That document barely even mentions the Sun patent pledge, and doesn't analyze it. Though it does explicitly state that it only covers versions that Sun participates in, so no. My comment is not false.
Sun and IBM. Also, nearly all of the anti-OOXML web sites out there are run by IBM employees or those associated with OASIS. Rob Weird - IBM. Bob Sutor - IBM. Andy Updegrove - OASIS Lawyer.
I did this because there is already a fully supported, open, non-patent-encumbered standard covering the whole domain of what ooxml proposes
False. ODF has the exact same sort of patent problems that OOXML does. In fact, ODF is in worse shape because Sun's IPR grant is only valid so long as Sun participates in the ODF committee.
Actually, yes. There is a great deal of controversy around the Kenyan national response.
Two IBM employees are listed in the authors metadata of the PDF files submitted by Kenya. Not so coincidentally, Kenya also had one of the largest number of comments submitted.
Actually, Sun does have absolute control over ODF. Apart from the fact that Sun employees are not only the chair of the committee, but make up nearly half of the committee members, the OpenOffice file format that was donated to OASIS, and is the basis of ODF, was licensed under the strict provision that Sun only licensed their patents (or rather promised not to sue) to ODF implementors as long as they continued to participate in it's development.
So, if Sun doesn't like what OASIS is doing (hardly possible given the sheer numbers of people on the committee, but still), they need only threaten to walk away and effictively kill any future version ODF if they don't get their way.
see http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/ipr.php and note particularly the clause that contains this phrase: "or of any subsequent version thereof ("OpenDocument Implementation") in which development Sun participates to the point of incurring an obligation"
Their report still flies in the face of everything I know about the industry and the players involved.
Have you considered that maybe what you know is wrong?
Sun and IBM have been mounting a massive disinformation campaign against OOXML for the last 2 years. 95% of what people reiterate about OOXML (often word for word) comes straight from people who are in the employ of a Microsoft competitor, and who have a lot to gain by Office's failure to standardize it's format.
Meanwhile, companies like IBM have been working dilligently to influence standards bodies negatively against OOXML. For instance, the Kenyan response was written almost entirely by an IBM employee, who just so happens to be the vice-chairman of the german ISO body.
While there is likely much mud to be slung on both sides, my point is that what you probably know about this situation is likely filtered through biased eyes. Not to say that this report is or isn't valid, but more than likely your opinion on this matter has been expertly manipulated by people with a monetary incentive for their side to prevail.
That's ridiculous. You've never seen a volume license program, have you?
Most companies pay a set volume license price for their OS, Exchange or SQL CAL's, Office, etc... that is considerably lower than any price you'll find online. We're talking something in the range of $150-200 per computer for everything. You can't go by retail prices.
At this point, I think it's a fair argument that the cost of retraining to use OO.o is probably much smaller than the cost of retraining to use Office 2007.
Really? Why? Pretty much the only thing of consequence that is radically different in Office 2007 is the file format and the ribbon. The ribbon is just a different layout for the same functionality that was there in Office 2003 (plus new features that are a superset of the existing ones).
OpenOffice does a *LOT* of things non-trivially different than Office does them, while Office 2007 does things the same way, it's just invoked differently. When a user chooses the "Paragraph Options", it looks and acts just like it did in 2003. When they do a mail merge, it works just like it did in 2003. When they create a formula in excel, it's exactly like it was in 2003.
OpenOffice may *LOOK* more like Office 2003, but it doesn't act more like it than 2007 does. It's the actual functionality that requires the retraining, not the position or method of invocation.
I think you're naive if you actually think retraining costs are less to move OpenOffice than to move to Office 2007.
They didn't use them as a database. They used them to print paper documents that were kept in archive. And you really don't know what you're talking about in regards to macros. While I don't doubt there is the occasional problem, it's nowhere near as common as you claim. In fact, i've never even seen it happen once, in over a dozen companies over 15 years, with 10's of thousands of documents with embedded macros.
If it WERE as big of a problem as you state, people wouldn't use them.
Like most people that advocate OOo, you really have no idea how Office is used, do you?
You think people sit around writing macros for themselves? Maybe some, but every company i've worked for in the last 10 years has had (literally) hundreds, even thousands of documents on file servers with embedded macros for use by the entire company.
The Accounting departments are particularly notorious for this, as are Human resources. They have create macro embedded documents for vacation request forms, health care and insurance forms, Expense reports, travel requests, Yearly occupational reviews, etc...
One company I worked for had macro'd excel sheets for shipping and receiving, inventory, RMA and other processes.
You're absolutely right that there is a minority of specialized MS Office users who *WRITE* those macro's, but legions of everyday people use them. It's this kind of thinking that keeps OpenOffice where it is. "Oh, only 10% of people might use that, so we can ignore it". Ignore enough 10%'s and you don't have much left.
Ahh.. I see. So because some people have hacked together a kludge, that makes it all good? That's like saying nobody should create Linux apps, since Wine can run most Windows ones. Wrappers and other hacks are not a long term substitute for the real thing, and in fact they just encourage the offender to keep the status quo.
Linux users don't get their software from download pages, they get them from their repositories. So whether or not Microsoft offers a download for Moonlight is irrelevant.
Yes, in fact I commented in the message you're responding to that this is indeed a problem. My point, however, was more oriented towards the reactionary and hyperbolic nature of the story, which misrepresented the situation in a number of different ways.
Yeah, it's a problem, but half the shit the blogger said wasn't true, or was exagerated.
I agree that the iTunes solution is better, but my point was that the situations are similar. iTunes simply has a better way to re-validate the content.
There's nothing sinister. There's no blacklisting of unprotected media. No software scans all your files. These are things the original article claimed happened.
Well, I was unable to read the original story because of slashdotting. The story seems to be "real", in that things likely happened as he explains, but he's (probably not deliberately, though definately hyperbolically) misrepresenting many of the facts.
First, nothing "scans all your files". Second, he makes it sound like you aren't allowed to watch videos without DRM, which is not correct. Third, it's not terribly difficult to backup your licenses. It's 3 clicks in Windows Media.
What this boils down to is when the DRM is "reset", the signing code is regenerated, which means that any files that use DRM that were downloaded with the old signing code will no longer play, because the signing key is no longer valid. Nothing "scanned all the files", nor were licenses "revoked". If they were revoked, you couldn't back them up and restore them with the new signing key.
Basically, it's the same thing that happens if you wipe your hard disk and re-install iTunes. None of your iTunes music downloads will work, because it regenerated a new signing key.
Now, this is still a problem that adding a higher resolution monitor causes the DRM to no longer function without resetting, but it's not an insurmountable problem, and it's almost *NOTHING* like what the author is trying to portray the situation as.
Unless you're running a 64 bit OS. Adobe has been promising a 64 bit flash player for years, and it's yet to come.
Silverlight has both 32 and 64 bit versions. And you're not limited to one programming language. *AND* it's XML based, which means that's it's more accessibility friendly than the binary flash format.
Members of the Gnumeric team beg to differ. They state rather matter of factly that the documentation of OOXML has helped them immensely with their legacy binary compatibility.
As for deprecation. You might want to pay a little closer attention. Those elements were deprecated in the first version. Seriously. The only difference here is that ECMA is extracting the deprecated elements to their own annex and are putting big red flashy neon signs on it saying "don't implement this stuff, we meant it, it's going away". And that's not the "backwards compatibility section". All of those elements (perhaps with the sole exception of VML) haven't been used in new documents for close to a decade, some even longer (like the wordperfect and lotus stuff).
Regarding Posix, NT was only ever Posix.1 compliant, and as far as I know, it's still Posix.1 compliant, but for years Microsoft has also had the free Interix add-on that made applications developed for Interix fully posix compliant, and that "add-on" is now included in the enterprise and ultimate editions.
And yes. OOXML *IS* simply the binary documents expressed in XML. It's a 1:1 mapping. The only difference is the "container" in which that information is access. in binary documents, that container is (typicall) OLE Compound document format, a format which is pretty well know and documented by several sources.
The usual argument is "Well, why include deprecated features in a new standard" and the reason is that documents converted (note: not translated, converted) from binary formats may contain those data elements, and they have to be represented for a 1:1 conversion, which is required by several state and federal laws for data archival.
In fact, it's *ILLEGAL* to convert documents to a format that might lose information in the process. Laws like Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA require the information be archived precisely as it was created. That can't be done with documents converted to ODF because there will be necessary translations that can result in loss of data (For example, you can't convert the bad leap-year to ODF without "correcting" it, which alters the document even if the original document was in error).
You're focused on this as a "new" standard. It's not. It's basically documenting an existing defacto standard (MS's binary format), albeit in a new way. OOXML is little more than Microsoft's binary formats, documented and expressed in XML. This allows billions of existing documents to be converted to an open format without the need of (possibly lossy) translation.
If you posit that people are going to continue to use MS Office, and if you posit that new software will continue to be built that needs to work with MS Office documents, and if you posit that lots of people have a lot of data they don't want to translate into a totally new format, then standardization of the defecto standard binary documents is a *GOOD* thing for all involved, including the companies like Sun and IBM, because it provides a documented way to go from binary MS Office to ODF.
What's more, standardization locks microsofts hands to a great degree in what they can do. If they stray from the standard, then they will no longer be eligible to meet government contracts that require standard support.
What I don't understand is why so many people are so violently against standardizing the already defacto standard format? It doesn't need to be a technically superior solution, because it's merely a codification of what's already being used by nearly everyone.
I think what you mean is that you've done a lot of reading and listening to those that have a political or financial stake in the outcome of the OOXML standardization.
Has it ever occured to you that listening to people like Rob Weir or Andy Updegrove might only give you part of the story?
I agree that good admins have a variety of tools at their disposal, but home users are not quite so inclined to jump through all those hoops. That's where the WHS comes into play. Sure, it may not be perfect (not even counting this bug), but has any version of any system been perfect? They usually start out addressing certain needs, and grow and evolve to do better.
I think WHS has a lot of potential for non-technical users to be able to do things that us techies have been able to do for years.
The KB article is a bit vague. But the key phrase there is "When you save them to the home server", which I take to mean when you choose the home server share from the "save" dialog or you simply save a file that was originally on such a share.
What they seem to be saying is that if the file resides on the server, but you aren't editing it on the server itself (ie a computer that is a client) then the chance of the corruption exists. "edit files on a home computer" in this case appears to mean literally, that you are using the home computer to do the editing, not that the file resides on the home computer.
Slashdot Mirror
That document barely even mentions the Sun patent pledge, and doesn't analyze it. Though it does explicitly state that it only covers versions that Sun participates in, so no. My comment is not false.
Sun and IBM. Also, nearly all of the anti-OOXML web sites out there are run by IBM employees or those associated with OASIS. Rob Weird - IBM. Bob Sutor - IBM. Andy Updegrove - OASIS Lawyer.
I did this because there is already a fully supported, open, non-patent-encumbered standard covering the whole domain of what ooxml proposes
False. ODF has the exact same sort of patent problems that OOXML does. In fact, ODF is in worse shape because Sun's IPR grant is only valid so long as Sun participates in the ODF committee.
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/ipr.php
Actually, yes. There is a great deal of controversy around the Kenyan national response.
Two IBM employees are listed in the authors metadata of the PDF files submitted by Kenya. Not so coincidentally, Kenya also had one of the largest number of comments submitted.
http://notes2self.net/archive/2007/06/22/quot-there-is-no-reason-to-be-browbeaten-into-thinking-that-there-should-only-be-one-document-format-quot.aspx
Actually, Sun does have absolute control over ODF. Apart from the fact that Sun employees are not only the chair of the committee, but make up nearly half of the committee members, the OpenOffice file format that was donated to OASIS, and is the basis of ODF, was licensed under the strict provision that Sun only licensed their patents (or rather promised not to sue) to ODF implementors as long as they continued to participate in it's development.
So, if Sun doesn't like what OASIS is doing (hardly possible given the sheer numbers of people on the committee, but still), they need only threaten to walk away and effictively kill any future version ODF if they don't get their way.
see http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/ipr.php and note particularly the clause that contains this phrase: "or of any subsequent version thereof ("OpenDocument Implementation") in which development Sun participates to the point of incurring an obligation"
Their report still flies in the face of everything I know about the industry and the players involved.
Have you considered that maybe what you know is wrong?
Sun and IBM have been mounting a massive disinformation campaign against OOXML for the last 2 years. 95% of what people reiterate about OOXML (often word for word) comes straight from people who are in the employ of a Microsoft competitor, and who have a lot to gain by Office's failure to standardize it's format.
Meanwhile, companies like IBM have been working dilligently to influence standards bodies negatively against OOXML. For instance, the Kenyan response was written almost entirely by an IBM employee, who just so happens to be the vice-chairman of the german ISO body.
see http://notes2self.net/archive/2007/06/22/quot-there-is-no-reason-to-be-browbeaten-into-thinking-that-there-should-only-be-one-document-format-quot.aspx
While there is likely much mud to be slung on both sides, my point is that what you probably know about this situation is likely filtered through biased eyes. Not to say that this report is or isn't valid, but more than likely your opinion on this matter has been expertly manipulated by people with a monetary incentive for their side to prevail.
That's ridiculous. You've never seen a volume license program, have you?
Most companies pay a set volume license price for their OS, Exchange or SQL CAL's, Office, etc... that is considerably lower than any price you'll find online. We're talking something in the range of $150-200 per computer for everything. You can't go by retail prices.
At this point, I think it's a fair argument that the cost of retraining to use OO.o is probably much smaller than the cost of retraining to use Office 2007.
Really? Why? Pretty much the only thing of consequence that is radically different in Office 2007 is the file format and the ribbon. The ribbon is just a different layout for the same functionality that was there in Office 2003 (plus new features that are a superset of the existing ones).
OpenOffice does a *LOT* of things non-trivially different than Office does them, while Office 2007 does things the same way, it's just invoked differently. When a user chooses the "Paragraph Options", it looks and acts just like it did in 2003. When they do a mail merge, it works just like it did in 2003. When they create a formula in excel, it's exactly like it was in 2003.
OpenOffice may *LOOK* more like Office 2003, but it doesn't act more like it than 2007 does. It's the actual functionality that requires the retraining, not the position or method of invocation.
I think you're naive if you actually think retraining costs are less to move OpenOffice than to move to Office 2007.
They didn't use them as a database. They used them to print paper documents that were kept in archive. And you really don't know what you're talking about in regards to macros. While I don't doubt there is the occasional problem, it's nowhere near as common as you claim. In fact, i've never even seen it happen once, in over a dozen companies over 15 years, with 10's of thousands of documents with embedded macros.
If it WERE as big of a problem as you state, people wouldn't use them.
Like most people that advocate OOo, you really have no idea how Office is used, do you?
You think people sit around writing macros for themselves? Maybe some, but every company i've worked for in the last 10 years has had (literally) hundreds, even thousands of documents on file servers with embedded macros for use by the entire company.
The Accounting departments are particularly notorious for this, as are Human resources. They have create macro embedded documents for vacation request forms, health care and insurance forms, Expense reports, travel requests, Yearly occupational reviews, etc...
One company I worked for had macro'd excel sheets for shipping and receiving, inventory, RMA and other processes.
You're absolutely right that there is a minority of specialized MS Office users who *WRITE* those macro's, but legions of everyday people use them. It's this kind of thinking that keeps OpenOffice where it is. "Oh, only 10% of people might use that, so we can ignore it". Ignore enough 10%'s and you don't have much left.
Ahh.. I see. So because some people have hacked together a kludge, that makes it all good? That's like saying nobody should create Linux apps, since Wine can run most Windows ones. Wrappers and other hacks are not a long term substitute for the real thing, and in fact they just encourage the offender to keep the status quo.
Linux users don't get their software from download pages, they get them from their repositories. So whether or not Microsoft offers a download for Moonlight is irrelevant.
Yes, in fact I commented in the message you're responding to that this is indeed a problem. My point, however, was more oriented towards the reactionary and hyperbolic nature of the story, which misrepresented the situation in a number of different ways.
Yeah, it's a problem, but half the shit the blogger said wasn't true, or was exagerated.
I agree that the iTunes solution is better, but my point was that the situations are similar. iTunes simply has a better way to re-validate the content.
There's nothing sinister. There's no blacklisting of unprotected media. No software scans all your files. These are things the original article claimed happened.
Well, I was unable to read the original story because of slashdotting. The story seems to be "real", in that things likely happened as he explains, but he's (probably not deliberately, though definately hyperbolically) misrepresenting many of the facts.
First, nothing "scans all your files". Second, he makes it sound like you aren't allowed to watch videos without DRM, which is not correct. Third, it's not terribly difficult to backup your licenses. It's 3 clicks in Windows Media.
What this boils down to is when the DRM is "reset", the signing code is regenerated, which means that any files that use DRM that were downloaded with the old signing code will no longer play, because the signing key is no longer valid. Nothing "scanned all the files", nor were licenses "revoked". If they were revoked, you couldn't back them up and restore them with the new signing key.
Basically, it's the same thing that happens if you wipe your hard disk and re-install iTunes. None of your iTunes music downloads will work, because it regenerated a new signing key.
Now, this is still a problem that adding a higher resolution monitor causes the DRM to no longer function without resetting, but it's not an insurmountable problem, and it's almost *NOTHING* like what the author is trying to portray the situation as.
Tag this "Slashdoters Will Believe Anything SoLong As Its Negative Against Microsoft Especially If It Involves Vista"
(tried to make that one word, but the slashdot lameness filter rejected it... yeah, ok, so it's lame)
I would suggest that Netflix isn't the "stupid" ones here.
It may not be HTML, but it will be XML. Should be just as easy for search engines to index.
Both 32 and 64 bit versions of Silverlight. When's that 64 bit Adobe flash player coming?
XML based, which makes it easier for screen readers to process it than the binary flash.
Unless you're running a 64 bit OS. Adobe has been promising a 64 bit flash player for years, and it's yet to come.
Silverlight has both 32 and 64 bit versions. And you're not limited to one programming language. *AND* it's XML based, which means that's it's more accessibility friendly than the binary flash format.
Members of the Gnumeric team beg to differ. They state rather matter of factly that the documentation of OOXML has helped them immensely with their legacy binary compatibility.
As for deprecation. You might want to pay a little closer attention. Those elements were deprecated in the first version. Seriously. The only difference here is that ECMA is extracting the deprecated elements to their own annex and are putting big red flashy neon signs on it saying "don't implement this stuff, we meant it, it's going away". And that's not the "backwards compatibility section". All of those elements (perhaps with the sole exception of VML) haven't been used in new documents for close to a decade, some even longer (like the wordperfect and lotus stuff).
Regarding Posix, NT was only ever Posix.1 compliant, and as far as I know, it's still Posix.1 compliant, but for years Microsoft has also had the free Interix add-on that made applications developed for Interix fully posix compliant, and that "add-on" is now included in the enterprise and ultimate editions.
And yes. OOXML *IS* simply the binary documents expressed in XML. It's a 1:1 mapping. The only difference is the "container" in which that information is access. in binary documents, that container is (typicall) OLE Compound document format, a format which is pretty well know and documented by several sources.
The usual argument is "Well, why include deprecated features in a new standard" and the reason is that documents converted (note: not translated, converted) from binary formats may contain those data elements, and they have to be represented for a 1:1 conversion, which is required by several state and federal laws for data archival.
In fact, it's *ILLEGAL* to convert documents to a format that might lose information in the process. Laws like Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA require the information be archived precisely as it was created. That can't be done with documents converted to ODF because there will be necessary translations that can result in loss of data (For example, you can't convert the bad leap-year to ODF without "correcting" it, which alters the document even if the original document was in error).
You're focused on this as a "new" standard. It's not. It's basically documenting an existing defacto standard (MS's binary format), albeit in a new way. OOXML is little more than Microsoft's binary formats, documented and expressed in XML. This allows billions of existing documents to be converted to an open format without the need of (possibly lossy) translation.
If you posit that people are going to continue to use MS Office, and if you posit that new software will continue to be built that needs to work with MS Office documents, and if you posit that lots of people have a lot of data they don't want to translate into a totally new format, then standardization of the defecto standard binary documents is a *GOOD* thing for all involved, including the companies like Sun and IBM, because it provides a documented way to go from binary MS Office to ODF.
What's more, standardization locks microsofts hands to a great degree in what they can do. If they stray from the standard, then they will no longer be eligible to meet government contracts that require standard support.
What I don't understand is why so many people are so violently against standardizing the already defacto standard format? It doesn't need to be a technically superior solution, because it's merely a codification of what's already being used by nearly everyone.
I think what you mean is that you've done a lot of reading and listening to those that have a political or financial stake in the outcome of the OOXML standardization.
Has it ever occured to you that listening to people like Rob Weir or Andy Updegrove might only give you part of the story?
I think that was a little too subtle.
I agree that good admins have a variety of tools at their disposal, but home users are not quite so inclined to jump through all those hoops. That's where the WHS comes into play. Sure, it may not be perfect (not even counting this bug), but has any version of any system been perfect? They usually start out addressing certain needs, and grow and evolve to do better.
I think WHS has a lot of potential for non-technical users to be able to do things that us techies have been able to do for years.
The KB article is a bit vague. But the key phrase there is "When you save them to the home server", which I take to mean when you choose the home server share from the "save" dialog or you simply save a file that was originally on such a share.
What they seem to be saying is that if the file resides on the server, but you aren't editing it on the server itself (ie a computer that is a client) then the chance of the corruption exists. "edit files on a home computer" in this case appears to mean literally, that you are using the home computer to do the editing, not that the file resides on the home computer.