Microsoft Spokesman Says ODF "Clearly Won" Standard War 289
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 Its yet unpublished format ISO OOXML will not be supported before the release of the next Office generation.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:The end of vendor lock-in for Microsoft? (Score:5, Interesting)
Im not against Microsoft (or any software developer) having their own format, even if its the default format, however, I think that 1) ODF should be left alone (no EEE) if added to a Microsoft product, and 2) that they supply a converter (as lossless as possible) that can convert both ways, from ODF, and to ODF.
Likewise, im glad to hear them admit it, but not as glad as I would be to hear that they are dropping OOXML.
Re:That's It???! (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, yes. But that's just what they say in public. In private they're probably saying, "oh shit, we were way too obvious and public about our criminal behavior and the EU looks ready to stomp on us hard for this one. Maybe if we pretend to roll over and pretend to support ODF for a while, the EU will not make this a priority and use the courts to force us to play nice, with real consequences and oversight. At least if we look like we're willing to be open, we can subtly break compatibility with others and try to extend it with proprietary DRM or something. Really anything that stops us from being declared to have monopoly influence in the office suite market and doesn't make us compete purely on our software's merits is workable."
Can we not see straight even here??? (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting that anyone should choose to phrase it that way, since it was already an open question (ISO had missed the deadline, by a lot, with no explanation, and no announcement as to when the standard could be expected) before the appeal, probably because it was and is such a massive mess that they were overwhelmed by the task.
Let's not get too excited! (Score:5, Interesting)
OK, this is the first shoe to drop. (Sorry British Columbia, no offense)
The is the "embrace" part. Once they start using the format, just you watch, like Java, HTML, CSS, SQL, C++, C, etc. they will add features that break compatibility, because of, wait for it, "customer demand." As we all know "customer demand" will be asking a room full of carefully collected idiots a set of loaded questions.
I have worked closely, in the past, with Microsoft and they view any real standard as a threat. They wield their monopoly power and "defaco" status like a sledge hammer. They've done it in the past, and they'll do it with ODF.
The computing community has to monitor the situation and fight incompatibility as the run of the mill consumer has absolutely no idea what is going on.
ODF Compatibility test utility (Score:5, Interesting)
We are in a very important phase. We (someone) needs to create an ODF compatibility test utility, like an HTML validator, that will test the compliance of an ODF file.
It can be used to catch Microsoft's crap. Remember, a word processing document is unlike HTML. HTML is likely to be seen by a multitude of people where as a document is probably only going to be seen by a specifically targeted group. Microsoft will be able to add incompatibility and almost no one will be able to notice until they wish to open THEIR document with a non-microsoft word processor or spread sheet. At that point it will be too late.
We also have to make sure that Microsoft's products render ODF compliant documents correctly when they are created by non microsoft applications.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Re:The end of vendor lock-in for Microsoft? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not if this guy [slashdot.org] is telling the truth. I have no reason to think he'd be lying, either.
Something seems fishy (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The end of vendor lock-in for Microsoft? (Score:4, Interesting)
For some of us, it comes up quite often. As tools get better and more people are online with easy networking, I think collaboration on documents will also become more common and choice of tools to use with a real, open standard becomes more important as well.
Usually I agree (although .doc is better if I'm mining it for data the user didn't know they sent). For the average person, however, this may be a different story for a number of reasons. First, the most popular PDF reader (Adobe's) is horribly slow and bloated in tis default configuration and most users don't know of better option or how to use it. Most users are not even capable of copying and pasting text from it into something else. Combine this with PDFs on the Web using IE+WinXP+Adobe's plugin and you have a terrible experience for the average person reading PDFs from the Web. This leads a lot of people to avoid the format altogether and .doc is the next closest thing the average person has seen for communications of that sort.
Google docs is fairly new and is still a bit lacking in features for many people. It is also not really an option for a lot of internal communications in a work environment. I do think collaborative editing will move to ODF unless MS manages to upset things.
Microsoft is not stupid (Score:4, Interesting)
Just possibly, Microsoft is sincere about supporting ODF.
Microsoft cannot possibly be ignoring Apple, Google, the EU, the emergence in the last year of mainstream desktop linux and the $400 laptop, the OLPC, the mixed press that accompanied Vista and Office 2007, the bad press received by Windows mobile and the Zune, etc. It is a company that will go through major changes in the next few years. Ballmer is the boss, but probably not for long. Ray Ozzie is CTO and he and a host of managers below him will ultimately be rewarded for figuring out how to succeed in this new world where Microsoft has lost a lot of its market dominance and even more of its mindshare.
If I were at Microsoft I'd be figuring that hardcore corporate MS shops are going to stay MS shops for the forseeable future whether I support ODF or not (they've probably built their business around Exchange server). The fringe --- governments, small business, K-12 schools, universities --- are gone in the next two years unless I start to interoperate in a serious way. So I would support ODF, and I would do it sincerely, and I would figure that by doing so I'd be holding on to some of my customers in the short run. In the long run, well, everything is up for grabs. I'd be better be doing some heavy R&D in the hopes of competing with Apple, Google, and the linux community.
Re:ODF Compatibility test utility (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe we can add an extension to "Google Desktop" that will test ODF files when they are indexed and warn users that their applications are producing broken documents.
Re:How to Stop Extend Embrace Extingish ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wait and See (Score:1, Interesting)
You know what, there is nothing that can make them stop. It is their ruthless lobbying that drives EU and member states government officials into an activist mode.
Next week the EU will present the draft of the new EIF2.0, the government interoperability framework. If Microsoft tries to obstruct it again it will get forceful resistance on all levels. If Microsoft tries to ignore it the EU would adopt open standards. So the only way is really to play nice and get real. I am not sure Microsoft is ready for that. They still don't understand how to behave in Europe, or in nations which are not theirs. So the elephant in the room will trigger even more dominos.
And the funny thing is that you can help them with the domino stones. In the end there is nothing but unconditional surrender.
Change tracking ? (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess you mean change tracking... it's fun when some government types fall for it, but for the sender it's a disadvantage or even a security risk.
Also, I think it is not very user-friendly if you want to track multiple revisions. The display gets really cluttered tying to display three or four different versions. Overall, I think it is a poor substitute for a version control system.
Re:The end of vendor lock-in for Microsoft? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:The end of vendor lock-in for Microsoft? (Score:4, Interesting)
That ODF mirrors OpenOffice.org so closely is no wonder. Before it became the world's "standard" file format, it was simply the storage format of OpenOffice.org. So, it has the same limitations and idiosyncrasies as OpenOffice.org.
Re:That's It???! (Score:4, Interesting)
The EU did not go far enough. The media player software market is still pretty destroyed. Can you really argue that if WMA was not bundled into Windows it would even be used by anyone? You're right that the particular remedy they tried was stupid, but wrong about the direction. OEMs should be choosing which media player to include, be it WMP, iTunes, Realplayer, or Mplayer. MS should not be able to force everyone to have WMP, just because they have a monopoly on desktop OS's. The market would be much better for al of us, if OEMs were able to pick the one they think would be best for their users, without having to deal with MS's illegal incentives.