the law in so doing.

      Please educate yourself before trying to argue. There is a working plug-in for MSOffice licensed under the BSD license so MS can simply copy and paste if they want. They've done it before with BSD code.

      Sure they could use that code or inspect the ODF files, but you miss the point everyone here is making: The standard is what Microsoft follows, not the competitor's method of implementation.

      First, the BSD code in question was paid for by MS, its not a competitor's Second, MS is not legally obligated to obey the standards, but they are legally obligated to honestly attempt compatibility with competitors. Not even testing against competitors does not seem like an honest attempt to me.

      Again, they followed a broken standard, just because OpenOffice and others copied eachother doesn't mean Microsoft or others should.

      Yes it does if their goal is compatibility and since the law requires them to attempt to be compatible with competitors lest they be leveraging their monopoly influence, that is exactly what they should have done if they had to choose between the standard and being compatible. That, however, is a false dichotomy. They could have followed the standard and been compatible. They chose not to.

      You seem to support Mac/Google/OpenOffice ...

      This seems to be your main problem. Technology companies are not sports teams. I'm not in support of any company. I point out when any of them does something good or bad because I don't have emotional investment in any of them.

      ...and reading comments that always blame Microsoft is sickening.

      Why? They're a criminal company that routinely breaks the law and in so doing holds back innovation in numerous technology markets. Is there any surprise that a site made up of geeks who love technology would have a lot of negative things to say about them?

      Microsoft and Open Source have their problems...

      Yeah, sort of the way GM and aluminum casting have problems. Open source is a method of licensing, not really comparable to a corporation.

      ...quit pretending that OS is perfect and Microsoft is the anti-christ.

      What OS are thinking I'm pretending is perfect? I never said MS was the antichrist. That's two strawman attacks in a row. MS are just a corporation that happens to have a lot of influence in certain markets and a tendency to break the law and undermine free trade. They do a lot of damage and it is wholly appropriate to point out when they break the law yet again.

      They are no different than any other corporation (Google? Sun? IBM? Don't be evil, yeah, right).

      They are different from those listed above in that MS's criminal violations of antitrust law are ongoing and have not been stopped and THEY'RE THE ONES BREAKING THE LAW IN THE ARTICLE WERE DISCUSSING! When Google or IBM or Apple is breaking the law and hurting competition and an article about it is posted here, I'll complain just as loudly.

  4. Why no certification program? by DrXym · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I know Microsoft is being its usual self, but perhaps the ODF alliance should promoting a certification program and a compliance logo to raise the quality of interoperability of ALL ODF based applications.

    1. Re:Why no certification program? by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 5, Insightful
      And more than just a logo. We need the equivalent of acid test. Round trip testing. Great opp for non programmers who have been enjoying Open Source software for so long. Test the ODF export/import in MSWord and submit bugs.

      If you have been saying, "I support Open Source, but since I am not a coder, I cant do much", this is your chance to contribute positively and advance the cause for open standards.

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  5. No sympathy by wampus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you write a standard and clamor to get it adopted by law, don't leave Redmond-sized holes in it. Someone might just try to drive a Microsoft through it.

    1. Re:No sympathy by spitzak · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Standards are normally written with the assumption that people interpreting them have a desire to interoperate. This was of course a mistake when you have a hostile party like Microsoft.

      It is trivial to comply to the letter with lots of standards yet make an implementation that does not interoperate at all. Maybe this should be some new variation on the obfuscated-C style contests. Pick some computer standard and write some software that does not work with it yet technically obeys every part of the standard. More modern ones that are designed for expansion such as ODF make this pretty easy, older communication standards would be more fun I think.

  6. Let the market work it out by Useful+Wheat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Although nobody is really surprised that Microsoft has made their software comply with the letter of the law and not the spirit, is this really a big issue? If, as the summary says, the marketplace is demanding a grand interoperability between software products, then we might see the rapid uptake of OOO in the near future. Failing that, if nobody switches, then the market has spoken loud and clear, Nobody cares.

    Honestly, the single most productive thing you could do to ensure the rapid uptake of open standards would be to make openoffice.org an amazing product. Put all of your time and effort into making it clearly superior, and at that point everyone will use an ODF by default.

    1. Re:Let the market work it out by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Although nobody is really surprised that Microsoft has made their software comply with the letter of the law and not the spirit, is this really a big issue?

      First, they didn't comply with the letter of the law. This is clearly a violation of antitrust law. Second, they didn't comply with the letter of the spec, both failing to implement it properly and going out of their way to not implement features they already had working code for and ignoring both reference implementations.

      If, as the summary says, the marketplace is demanding a grand interoperability between software products, then we might see the rapid uptake of OOO in the near future.

      We might or we might not because monopoly influence on several markets allows Microsoft to undermine and break the normal operation of the free market system by violating antitrust law. In doing so they hurt competitors, consumers, and slow innovation.

      Failing that, if nobody switches, then the market has spoken loud and clear, Nobody cares.

      Yeah and the market spoke and nobody wanted answering machines, speed dial, or to own instead of rent a telephone while AT&T had a monopoly on phone service. The free market cannot operate and determine the best products at the best price when undermined by abuse. That's why it is illegal.

      Honestly, the single most productive thing you could do to ensure the rapid uptake of open standards would be to make openoffice.org an amazing product. Put all of your time and effort into making it clearly superior, and at that point everyone will use an ODF by default.

      When faced with a monopoly, having the better product does not mean you win in the market. Clearly superior products can and do lose because of artificial problems introduced to them; artificial problems like being unable to open most ODF files which were made intentionally incompatible by a company with monopoly influence on the market.

    2. Re:Let the market work it out by Haeleth · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Honestly, the single most productive thing you could do to ensure the rapid uptake of open standards would be to make openoffice.org an amazing product. Put all of your time and effort into making it clearly superior, and at that point everyone will use an ODF by default.

      (a) You're making the common mistake of conflating ODF with OOo. The two are completely separate entities. People who advocate the use of ODF are not necessarily OOo fans; they may prefer Abiword, KOffice, or even Microsoft Office. The whole point of open standards is that it shouldn't matter what software you use.

      (b) Even if you take your goal to be the promotion of OOo (a particular software product) rather than ODF (a document standard), then it's naive to think that all you have to do is make a product that's better than MS Office. The sad truth is that no matter how good your product is, most people will be reluctant to switch to it. People hate change. The product would need not only to be better, but to be about 10 times better. And then you would need to communicate that fact, in the face of the best marketing that one of the world's richest companies can buy. Not an easy task.

      But if you can get open standards adopted, then there's no longer any reason to care about increasing OOo market share, because it won't matter what software people use: you'll still be able to read their documents and they'll still be able to read yours.

  7. No. PDF is right. by Ungrounded+Lightning · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Shouldn't the file be an ODF format?

    You're not trying to let them edit it. You're trying to influence them with a fixed document. So a display-only format is fine.

    Further: You're trying to influence people who are NOT YET onboard with ODF. So you want a format that is viewable by as wide an audience as possible while displaying conveniently in an easy-on-the-eyes form. Right now that's PDF.

    Putting it out in ODF means it's only viewable by people who already have ODF installed. That's mainly the people who are already onboard and don't need to be convinced. So it would be a case of "preaching to the choir" rather than "converting the heathen". Useful for giving your evangelists more talking points perhaps. But not all that useful for the purpose intended.

    --
    Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
  8. Re:Microsoft, in turn, should warn governments by Darkness404 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Um, the difference is Office 2007 formats aren't a standard. OOXML is, but even MS's own implementation doesn't match up to the specs.

    ODF on the other hand has an open implementation, free source code, open specs, royalty free, etc.

    ODF alliance warning about sub-par ODF support on Office 2007 which ODF is totally open, is different than MS warning about not supporting their closed, undocumented format.

    --
    Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
  9. Mod parent up by KlaymenDK · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That's a very insightful, proactive suggestion. Why bitch about the usual MS attitudes if you can provide a constructive path ahead, right?

    Actually, it shouldn't be all that hard (but, it may well be tedious work) to put together a document that includes samples of *all* features of the spreadsheet / text editor / drawing / presentation document.

    Providing verification is probably a bigger challenge. I wonder if it could be done as macros in any of the ODF-supporting suites, or if that's akin to an SOD violation?

    --
    "Good news, everyone!"
  10. Re:Wahwahwah by malevolentjelly · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If anyone is interested in specifically what is "broken"(read: incompatible with OpenOffice.org 3.0)... which I doubt... here is some very good information detailing which decisions were made in implementing ODF and why they were made:

    http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/default.aspx

    The last couple blog posts should be what everyone is looking for.

    Beyond this, Microsoft is simply implementing ODF 1.1 because ODF 1.2 is not done yet. If Microsoft is going to support a standard, they will support the standard not the most popular implementation's interpretation of the standard.

  11. Re:Wahwahwah by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Microsoft followed the ODF specification to the letter

    Are you paid to astroturf? Thy did not follow it to the letter and they ignored the reference implementations and if they tested for compatibility like everyone else they did so to make sure things would not work. Given their market share, that's criminal.

  12. No, not at all by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There's a couple reasons why they'd do it differently:

    1) The whole reason they are doing the ODF thing is pressure from the EU with regards to anti-trust. Part of that pressure is that "You have to do it according to the standard." They don't want MS to go and say "Well we implemented some of the standard, but changed it in ways we like." So MS has been sticking strictly to the standard. Not all the other implementations do. So, you get a difference in results. Now you can argue that the right way of doing things is everyone else doing the same thing, even if it isn't the standard, but that really isn't an option for MS. They need the CYA ability to say "We implemented the standard 100% to spec, no deviation."

    2) All the other ODF stuff I've seen is open source. As with most open source, they borrow heavily form other open source projects. In the case of ODF, the modus operandi seems to be "Do what Open Office does." Ok that's great, but again not an option for MS. They can't take OOs code, of course, or they'd have to open up their software which they don't want to do. In theory they could look at it and then "reverse engineer" it so to speak and reimplement but that's dangerous. They won't want to fight claims of violating the GPL. So best to just have your dev team pretend it doesn't exist and do their own thing.

    Basically the ODF spec isn't clear and precise. So there are areas where you kinda have to decide how you want to do shit. MS isn't going to look at how it was done in OO's code, so their own design culture, which is different, will dictate how things are done. So you get differences right there. Then there are cases where the popular ODF implementations aren't compliant with the spec. They work because they are all not compliant in the same way, but then that won't work with MS's compliant implementation.

    More or less it looks like the ODF alliance needs to shut up, and write a better standard. For something like this, a good standard will be very complex and extremely specific. There's just no avoiding that. If you want to be able to have all of this different, rich functionality, and you want it to work the same way and display the same way everywhere, the standard has to be very very detailed. Everything has to be specified precisely. You can't leave it up to the developer on how to do anything, or you are going to get differences.

    1. Re:No, not at all by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 5, Informative

      The whole reason they are doing the ODF thing is pressure from the EU with regards to anti-trust. Part of that pressure is that "You have to do it according to the standard."

      So you're arguing that MS's lawyers are completely incompetent and didn't know that being incompatible was a violation of antirust law and that antitrust law doesn't mention anything about standards compliance? I think that's a naive.

      All the other ODF stuff I've seen is open source. As with most open source, they borrow heavily form other open source projects. In the case of ODF, the modus operandi seems to be "Do what Open Office does." Ok that's great, but again not an option for MS. They can't take OOs code...

      They already own BSD licensed code that works on MS Office. Next argument please!

      Basically the ODF spec isn't clear and precise.

      But it's clear an precise enough that it worked for everyone else and there are multiple working open source implementations, one of which they can literally copy and paste from and which they helped fund the creation of and probably have full rights to it even if it wasn't BSD licensed. Sorry, that argument doesn't fly either.

      Then there are cases where the popular ODF implementations aren't compliant with the spec.

      Example please.

      More or less it looks like the ODF alliance needs to shut up, and write a better standard.

      They already did. MS doesn't want a standard for interoperability. They are simply looking for any way they can be compliant but still be incompatible.

      Everything has to be specified precisely.

      Not really, that's what reference implementations are for. If you have any doubt about how to handle this, see the reference implementations and do it that way.

      The only argument you made that has any legs is the first one regarding compliance with the spec, but only if you assume ignorance of the law (I assume you perhaps aren't that familiar with antitrust law). I assure you, while it may at times appear that all of MS's lawyers have never heard of antitrust law, that is not the case in reality.

    2. Re:No, not at all by nxtw · · Score: 4, Informative

      But it's clear an precise enough that it worked for everyone else and there are multiple working open source implementations, one of which they can literally copy and paste from and which they helped fund the creation of and probably have full rights to it even if it wasn't BSD licensed. Sorry, that argument doesn't fly either.

      No, it just means that there are other implementations that behave similarly to OpenOffice.org.

      Demanding that Microsoft implements the ambiguous / not standard parts of OO.o's ODF in the same way that OO.o does is sort of like demanding that Mozilla implements all the ambiguous / not standard parts of MS's HTML/CSS rendering implementation. Or demanding that Apple modify OS X's kernel so it implements the same syscalls as Linux instead of implementing POSIX, because Linux is the most popular operating system used to run programs that target POSIX.

      Of course, with ODF, 1+2=1. ODF 1.1 is broken, and there is nothing that can be done to make a fully standards-compliant ODF 1.1 implementation without filling in the gaps somehow. Apparently, OO.o 1-2 uses a nonstandard forumla implementation and OO.o 3 writes to the not yet finished ODF 1.2 standard.

    3. Re:No, not at all by alexborges · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Absolute nonsense and petty attempt to justify malice.

      There IS a standard which was NOT completely respected by Microsoft.

      However, we arent talking about that part: in this instance, the only claim you can make against the standard is its failing to provide formula specification for spreadsheets.

      This is something that MS and all implementors can be asumed to have known BEFORE starting to implement the standard. All other implementations, INCLUDING the BSD licensed one by a microsoft contractor, chose INTEROPERABILITY, Microsoft in their second and internally executed implementation, chose to BREAK IT, and thus it DOES NOT interperate with anything at all.

      You can only claim compliance, but you cannot provide evidence that this choices werent taken with WRONGFUL WILL (them being the evil fuckers theyve always been). It was an ill willed decision, that is obvious and the evidence is that, hey, they DONT interoperate at all when they COULD and actually DID interoperate in OTHER implementations.

      Damn... how much do they pay for astroturfing?

      --
      NO SIG
    4. Re:No, not at all by spitzak · · Score: 4, Informative

      You are missing one ENORMOUS detail: the formulas ARE defined, they are defined by Open Office and every other ODF user as "do what Excel does" (to be pendantic they are "do what Excel does when set to a locale that uses commas as the decimal point").

      Microsoft is in the BEST position to do this, better than anybody else including OpenOffice! I believe they have the most accurate implementation of Excel. Or are you going to claim otherwise?

      Complicated wording and excuses from Mr Dave Mahugh just show that he is a truly sick and moralless individual. It is blatently obvious how to do the formulas. He is purposly writing stuff he knows as absolute bullshit in order to satisfy his paymasters. A bug in OpenOffice does not mean "don't write any ODF formulas" which is basically what he is claiming. WRONG.

  13. This is a document for nerds ... by Alain+Williams · · Score: 3, Informative
    Unfortunately, so it will be ignored.

    What do I mean ? It starts by assuming that you know what ODF is, giving it a name ''the OpenDocument Format'' doesn't really help -- the average Member of Parliament/Senate/Dictatorship/... will not have a clue what you are talking about. All sorts of other buzz words abound, there are names of unknown things like KSpread and Symphony -- who has heard of them ?

    I am sympathetic to what they are doing - it is a great idea, unfortunately it won't get much legislator/bureaucrat/... eyeball time because it doesn't explain what it is all about. It needs to be prefixed by a page that explains it all in nice, friendly words that everyone can understand and say that the technical details are on the next pages -- which starts with page 1 of what they have produced.

  14. no, they'll do more than that by je+ne+sais+quoi · · Score: 4, Interesting
    They don't warn people about it, but they do consider anyone running or develping for openoffice eligible to be sued. Here's a news article from 2004 about the settlement between Sun and MS over staroffice that states:

    In the document, it is stated that Microsoft agrees not to sue Sun for commercial distribution of StarOffice, which is based on OpenOffice.org, but that Microsoft can still seek damages from OpenOffice users or distributors for any copy installed after April 1, 2004.

    Watch what happens if openoffice makes any kind of real dent in office's market share. It'll be just like the RIAA going after downloaders...

    --
    Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
  15. Re:For a commercial vendor, by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Plenty of info here:

    You seem to have fallen for marketing nonsense. There exists a spec, which no one including MS has implemented. Then there exists the docx files MS office creates which are not compliant with the standards you link to and which are not fully documented anywhere.

    From the first link you posted, a quote about when MS will be compliant with the published version of the spec:

    On March 13, 2008 Doug Mahugh, a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft specializing in Office client interoperability and the Open XML file formats confirmed that version 1.0 of the Open XML Format SDK "will definitely be 100% compliant with the final ISO/IEC 29500 spec, including the changes accepted at the BRM"

    To date they have not managed to comply fully with their own format specification and no other company has a fully compatible version either, that I know of.

    So where is the documentation for the docx format Word creates today? Where is the fully compliant, BSD licensed reference implementation for Linux that OO can copy and paste code from? I think your argument pretty much went down the crapper at this point.

  16. Happy to comply when it breaks compatibility by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Microsoft did what they had to do to break compatibility. They must have been laughing themselves silly when they realised that other users of ODF had left the door open for them to both break compatibility AND claim compliance.

    Don't kid yourself, they may have been very happy to claim that they are compliant, but compliance was not the aim. Breaking compatibility was the primary purpose.

    1. Re:Happy to comply when it breaks compatibility by TropicalCoder · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Microsoft did what they had to do to break compatibility. They must have been laughing themselves silly when they realised that other users of ODF had left the door open for them to both break compatibility AND claim compliance.

      Don't kid yourself, they may have been very happy to claim that they are compliant, but compliance was not the aim. Breaking compatibility was the primary purpose.

      Why was this modded Flamebait? It is actually insightful, given Microsoft's history. That moderators rarely award points to ACs is somewhat understandable, but to censor an AC when it is already invisible is puzzling to me. Must have been an unintentional error is the only thing I can imagine.

  17. Read before you judge by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 5, Informative

    Before you judge on this issue, it helps to read comments by various involved parts - those raising the issue to attention, MS people who have implemented ODF, and informed commenters outside this dispute. So, here's a bunch of links to start with.

    First of all, a series of blog post by OASIS' Rob Weir (who's criticizing MSOffice) and Microsoft's Doug Mahugh (who's defending it) that evolved into a kind of a public discussion on the issue. Here they are in chronological / meaningful reading order:

    http://www.robweir.com/blog/2009/05/update-on-odf-spreadsheet.html
    http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2009/05/05/odf-spreadsheet-interoperability.aspx
    http://www.robweir.com/blog/2009/05/follow-up-on-excel-2007-sp2s-odf.html
    http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2009/05/09/1-2-1.aspx
    http://www.robweir.com/blog/2009/05/battle-for-odf-interoperability.html

    Then there's some outside commentary. I've taken the following links from comments in Doug's blog posts, and they tend to either be neutral or side with MS on this, so it may not be a representative sample. If you have any representing informed argument for the other side (e.g. by members of ODF committee, or ODF implementers - in general, people who know the ins and outs of the spec, and can accurately judge on its wording and intent - not random blogosphere FUD from either side), please mention them in replies.

    http://ajg.math.concordia.ab.ca/?p=4
    http://adjb.net/post/Notes-on-Document-Conformance-and-Portability-4.aspx
    http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/05/odf-11-formula-support-in-office-sp2.html

  18. They did it again. by Godji · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Microsoft did it: they managed to make ODF scary - it may or may not work. It was a brilliant FUD move.