ODF Editor Says ODF Loses If OOXML Does 268
An anonymous reader writes "The editor of the Open Document Format standard has written a letter (PDF) that strongly supports recognizing Microsoft's OOXML file format as a standard, arguing that if it fails, ODF will suffer. 'As the editor of OpenDocument, I want to promote OpenDocument, extol its features, urge the widest use of it as possible, none of which is accomplished by the anti-OpenXML position in ISO,' Patrick Durusau wrote. 'The bottom line is that OpenDocument, among others, will lose if OpenXML loses... Passage of OpenXML in ISO is going to benefit OpenDocument as much as anyone else.'"
Can't say that I understand him (Score:5, Interesting)
Rob Weir's response to Patrick's sudden flip flop (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting angle on Durusau's behavior (Score:5, Interesting)
This is conjecture, obviously, but I find it plausible, FWIW, especially since there is now a follow-up.
Re:3 questions... (Score:5, Interesting)
From the article:
His big beef is the ODF standard needs to have some formula definitions added??? So add them to the standard! Somehow I think the actual formulas, at least the financial ones, are already defined in some other standard, maybe not an ISO standard, but a standard somewhere. I just can't believe CPA's make up their own formulas. (OK, honest CPA's.) And since these formula's are standard somewhere else already, then OpenXML should have the same formulas.
"But what if there are different standards for the same financial function?" you ask. Well, then have a flag to pick which one is used as part of the function call. If OpenXML doesn't do this then ODF can make claims that Excel is not suitable for financial calculations. Actually, from the comments above, I'd say that is already the case. "...output varies by version and service pack of MS Office." does not inspire confidence in me for one.
The author also seems to think having OpenXML as a standard will provide anyone and everyone the complete specs to the standard. From what I've read, this isn't the case so far, and I doubt MS is anxious for that to happen. Get it approved, yes, but describe it in enough detail that anyone else could fully implement it, no.
As it is, Microsoft will not commit to supporting the standard. According to Brian Jones, a Microsoft manager who has worked on OOXML for six years: "It's hard for Microsoft to commit to what comes out of Ecma [the European standards group that has already OK'd OOXML] in the coming years, because we don't know what direction they will take the formats. We'll of course stay active and propose changes based on where we want to go with Office 14. At the end of the day, though, the other Ecma members could decide to take the spec in a completely different direction. ... Since it's not guaranteed, it would be hard for us to make any sort of official statement." [techworld.com]
How this kind of thing works - Soft Bribery (Score:5, Interesting)
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I want to tell you Slashdot people something about how this kind of thing works. I don't really know the name for it, but I call it "soft bribery". You might also call it "economic alignment" or whatever. Here's what happens.
A large, rich stakeholder wants a particular outcome - in this case, MS wants OOXML to be ratified. They have some adversaries - respected leaders of the OSS movement or ODF foundation, in this case. Note that there are always certain people with disproportionate voices - these people are really hurting them. How can they turn them around?
They can't outright bribe them. That's illegal and probably wouldn't work anyway - people would feel insulted. So what they need to do is ensure that the "thought leader"'s economic interest is aligned with their own.
We see this happen all the time - a previous strong advocate against something, in this case pro ODF and against OOXML, will suddenly get more concilatory. See Durusau's change of tone for an example. Now I don't know him, but I'm pretty sure here's what happened.
He would be in constant contact with the OOXML team in MS just as a matter of course. One day, though, they'll tell him to expect a call from a VP or higher - big guns. He's excited to be able to reach higher up in the company. Finally, they're taking him seriously. He might be talking to a billionaire!
He'll get the call. "Wow, we're really impressed with your work on this. My team is always telling me what a smart, together guy you are", says the VP or Partner or whatever. "I just wanted to tell you that we really appreciate the work you're doing and we can learn a lot from you. Say, when this is all over, if OOXML finally gets accepted - we'd love to get you in for some interoperability training and consulting, our staff could really use your insight. We pay pretty well, $500 an hour, and we estimate the contract would last for a year fulltime, but we're flexible with your current work - we just need you on call. What do you think?"
There you go. That's it. A year's worth at $500/hr is close enough to a million bucks, the guy's got a mortgage, game over. Of course MS wants it kept quiet or the deal's off - that's their "standard business practise", and the contract has an NDA clause.
Game over. I'm sure this is what happened to Durusau. I'm pretty sure it's what happened to Miguel. Unless you're independently wealthy, not many people can say no to a few hundred thousand in "consulting". Needless to say, he'll never step foot in any Microsoft building. Hell, maybe it's a lot less than a million - it was for someone I know.
I am going to be very vague here - sorry if you think I lose credibility, but I don't want to burn my friend. He was the CEO/CTO (same guy) at a small systems integrator in the educational sector "somewhere in Asia". A largish school deal was in the works, his company advised decision makers in favour of linux. A respected company, had a lot of sway with the local suits, it was looking like going their way. One day he gets a call to the cell phone - wow, one of the big guns!
"We really like the work you're doing. Say, it looks like this deal isn't going to go our way - but if it does, we'll need a partner to help us interoperate with the existing infrastructure - you installed a lot of it, so you're first in line and we'd like to book you in advance just to make sure we can get you. What are your rates? Well, we'd like to make sure we have you for at least six months and we actually pay a set rate in this area of $$$
Tenacious (Score:3, Interesting)
It's important to keep in mind the reasons we oppose the OpenXML format..
* It'll let Microsoft extend the blight of their ".doc" format for years to come.
* As with doc, hard to reverse engineer, if it becomes a standard and gets widely used, especially in government, we'll be stuck implementing it in OSS apps while they change it to be different (Bourne out with
* Binary blobs that could be anything, stuck into the code at Microsoft's request, obtainable only from Microsoft.
Lately there have been even better reasons.
* Allegations of corruption and mishandled votes.
In order to ensure the public good, we have to stand against that sort of thing. Being stuck reverse engineering a broken format is LESS of a problem than being in a situation where your votes get messed with. It wasn't a public vote I'll grant but it still matters. After the mess with the standard voting, they have to become an example to others.
While in the pro-camp, we have what?
* Better spreadsheet handling with Excel
* Legacy features of Microsoft formats
Handy sure, but it's not as if we can't transfer from
Basically, the benefits aren't as important as stopping vote rigging or the problems of being blighted with Microsoft lock-in and binary blobs.
Can ISO de-recognise standards? (Score:4, Interesting)
Can the ISO then meet again and de-recognise the DIS29500 standard?
If yes, what is the procedure for this process?
I don't see it. (Score:5, Interesting)
First, literally, I don't see TFA. I see TFBE -- The Fine Blog Entry -- which quotes the letter, but doesn't link to it.
But I'll work with what I have:
Then OpenDocument is the correct, standard definition, and OpenXML will be even further from standardization.
The fact that Excel output varies by version and service pack, and is sometimes downright wrong, is all the more reason to ignore it. Approximate it, maybe, to make porting easier. Write a compatibility layer, even. But don't push through an entire second document spec, which is so deeply flawed in so many ways, just to make us match one particular iteration of Excel output.
Oh, and Excel output varies by version and service pack. WTF makes this tool think Microsoft will even try to adhere to a standard, even if it's their own?
It certainly would, wouldn't it?
Except for the fact that the OOXML spec doesn't include them. In all its six thousand fucking pages, not one mention of how, exactly, to implement LineSpacingLikeWord95. And what's he proposing -- delay OOXML until this can be included in the spec, and thus make it, what, twelve thousand pages? Or push it through in the faith (hah!) that Microsoft will add it to the next version of OOXML?
Consider, also, that there is a right way to do this: Styles. Extend the style system to support this quirky behavior. Support quirky behavior in an abstract way. Then, put the actual definition of LineSpacingLikeWord95 in the document itself, as a style. Translating back is easy, too -- just look for styles flagged that way, or just styles that happen to match the original format's quirk.
It would take some work, sure. But it would be pushing the work back to Microsoft and Office, not to ISO and any potential other implementations. And it would mean we don't have to carry this legacy crap with the format forever -- eventually, there will be no more Word95 documents, and no implementation will have to care that LineSpacingLikeWord95 corresponds to an actual way of saving a Word95 .doc -- just that it should look a particular way.
Hmmm. Man attends conference in Seattle first. (Score:3, Interesting)
Now, Seattle and Redmond are fairly close, geographically speaking. I wonder if Mr. Durusau received some sort of persuasion from a company based in Redmond. I think we should be told.
Has an "incentive" been offered you think? (Score:2, Interesting)
When I lived in Malaysia last year (very nice, warm people with a really dodgy government), whenever a major project is stalled or changes direction, or when a prominant politican flips on a seemingly heartfelt poisition overnight (happens more regularly that you think) we all nod our heads and know that he probably got a new Porsche.
Why can't I shake the feeling that this guy has been bought off? Heck, Microsoft has shown it's willing to pay off Swedish votors for OOXML and a slew of other shady dealings.
Re:3 questions... (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh please, not the Kerberos thing again. Microsoft used the vendor specific fields for, shock horror, vendor specific data; it fully complied with RFC1964 and RFC1510 and interoped with MIT Kerberos versions 1.0.5, 1.0.6 and 1.1.1. The java debacle was not that they changed the underlying java spec (and it was in no way an ISO spec), but that they added their own namespaces which didn't stand out enough. CSS, well, that's just bloody poor implementation. Mozilla have been happy to ignore parts of CSS and go their own way too, text wrapping immediately springs to mind where the MS extensions were on the road to being rolled up into the spec, but Mozilla decided to implement their own, so now, come CSS 3 we have two different methods of doing the same thing.
At least someone is admitting that ODF is lacking in a number of key areas and isn't the magic bullet everyone wants it to be.
Re:3 questions... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I don't know about ODF (Score:3, Interesting)
Wouldn't it make more sense to just add new properties to CSS3 and just use XHTML?
I've never entirely understood the need for either format.
If we can specify every aspect of page layout with CSS3, then we can do everything with HTML that we can do with word processor docs. If we add page transition style definitions, we've got presentation docs covered. Add MathML and we have spreadsheets covered, and if we round that out with SVG, then charting is covered.
Isn't this more well-defined, simpler, and more accessible than either standard?
Who loses if M$OOXML loses? (Score:5, Interesting)
From the thread on Groklaw [groklaw.net]
I reproduce here the response from grokker59 [groklaw.net] and below Ron Weir's [groklaw.net] response.
Authored by: grokker59 on Tuesday, March 25 2008 @ 08:27 AM EDT
Item 1: If DIS29500 is not approved, *national bodies* will loose a forum to work on DIS29500 - circular reasoning. If DIS29500 is not approved, NBs won't *NEED* a forum to work on DIS29500 !
Item 2: Microsoft-only vendors may lose contracts because Microsoft failed to get "their" format approved. Circular reasoning. By not standardizing on a proprietary, lock-in document format, those companies that only sell proprietary lock-in document software no longer have a guarantee of continuing sales to locked-in customers. They might need to support an additional product or two to continue getting contract awards.
Item 3: If OOXML is disapproved, then ODF loses because it has no ISO-based formula definitions to insure compatibility between ODF and the complete lack of formula documentation in OOXML ? How is this a comparison and why do I care whether ODF shares formulas with OpenXML ? Microsoft's Office 2007 does not use OpenXML. Neither are Excel formulas documented in OOXML to the extent that translation can take place. What's important is that ODF interoperate to the greatest extent possible with Office 2007 and future versions - not that it interoperate with a format that Microsoft has already abandoned and/or never implemented.
Item 4: OOXML/OpenXML does not define legacy features, nor does OOXML/OpenXML provide a mapping for legacy features. Furthermore, all legacy features were moved to 'deprecated' status in the BRM, so there is no requirement to support them in either OOXML or ODF. OpenOffice already supports MS legacy features better than MS products, so I fail to see the gain of supporting DIS29500 to provide something that ODF products (OpenOffice.org) already does better than MS products.
Item 5: "ODF has no ISO-based definition of the current MS format for mapping purposes." Since MS products do not implement DIS29500, this is is a non-issue. MS has already stated they do not feel bound to support future DIS29500 versions in future products, so ODF MSOffice mappings are never going to be ISO-based. Nor should we expect MS to open their file format protocols in future versions.
There is *certainly* no reason to expect that MS will "offer a seat at the table" to any public organization during the planning/implementation of their next version of MSOffice since they've already stated that they do not feel bound by DIS29500 or its successors in ISO.
Another view from the ODF TC
Authored by: rcweir on Tuesday, March 25 2008 @ 06:38 PM EDT
As Co-Chair of the ODF TC, let me say that Mr. Durusau's views in no way represent the position of OASIS or the ODF TC.
Of course, he is entitled to his personal views, and so am I.
Patrick makes 5 assertions in his latest letter, and these are easily rebutted:
1) National bodies lose an open and international forum for further work on DIS 29500.
*Is Patrick implying that Ecma is not open and international? That would be a good thing to to know in those places where Microsoft is currently pushing for adoption of OOXML, arguing that it is an open standard.
One does not approve a standard in ISO in order to be more open. Openness should be there from the beginning. Patrick's argument appears to be "Let's give OOXML the highest level of approval and then it will be a better standard". But ISO standardization is not done
Re:3 questions... (Score:5, Interesting)
The best comparison would be S/MIME vs PGP. If you look at deployed base there is absolutely no question that S/MIME wins. We have over a billion email clients with embedded S/MIME support. But both are IETF standards and I was present when Burt Kaliski pitched handing S/MIME to Jeff Schiller, the Security area. Jeff was at the time probably the biggest PGP supporter, he was one of the main people who made the MIT distribution of PGP happen.
The popular perception is that the S/MIME and PGP camps are both at each other's throats. This is not the case at all. Neither product is exactly a deployment success in that virtually no email is secured with either. Jon Callas, CTO of PGP and I both worked on DKIM together. PGP Inc. makes an excellent S/MIME product. The perception that there is a division only hurts both standards. In my book [blogspot.com] I advocate that email clients implement at least PGP encryption so we can move forward to an interoperable message level confidentiality solution. There is not a big technical or even a market reason to do this, but there is a major political reason as PGP dominates in mindshare. We are going to make very sure that we do not have a similar schism when we move to the next generation technologies.
ODF vs OOXML is a very similar problem. The deployed base of applications is simply too great to make convergence on a single standard practical for this generation. It is only going to become practical when the market moves to the next generation.
The Microsoft Java namespace was entirely justified, Microsoft had bought into Java thinking that they could use it as their next generation programming language across the board. The only way to do that was to allow access to Windows APIs. Sun thought that Java was more than a programming language, it was a replacement platform that they had absolute control over and would sue anyone who tried to implement different ideas. The way I looked at it was 'OK Sun, you have an idea whose time might have come, but why should you get to control the entire future of the computing business on the basis of one idea'.
Standards are not about establishing a monoculture. The idea is to standardize what we agree on so that we can then innovate in areas that provide useful choices, i.e. benefits, for the customer and not in areas where it only causes problems.
ODF is not going to be the canonical archive format in perpetuity. It is rooted in the world of paper documents for a start.
Re:I still don't get it... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:3 questions... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I don't know about ODF (Score:3, Interesting)
While sed, awk, and grep are sufficient for very basic transformations and I use them frequently, they are not sufficient for the kind of complex formatting people expect from a modern word processor or spreadsheet. Awk and sed are ugly languages when you try to push them beyond very basic tasks.
Don't get me started on using C to write text processing applications. That's one of the tasks it's particularly poorly suited to. I can't begin to imagine how much time would be saved fixing grave security vulnerabilities due to buffer overflows that could have been avoided if people had used a language with real string handling or at least a C library that does the dirty work.
While XML is far from perfect, it is very well supported by libraries and tools written in almost every language known to man, including C. If writing a tool to deal with an XML document is more complex than to deal with a plain text document, it's probably because the XML format has more features. If the XML format is too complex, it should probably be replaced or simplified. I'm sure you're aware that the simplest XML document is something like: