Microsoft Spokesman Says ODF "Clearly Won" Standard War

Elektroschock writes "At a Red Hat retrospective panel on the ODF vs. OOXML struggle panel, a Microsoft representative, Stuart McKee, admitted that ODF had 'clearly won.' The Redmond company is going to add native support of ODF 1.1 with its Office 2007 service pack 2. Its yet unpublished format ISO OOXML will not be supported before the release of the next Office generation. Whether or not OOXML ever gets published is an open question after four national bodies appealed the ISO decision."

Re:Consumer vs Professional

[fictionpuss]

The question is whether Microsoft is going to really support ODF or just give lip-service token support. For example, how fast are bugs in the ODF support going to be fixed? Remember how Micorsoft "supported" Java with their non-compliant, buggy implementation?

Considering that they have an open source codebase to work from, which wasn't true of Java at the time, they don't have much of an excuse to write a buggy implementation.

Re:The end of vendor lock-in for Microsoft?

[The Warlock]

http://www.betanews.com/article/Next_Office_2007_service_pack_will_include_ODF_PDF_support_options/1211343807 [betanews.com]

There will be an option in both the installer and options menu to choose ODF as the default format, if you want.

I was in this session...

[JustShootMe]

And in fact asked the question "Is this just Microsoft doing the first stage of embrace, extend, extinguish?" I was not happy with his response. He floated the idea of merging the two standards, which really concerns me, and also seemed to acknowledge that there was going to be some extension.

From the impression I got, we got thrown a bone, and ODF and OOXML are going to be merged in the next couple of years, and MS will have de facto control because OOXML allows for proprietary extensions.

MS is not going to take this lying down.

I did shake Stuart's hand afterwards, however. He deserves props for showing up and taking a little abuse, although I was not near as hard on him as I would have liked to be, just because other people also deserved a chance to ask questions.

One thing that struck me is that one of the Singapore standards guys was there, and he was NOT happy. He was pretty pissed off that they could not provide even one reference implementation.

But... like I said. Props for showing up, MS. Now you just have many years of monopolistic behavior to live down, and I'll never trust anything you say again.

Re:Consumer vs Professional

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Considering that they have an open source codebase to work from, which wasn't true of Java at the time, they don't have much of an excuse to write a buggy implementation.

They didn't have an excuse at the time, either, which is why the courts convicted them of antitrust abuse for doing it.

Re:ODF Compatibility test utility

[ender_01]

You mean something like this [oasis-open.org]?

How to Stop Extend Embrace Extingish ?

[HighOrbit]

The EEE strategy can be stopped via a licensing scheme. That was the way Sun stopped MS over Java. ODF should do the same, minus the royalties

1. Create open standard that is copyrighted and trademarked
2. Create free test suite for open standard
3. Predicate free-gratis license to distribute on passing test suite
4. Profit! and compatibility all around

For what it's worth, I think this should be used with html, ecmascript, and css. You should only be ALLOWED to implement those standards if you can agree to follow those standards. The Open Group does with UNIX and the Single Unix Specification, but ofcourse, they charge exorbitant fees.

Re:I was in this session...

[nico60513]

Microsoft was a member of Oasis while ODF 1.0 was being developed. They could have addressed feature X, Y and Z during the ODF 1.0 development process. They could have ensured that ODF met the needs of Microsoft Office. They chose not to contribute. If it doesn't met their needs, it is their own fault.

Having said that, I think it would be great if they contributed to future versions of ODF, as long as they aren't the only voice being heard.

Re:The end of vendor lock-in for Microsoft?

[digitig]

(once they got used to it, people also quite liked the 2007 interface)

I'd like to know your evidence for that -- I've been using it for months, and still loathe it.

The keystrokes for common actions used to be short, and for infrequent actions used to be longer -- a standard UI design principle. But in Word 2007?
"Edit | Paste Special" used to be "<alt>ES"; now it's "<alt>HVS" ("V"??? Where did that come from?). "Edit | Find" used to be "<alt>EF", now it's <alt>FDF. "File | Properties" used to be "<alt>FI", now (for all but a couple that I don't use) it's "<alt>FEP"[click "document properties"][click "advanced properties..."]. I can't find any way to get there without the mouse, and I can't find any way to get rid of the properties ribbon without using the mouse, and I don't see the point of needing the two mouse clicks because "advanced properties..." is the only entry under "document properties".

On the other hand, changing the number of columns (which I would always do in a new document template, maybe once every couple of years) is just "<alt>PJ" -- really convenient.

The whole interface is geared to the beginner, who is mousing all over the place. Power users, who usually like to keep their hands on the keyboard, have been abandoned.

Re:Consumer vs Professional

[fictionpuss]

OpenOffice is LGPL not GPL -- they could build from the OpenOffice codebase, write their own wrappers, keeping just that under the LGPL. They would not need to release any Microsoft Office code.

Re:How to Stop Extend Embrace Extingish ?

[Slime-dogg]

MS doesn't call it JScript anymore. They call it ECMAScript

Re:Wish i could see what you see..

[zcsteele]

I can't speak for the poster you're responding to, but my sister wants a grammar checker. I haven't bothered with grammar checkers in years, so I never noticed there wasn't one in OO.

Any suggestions that don't involve "use MS Office" would be great.