Microsoft Votes to Add ODF to ANSI Standards List

RzUpAnmsCwrds writes "In a puzzling move, Microsoft today voted to support the addition of the OpenDocument file formats to the American National Standards List. OpenDocument is used by many free-software office suites, including OpenOffice.org. Microsoft is still pushing its own Office Open XML format, which it hopes will also become an ANSI standard. Is Microsoft serious about supporting ODF, or is this a merely a PR stunt to make Office Open XML look more like a legitimate standard?"

Re:Why would it be puzzling?

[shaitand]

Sort of runs contrary to the point of a standard doesn't it? The purpose of standards is to put out an open method that everyone uses and interoperates with. If you have two, which is then the standard standard?

This vote is good for Microsoft

[Skapare]

This vote is good for Microsoft. It can work this way. With ODF on the list, and later with others like PDF on the list, plus their own OOXML added to the list, it can make the list itself look legitimate. Then they will argue that governments can meet their obligations for open documents by choosing any one format from the list, making it seem that OOXML will be at least as good a choice as ODF.

Since when?

[WindBourne]

MS has never supported pushing a standard unless it is theirs or it is a modification to a current standard. Even in HTML, they were late to that game and push for a number of mods (a number of which were insane but designed to give them an edge). In java, while the did not push for standards, one it was, they tried to control it.

This is totally out of character for MS, though the only issue that I can see, is that now MS will be allowed to push through a number of mods that will allow their proprietary EEE ©.

Re:Why would it be puzzling?

[pohl]

The purpose of standards is to put out an open method that everyone uses and interoperates with.

I disagree. The purpose of standards is not to create something that everybody uses. Rather, it's to sufficiently document something such that anybody could use it. A diverse collection of competing standards is nothing new [wikipedia.org]. If one standard becomes dominance, there are nice efficiencies that you get, but it's not the purpose of standards -- it's just the gravy.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Why would it be puzzling?

[man_of_mr_e]

Actually, Microsoft does stand in the way of ODF adoption, just not of it becoming a recognized and official standard.

I disagree. I've followed this battle in pretty close detail. My observation is that Microsoft has only stood in the way of ODF being adopted to the exclusion of any other format. They seem to be perfectly happy with any case where ODF and other standards being allowed.

They fight tooth and nail against anything that gives users most the benefits of open standards.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. I highly doubt your premise. Sure, Microsoft wants standards to benefit itself, but you claim that Microsoft is gainst anyone else benefitting from them.

When most people think of a standard, they think of something like SAE bolt specifications

Funny you should mention that. How many different standards are there for bolts? Several. SAE and a number of ASTM standards, ISO and ANSI standards, etc...

This is because of the application of patents, the ties to secret information, because it is copyrighted, and because MS has a monopoly in the desktop OS space, a "standard" from MS is not just a "standard" as it would be referred to in most other industries.

ODF is no more "open" than OXML is. It too is covered by patents (and required a patent covenant by Sun, just like OXML). It too is largely championed by a single organization (in this case Sun), with several other organizations involved. BTW, the very definition of a patent means the information is not secret. You might want to re-evaluate your argument.

Saying, however, that OpenXML, is just another standard is misleading to the majority of people, because openXML and ODF are not equal, in terms of what sort of standardization benefits they bring to the industry.

Ok, then you shouldn't have any problem explain exactly how they are unequal, right?

Re:Why would it be puzzling?

[jon_anderson_ca]

BTW, the very definition of a patent means the information is not secret.

Well, unless there are things like "Specifies whether to layout footnotes as is done in Word 6.0/95 and Word 7.0/97" [rep.oio.dk], where the implementation to be copied is protected by copyright and, therefore, secret.

Onus is on you.

[Kadin2048]

What precisely does OOXML do, that ODF won't?

I'm genuinely curious.

I've yet to see any compelling reasons to use OOXML, and there are a lot of compelling reasons in favor of ODF (open format, relatively simple spec, many existing implementations with open codebases, etc.) and none in favor of OOXML.

The only things I've ever seen in OOXML that don't exist in ODF are the 'Microsoft braindeath compatibility features'; the tags that say "Do spacing like Word 95!" and can only ever be implemented by Microsoft, because they're the only ones who really understand WTF "spacing like Word 95" means.

Re:What if it helps them sell licenses?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Are you aware that Word 2007 supports ODF? Not out of the box, but it's on the list of supported add-ons...

Yes. The thing is, the move to ODF is usually motivated by a desire for vendor choice in office suites, and that usually means someone has a pain point that is the current version of MSOffice not being the right fit for at least some applications within the organization. MS would rather those people stay MSOffice customers because that is in MS's best interest, even if it obviously is not in the customer's best interest.

Why would they do this?

First MS did not "do this" several plug-ins were developed by a third parties like Sun, sometimes in cooperation with MS. MS supports them for two reasons. First, to do otherwise is yet another violation of antitrust law, but one which would highlight the reason everyone should be pushing for ODF in the first place. Two, MS needs some ODF support in order to be eligible for certain bids they really, really don't want to lose to OpenOffice. MS's goal is to keep MSOffice on top. Lock-in file formats are a method of doing that. They aren't willing to lose the former to maintain the latter.

ODF isn't that popular yet, but it's gaining exposure. So... add support for it, then add it to the list of official formats you can use.

MS's goal is to keep MSOffice used by everyone. They want to do that, however, not through making it the best product for everyone's needs, but by making it hard for people to switch to something else. File formats are their normal lock-in. MS could make ODF a first class citizen and save to it, by default, with no need for added downloads. They don want to do that unless they are forced to. They'd much rather keep as many road bloack between users switching to another program as possible. This is bad for end users because in some cases other tools suit their needs better.

(support all the same formats, support a couple it doesn't, and still have things like better Accessibility support, and it gets a lot easier to convince governents and companies not to switch)

Ahh, but here's the thing. All "support" is not created equal. MS wants a bullet point that says "ODF support" so they can win contracts. They'd rather, however, that it was just a bullet point and was as hard to install and use as possible to still get that bullet point, all the while pushing people to something(OpenXML) that sounds like it will provide the same benefits of a standard, but in reality is just slightly less of a lock in that .doc.

Admittedly, they could do this without standardization of ODF, but there's no point in fighting it and a bit to be gained from supporting it. There's nothing wrong with the standard; to Microsoft it's just another format you can use their software for.

There is a lot wrong with ODF from MS's perspective. It removes their .doc lock-in completely and gives people a way to move to other things. That potentially costs them money and means they have to spend money to improve MSOffice and compete on level ground with others. MS will move to ODF when they have to or when MS Office is no longer the biggest chunk of the market. Until then, they want lock-in and that means undermining ODF.

Re:My Name Is Bill

[Anonymous Coward]

Vista is the fastest-selling operating system ever. How is that "lackluster"?

Hey, I'm no Microsoft fan either, but take off those zealot glasses. You just look silly when you say such things.

Re:Examples?

[fritsd]

ODF cannot fully represent Office documents.

Says who? Microsoft? Why didn't they join the OASIS committee then, when they were invited but declined? Microsoft WAS INVITED to send a representative to throw all their necessary document features on the table and incorporate them into ODF. They weren't interested -- then. If they're now crying that ODF doesn't support those features, it's really only their problem.

The European Commission politely asked Microsoft whether they would please consider joining that OASIS tech committee because it would encourage interoperability.

Here (not primary source): http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/50273/index.h tml [lxer.com]

*I* will trash OpenOffice.org; no need for MS Word

[KWTm]

Just as the situation is today. Look at the "reviews" of OpenOffice.org by various "journalists". You'll see them complaining that the formating on a document was "messed up" when they went
from MS Word
to OpenOffice.org
back to MS Word.

Okay, if you think it's due to MS Word that OOo looks bad, try this one on for size: a document saved as ".odt" with OpenOffice.org v2 for Linux (Kubuntu) is mangled when opened in OpenOffice.org v2 for Windows (Win2k). There was no MS Word involved anywhere.

This was a document for which formatting was important: I had designed a greeting card to be printed onto thick paper and folded into quarters, so positioning was critical. I did this on my Linux box, but the printer was hooked up to the wife's box, and she only wants Windows on it. I saved the file on Kubuntu, FISh'd it over to the Win2k box and opened it, and the text formatting had screwed up, spilling over onto the next page.

If OpenOffice.org can't standardize their own document formatting, what's the point having a standard like ODF in the first place? (I finally exported to PDF in order to get it onto the Win2k box without messing it up.)

I'm grateful to Sun for all the contributions they've made to Open Source, but I have to say, OOo is a steaming pile of crap.

Okay, that was a bit too blunt, and I'm glad they have an integrated office suite with spreadsheet, presentation application, I appreciate the work they've put into this, grateful that they distribute OOo under an Open Source license, etc. etc., so let me do my best to be more subtle.

Erm, er, OpenOffice is ... a steaming pile of crap.

Sorry. I tried.

Re:*I* will trash OpenOffice.org; no need for MS W

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent post doesn't demonstrate what it thinks it does, but it does point out a couple of general problems worth noting.

1. Fonts are not necessarily interchangeable between operating systems. The most common problem is substitution, where the operating system chooses the closest font to the one requested by the application (in turn, requested within the document file). Usually this will be good enough, and it should always be good enough for government work. But things will generally fail if you push the envelope of word processing, as described in the parent post.
2. A word processor should never be used where a desktop publishing application is needed. Word processors work on WORDS. Desktop publishers work on PRECISION APPEARANCE. The difference is as vast as that between a spreadsheet and a database.

If I were attempting what parent post described, I would have used OOo's .pdf capability, which probably would have worked well enough.

BTW, Scribus is a competent desktop publisher. It is FOSS, and well worth the effort to learn if one is into things like greeting card designs and other stuff where presentation is more important than content.

Re:My Name Is Bill

[martin-k]

RTF is structured in a way that applications can skip the parts they don't understand, and RTF supports saving multiple versions of the same object (say, a graphics frame) in different formats, so that an application can pick the version it understands.

The same thing will happen with ODF as more word processors pick it up. Every word processor has its little 'extra' features for which a different file format has no support. As an example, ODF only supports an extremely simplistic way of 'tracked changes' that mirrors the level of tracked changes support in OpenOffice.org. Another word processor with better tracked changes must either add its own XML tags in the ODF file or drop the extra features. Every WP developer will of course opt for the former, leading over time to variations in the ODF format as supported by different applications.

In other words, ODF will become quite varied over time, as soon as OpenOffice.org is not the only complete implementation anymore.

How do I know? We had to make exactly that design decision a month ago. See www.textmaker.com