Microsoft Blasts IBM Over XML Standards 323
carlmenezes writes "Ars Technica has up an article discussing Microsoft's latest salvo against IBM. Microsoft's open letter to IBM adds fresh ammunition to the battle of words between those who support Microsoft's Open XML and OpenOffice.org's OpenDocument file formats. Microsoft has strong words for IBM, which it accuses of deliberately trying to sabotage Microsoft's attempt to get Open XML certified as a standard by the ECMA. In the letter, general managers Tom Robertson and Jean Paol write: 'When ODF was under consideration, Microsoft made no effort to slow down the process because we recognized customers' interest in the standardization of document formats.' In contrast, the authors charge that IBM 'led a global campaign' urging that governments and other organizations demand that International Standards Organization (ISO) reject Open XML outright."
IBM or Microsoft (Score:4, Funny)
Re:IBM or Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
Could the IBM product function without the MS one ? Yes, you could download an alternative OS for free.
Could the MS product function without the IBM one ? No.
Go with IBM, brother.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Could the IBM product function without the MS one ? Yes, you could download an alternative OS for free.
Could the MS product function without the IBM one ? No.
Go with IBM, brother.
Chris-
Re:IBM or Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)
I have to assume GP was referring to the fact that GGP bought the laptop with Windows installed. That being the case, he more than likely bought an OEM license which, I am sure you are aware, is non-transferable. That being the case, the laptop *will* work fine without Windows, however, since Windows cannot be (legally) transferred to another machine, it *will not* work on other hardware (legally).
"...wait, don't answer that."
Ooops... too late
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Install Linux, pretend that your laptop is a generic Chinese copy...
Have peace of mind, start coding...
Re:IBM or Microsoft (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:IBM or Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
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But I run Linux, what an irony...
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
When you're a windows user, you really need those two keys in order to use windows's keyboard shortcuts - which you want to.
When you're a linux/bsd/whatever user, you've got yourself a nice set of "Meta" keys.
Re:IBM or Microsoft (Score:4, Insightful)
Additional keys are all well and good, but what I think really irks people about this particular key is that it has the Windows logo on it.
It would be exactly as useful and 0% as annoying if they kept the key but printed something else on it, like a star, or a light bulb or something.
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I don't know about you guys (Score:5, Insightful)
They both suck. (Score:3, Insightful)
The major problem is the use of XML. At least with HTML, the tag names were kept short. But both standards use rather long element names, often in excess of eight characters, plus eight or more namespace characters beyond that. For some of the XML element names of each format, we're looking at over 16 characters overhead! When such tags are used repeatedly, especially in a large or heavily-formatted document, a lot of space ends up being wa
Re:They both suck. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:They both suck. (Score:4, Funny)
There is a new viewer/editor program for OpenOffice.org files called, wait for it, "OpenOffice.org."
After installing the new OpenOffice.org file viewer/editor program, you will have the ability to open, view, edit and close ODF files without needing a separate compression utility.
It's like MAGIC!
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Re: (Score:2)
`` Changing a filename's extension might unleash chaos to your computer, are you sure? Y/N
`` Are you sure you want to press Yes?
`` We need you require to write your user password
`` Are you sure that's your password? Y/N
the kicker: (Score:4, Funny)
Re:They both suck. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:They both suck. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd rather have human readable markup in documents than save a few kilobytes.
Rather than giving stupid analogies, why don't you give a decent reason why this is bad?
Re:They both suck. (Score:5, Insightful)
The "space" is not that big of a concern, really. When LaTeX and GROFF were formulated, 640K was significant amounts of memory, and a 10MB hard disk was luxury. Space was important. Not so much anymore: 256-512MB RAM is standard, with 1-1.5GB not being unreasonable on a desktop, with 100's of GB of disk space. I know, "bandwidth" is still a somewhat limiting factor - but that's starting to die as a limitation, too. That all said, for the on-disk/transferable format, remember that at least the OO format is gzipped. Those repeating 16-character tags compress really nicely when gzipped.
However, I think this thread is really missing IBM's point. It's not that Microsoft's "standard" is horrible (which it is), it's that having competing "standards" will detract from the whole idea of having the standard: interoperability. Microsoft is attempting to subvert the standards process to be able to claim that MS Word complies with open standards while still making it nearly impossible for others to do so, which maintains Microsoft's lock on the word processor market. IBM is opposed to that as it will impede the ability for anyone relying on these open standards to reduce lock-in to actually meet their requirements. (Of course, it also impedes Lotus' ability to penetrate those markets, as well as OOo, AbiWord, KWord, and lots of others.)
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I'd like to work where you do. Document size is always a concern in my department when we are dealing with 5,000,000+ page runs.
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Is that the spec for OpenXML 2009?
Re:They both suck. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wake up and smell the 21st century. You burn more CPU cycles per byte encoding and decoding SSH traffic or passing data over a WEP-protected wireless network than you do packing and unpacking a zipfile. And let's not even talk about the processor intensity of JPEGs, PNGs (gotta love that alpha-channel compositing), or -- God forbid -- MP3s.
Besides, gzipping is only one way to compress ODF. The people who deal in high-volume data processing have done plenty of work on binary XML. The fact that ODF is an open standard makes it more or less trivial to write a program that translates tags to 16-bit tokens, which reduces markup overhead to a whopping two Unicode characters per tag, assuming you can devise a set of working conditions where the data overhead of human-readable tags and the processing overhead of gzip translation are both unacceptable.
Face it: storage costs less than a dollar per gigabyte these days, gigabit-per-second data transfer exists at consumer prices, and most people have more processing power on their desktop than existed in the first four generations of supercomputers. The value of bit-squinting has decreased exponentially since the 1950s, and these days it's vanishingly small except under very-high-load conditions.
And ODF's openness makes it friendly to people who find themselves working in very-high-load conditions.
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The XML is compressed before it is saved. Yes, there is redundancy in the source XML, but that doesn't mean you store the redundancy.
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The major problem is the use of XML. At least with HTML, the tag names were kept short. But both standards use rather long element names, often in excess of eight characters, plus eight or more namespace characters beyond that. For some of the XML element names of each format, we're looking at over 16 characters overhead! When such tags are used repeatedly, especially in a large or heavily-formatted document, a lot of space ends up being wasted.
The size of the element names are largely irrelevant, since OpenDocument files are normally compressed ZIP files. Very little space is wasted.
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Not really, as even a trivial compression algorithm will reclaim most of that wasted space.
It's not
ODF is format (Score:3, Insightful)
Having looked into both formats, I realized that they're both trash.
... OpenOffice.org and MS Office's HTML output is garbled and insane.
So (assuming any legitimacy to the complaint) then use a different tool to convert OpenDocument to HTML. Geez. It's XML and there are quite a few ways to make the transition, many of which are quite good.
You do realize that the article is about the format and not the applications which use them, don't you ? Yeah. I thought so. There are something close to three dozen applications which support OpenDocument, of which OpenOffice is only one.
MS shills seem to be working over time to try to confus
Re:They both suck. (Score:5, Informative)
Wow, insightful indeed. To add some metrics to the rebuttals in this thread: create two files with some bogus XML, one with very short tag names, the other with long ones. Then compare their uncompressed versus zipped sizes:
File 1:
<r>
<c>Value</c>
<c>Value</c>
</r>
(1000 total copies of the <c> element)
Uncompressed: 16,009 bytes
Compressed: 190 bytes
File 2:
<thisIsTheVeryLongRootElementTagName>
<andThisIsTheVeryLongChildElementTagName>Value</a
<andThisIsTheVeryLongChildElementTagName>Value</a
</thisIsTheVeryLongRootElementTagName>
(1000 total copies of the <andThisIsTheVeryLongChildElementTagName> element)
Uncompressed: 92,079 bytes
Compressed: 525 bytes
So yeah, let's create really obscure and non-intuitive file formats to save ourselves the wasteful redundancy of XML.
Re:They both suck. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you're missing the point. You don't replace Word with Lyx, you replace ODF with TeX. Then you would use Word to write TeX files.
It's not a bad idea on the surface; at the very least you would get a typographically powerful document format, instead of the nasty, ass-sucking typographic atrocities that the major office word processors currently produce.
I suspect it would be a nightmare to implement. TeX formats want you to define your document elements logically, ie. this line is a foo, this paragraph is a bar; the styles and rules for foos and bars are defined elsewhere. Although this is similar to HTML+CSS and is appropriate for anything being used systematically by designers, it really is not how people use wysiwyg, and is the opposite to how they've learned to use Word. With Word, very few people follow a methodical approach of predefining styles and using them consistently; instead they just randomly set fonts, sizes, colors, and line spacing until it looks right. Accidentally turned that list element into a giant heading? No problem. Just resize it back to 10pt, fix the line spacing, and turn off the bold. Now it looks just like the rest of the list elements. Nevermind that logically it's still a heading, which will screw up anything that is expecting the document's structure to be meaningful.
A second problem is that TeX and especially LaTeX depend heavily on style files to provide most of the document formatting definitions they use. The portability of a LaTeX document depends on having the prerequisite style files, and since different vendors and versions will have different style files in their distros, and will be tweaking and refining those like crazy to keep ahead of each other, it would lead to the LaTeX equivalent of DLL hell, and perhaps even to attemnpts to lock each other out by putting restrictive copyrights/licensing on the style files. You might get around that with a modified file format that incorporates the style files into the original document, but then you've just lost the proposed advantage of a lean and simple format.
It would be possible to come up with a powerful and easy to use wysiwyg interface for LaTeX (I think Pages could make a good example, since it emphasizes logical document structures) but the real problem we face is that the whole world has learned to create documents in the wrong way with Word, and there's no going back to a rational system.
A brave soul and a feeble mind. (Score:4, Interesting)
What the heck kind of open document format requires a rocket scientist to figure out it sucks? Most rocket scientists know more about you know... rockets and stuff.
True, and you could probably earn a PhD in ME from a good university before you could finish reading all 6,000 pages of M$ spec. So there, as the OP stated anyone can tell you which is better. Confronted with a 700 page volume or three feet of shelf space that do exactly the same things, most people would go with ODF. As is the usual case, the only person who will ever read M$'s soon to sink standard are it's authors. Something makes me think a majority of the spec was written by scripts, so that no human being will ever have read it.
All of the human being who have read parts of the M$ "standard" have quickly found out it's not a standard at all. It's incomplete and contradictory. The would be implementor is left to find ancient implementation details from older secret formats. Those details were different from version to version and even on different "platforms" within the same version. "Make it look just like the Apple Version of M$ Word from 1995" is hardly a specification and the M$ proposal says things just like that, though you might think that they could fit exact measurements into 6,000 pages. That kind of bullshit has little to do with a formatting implementation, and properly belongs to the exporter that M$ themselves should author because they are the only party with knowledge of all the previous versions. Mostly, their so called "standard" is an admission of past non portability.
It's not an IBM's format (Score:5, Insightful)
This "Open Letter" is nothing than another piece of FUD and whining.
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Bullshit. First: ODF is format and M$O2007 is (unreleased) product. Feel the difference.
Second. Guess why StarOffice file format (SXW, tried and proven in real product) spent that much time in OASIS/ISO until finally reaching stamp of approval. You seems to have missed that completely. The main difference between SXW and ODF is support for extensions: SXW is vendor specific XML schema, while ODF does support
Microsoft is being disingenuous (Score:5, Informative)
This might be true, but when Massachusetts decided to adopt this standard they raised holy hell, and used every trick in the book to make Massachusetts take it back.
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I'm not sure which is more amazing, that they made Hell holy, or that they raised it.
Considering though we're talking about Microsoft, i'm not sure it needs to make sense.
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Of course they did (Score:5, Insightful)
The only standard that stands still is dead (Score:3, Informative)
Okay - the subject is probably overkill. Standards change all the time. Or rather, standards gain extensions and new features all the time. I work with DRDA (a database networking protocol to encapsulate data passed from client to server and back) and it is constantly being added to to cope with new situations and requirements. That's not to say it's a bad standard - the core is solid and does (mostly) what database people need it to do. When we need it to do something new, we make proposals. The DRDA revie
A standard of one (Score:5, Interesting)
Reusable code is not truly reusable until it has been used more than once.
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Well, first: *wooosh*
And on a more serious note: Yes, "portable" means that it should be possible to move it across platforms. In theory. In practice, this is rarely the case, and when this comes up, it shows that a lot of source that's written to be portable is not really portable.
The same goes for "reusable".
Theory, meet practice (Score:2)
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They would like to have us believe that their 'open standard' is such, that's the point of this whining.
But, any spec which basically falls back to "do what older versions of our code did" without documenting that, is very far from being a spec.
This is just MS whining because people are calling them on trying to put for a 'standard' which is defined in terms of their legacy apps.
Cheers
When you're a convict.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:When you're a convict.... (Score:5, Insightful)
When a "standard" [ecma-international.org] says
This element specifies that applications shall emulate the behavior of a previously existing word processing application (Microsoft Word 95) when determining the spacing between full-width East Asian characters in a document's content.
[Guidance: To faithfully replicate this behavior, applications must imitate the behavior of that application, which involves many possible behaviors and cannot be faithfully placed into narrative for this Office Open XML Standard. If applications wish to match this behavior, they must utilize and duplicate the output of those applications. It is recommended that applications not intentionally replicate this behavior as it was deprecated due to issues with its output, and is maintained only for compatibility with existing documents from that application. end guidance]
It's shorter, more accurate, and only a little less helpful...
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Basically, moving from a proprietary, bad hack for a problem that didn't have a solution (unicode) into something that's much more universally acceptable.
Geez. Give them a break on this. Converting docs from old Word is going to be *hard*. All the stuff that MS did before unicode (win 3.1, 95 & 98, so word 6, 7, 95) to get alternate c
Re:When you're a convict.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't think that is so strange; it's a deprecated element, for backwards compatibility, not meant to be used anymore.
What's bizarre is that a new standard, that Word95 cannot read at all, is encumbered by deprecated backwards compatibility elements at all! They should just be left out.
You don't get it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Here is how the flag is used today:
1) Open Word95 document containing full-width East Asian characters in Word 2007+
2) On open (import) Word 2007+ sets the "autoSpaceLikeWord95" document property in the new document
3) On display, Word 2007+ displays the document using the special case formatting rules.
4) On Save as OOXML, the document g
crybabies (Score:2, Insightful)
Boring Boring Boring. More posturing as per usual
Be alert the world need more lerts
Wait... what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah... are we supposed to believe that? If anything creating there "open" format looks to me like a blatant attempt to prevent the one thing that open format people are trying to accomplish, namely having one open format that can be used by everyone and can't be arbitrarily obsoleted by any one company. Or maybe I missed something.
10 Billion In Revenue - You'd Be Pissed Too (Score:2, Informative)
Even a modest loss of that revenue would bring dramatic changes to Microsoft as a company and how it operates.
Open XML is an open standard (Score:5, Funny)
Details here [microsoft.com].
What about non-msft products? (Score:2)
Or, were you being sarcastic?
why would IBM do such a thing? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:why would IBM do such a thing? (Score:5, Funny)
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This comment contains formatting created by a previous version of Slashdot. To completely emulate the formatting of the comment, refer to that previous version of Slashdot. A complete discussion of the differences between the previous and current version of Slashdot are beyond the scope of the standard.
yea sure (Score:5, Informative)
"When ODF was under consideration, Microsoft made no effort to slow down the process because we recognized customers' interest in the standardization of document formats."
Yep you bet no effort to slow down the standardization process because they refused to be involved. However they have made every effort possible and will continue to do so in the future to slow
the adoption and deployment of this standard by any means necessary.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Ars missing something (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ars missing something (Score:5, Informative)
(unofficial) IBM response (except not IBM) (Score:5, Funny)
Hey Microsoft! We don't just hate you: fact is, your OpenXML spec is an appalling dump heap overflowing with the most disgraceful assortment of deplorable rubbish imaginable, mangled up in tangled up knots! I mean, we at IBM know a brain-damaged document format when we see one (heck, we invented plenty of them ourselves) and trust us, this one takes the cake. Ratification of this garbage could set the word processing industry back about twenty years. So don't give us the "customer's interest" line. We know what this is all about: this is about YOU.
Disclaimer: I don't work for IBM (anymore|yet) and these ain't IBM opinions. Well, not official opinions, anyway. ^^
I feel sorry for Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
IBM is being a big bully and not allowing Microsoft to screw the public and private companies of the world as Microsoft wants to.
Naughty Naughty Big Blue.
Re:I feel sorry for Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly. More about this here - how to hire Guillaume Portes [robweir.com].
Whose format is whose? (Score:5, Interesting)
While it is clear the so-called Open XML is owned, controlled, and licensed by MS, is ODF actually owned by OO.org. And, if so, will OO.org use it to limit users ability to migrate data? The reason why so many people are against any MS format is that MS will actively limit the ability for the user to use the data. For instance, it could be that a user that does not license a copy of MS Word does not have the right to use a particular format.
In fact the ODF format appears free of any such encumbrance, and SUN, which contributed much of it, has pledged it to remain unencumbered. Therefore, this seems like simple marketplace economics. If one has two products, and one is somewhat better but has a high real cost of acquisition, and the other is slightly worse but has a significantly less real cost of acquisition, the the market will choose the later. MS understands this, as cheap products is why people bought MS instead of IBM, and why MS continues to pay huge sums of money to create favorable TCO reports. There, this MS rant is simply an attempt to distract technical staff from the real issue, which is that future growth will be limited for benefits that are not always clear.
OASIS submitted ODF (Score:5, Informative)
This emphasis on ODF is to strengthen the parent post's claim on the importance of ODF being unencumbered.
Re:Whose format is whose? (Score:5, Informative)
- OpenOffice
- Star Office
- Google Docs & Spreadsheets
- KOffice
- Scribus
- Abiword
- ajaxWrite
- Zoho Writer
- Ichitaro
- IBM's Lotus/Domino
- IBM Workplace
- Mobile Office
- Gnumeric
- Neo Office
- Hancom Office
- WordPerfect???
So it is just Microsoft who is trying to frame this as a MS Office vs. OpenOffice argument, when it really is an Open, multi-vendor format vs a single vendor, obfuscated format argument. Argue formats, not software.Clouding the issue - backwards (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft seems to have it backwards. When it comes to standards, they advocate choice. When it comes to software, they advocate monoculture.
The questions I ask are rhetorical - I know the answer, and so should most people. The open source community (among others) have blasted Microsoft for years for trampling choice in software. Now they are seeing that open source (and competition in general) has a real chance of making significant headway with a well documented, open standard that anyone can implement, that will interoperate, and isn't controlled by themselves, so now they use the community's arguments, but in an area where it's not appropriate. They use the words the community has used to attack their software monoculture to attack a standards monoculture. It's calculated, and a smart move on their part. Utterly contemptuous and underhanded, but very very smart.
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That sucks, because it means that for wireless networking I'll lose all my choices. I can't chose between 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, and 802.11n because the only the first standard wins.
I also don't get to chose cell phone providers because there's only one standard for cellular phones (so much for CDMA vs GSM).
You're always going to have choice in standards.
Re:Clouding the issue - backwards (Score:5, Insightful)
Choice is standards is a negative thing for consumers, which is also something you example with your reference to GSM vs. CDMA. While there are enough differences in the goals of GSM vs CDMA that might technically make a valid case for both standards existing, their wide adoption in different geographical areas represents something of a failure in the standards process to ensure interoperability for the consumer.
So, thank-you for making my point on why we do not want competing standards, only competing implementations.
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<moviequote>They're playing hardball, and I gotta say I'm kinda impressed by it.</moviequote>
Losing their cool? (Score:2)
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft's format in and of itself is an attempt to sabatoge OpenDocument. Their refusal to support it, despite having the most popular Office Suit is another clear sign of their contempt for it, and the customers they claim to care about now.
God forbid IBM promotes their own standard. Jeez, that's almost like having competition! We'de hate to have to make MS actually compete with anyone. On top of all that, why in the world would IBM trust MS not to tweak the standand and make it MS only? Why would anyone who actually cares about an open format trust MS to touch it?
I already blogged about this. . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's what I wrote [oneandoneis2.org] :o)
of the 21 members, IBM's was the sole dissenting vote. IBM again was the lone dissenter when Ecma also agreed to submit Open XML as a standard so long as you don't count the twenty assorted countries [consortiuminfo.org] that registered comments and objections to our fast-tracking proposal.
When ODF was under consideration, Microsoft made no effort to slow down the process because we were too busy trying to kill it completely.
This campaign to stop even the consideration of Open XML in ISO/IEC JTC1 is a blatant attempt to use the standards process to limit choice in the marketplace for ulterior commercial motives and is in no way whatsoever similar to our own campaign to stop the consideration of ODF in Massachusetts for our own commercial interest.
It is not a coincidence that IBM's Lotus Notes product, which IBM is actively promoting in the marketplace, fails to support the Open XML international standard in the same way as all other office software (other than our own) does, because we deliberately designed it so nobody but us could use it.
If successful, the campaign to block consideration of Open XML could create a dynamic where the first technology to the standards body, regardless of technical merit, gets to preclude other related ones from being considered and that's one of our tactics, dammit! Or do you actually think all those people out there using Internet Explorer do so because they tried out Opera and Firefox too, but decided IE was the best browser going? No, they use it because it was the first browser they ever used.
The IBM driven effort to force ODF on users through public procurement mandates is a further attempt to stop us forcing Open XML on them instead through our usual blatant monopoly abuse.
XML-based file formats, which can easily interoperate through translators can easily allow Open XML documents to be imported into Lotus Notes, and there are two such translators currently in existence - one of which we ourselves initiated - so we're being blatantly two-faced here by saying that Lotus Notes not supporting Open XML will be a significant barrier to people using Open XML for their documents.
This campaign to limit choice and force their single standard on consumers should be resisted so that we can limit choice and force our single standard onto consumers. Don't you know how important lock-in is to us??
We have listened to our customers. They want choice. They want interoperability. They want innovation. But we don't have to give it to them, because we're Microsoft! Bwahahahahah! Give us money or you'll wither and fade into the limbo of incompatibility.
What do you mean, that tactic doesn't work any more? It's got to, our whole business depends on it!
Damnit. . . hand me another chair. . .
The crucible? (Score:2)
Wait wait wait... (Score:2)
Me thinks MSFT should look up the definition of standard.
Tom
They cannot possibly be serious. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
One True Format (Score:5, Insightful)
Call me crazy but having two different standards doesn't really capture the idea of having Standards at all. I thought the point of standards was to make it so we (the developers) only have to implement one thing. I can fully understand IBM's reasoning here. The only thing it seems MS wants to do is create more vendor lock.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Call me crazy but having two different standards doesn't really capture the idea of having Standards at all. I thought the point of standards was to make it so we (the developers) only have to implement one thing.
I disagree. I don't think there is any problem with having multiple OPEN standards because it is easy to translate between them and it allows competition among them for the best feature set and easiest to use, etc. The fundamental objection is what MS has come up with that they claim is an open
Whats that I hear? (Score:2, Funny)
what exactly is wrong? (Score:2)
ODF had a long open development period. Microsoft could have participated in this if they really cared about standards and a backward compatibile feature set. Instead they chose to develop their own format. So why should I have sympathy if they cry about IBM saying ODF is better?
Typically Microsoft ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nevermind that customers are rejecting Microsoft Office because they are trying to get out of the lock-in of Microsoft's proprietary document format. Nevermind that Microsoft is into "Open" only to fudge the line between "Open standards that are documented and that anyone can implement and use" and "Proprietary with an open wrapper". Heh ... if I embed an MS-Word file into an XML document and compress the result using the Open Source program Gzip, does that make the resulting file "Open"? No? According to Microsoft's own logic, this would be the case.
And all this just to disguise the fact that their proposed "Open" standard allows them to put their their (totally proprietary) Office format into a document that follows the standard and then call it "Open". It's squarely aimed at fooling manager types into ticking a box labelled "Open Standards compliant" on their checklist.
Of course it's a fine example of complete intellectual dishonesty on Microsoft's part ... but whenever did Microsoft ever care about honesty? Intellectual or otherwise? Microsoft didn't become big by using such stupid tactics ...
Take that video demonstration for example. You know ... the one that showed Windows "crashing" when Explorer was removed. Any ordinary person would have gone to jail for perjury on that "testimony" ... but large companies are exempt it seems. "A regrettable communication error sir." Yeah, right.
As many people know ... Microsoft's OOXML is a blatant attempt to perpetuate Microsoft's proprietary standards through a selection of backdoors in a 6,000 page standard proposal that Microsoft is trying to rush through. Just see the "criticism" section in this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML [wikipedia.org]
my solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Is there a point somewhere? (Score:5, Interesting)
Some randomly selected points from TFA.
True but irrelevant since the others are rarely used and everyone (but especially Microsoft) knows it is the default format that matters.
Billions? Maybe that is technically true but Microsoft's record on backwards compatibility isn't great even within their own product suites. I'm pretty dubious that with OpenXML all my old Word documents will convert with perfect formatting. I'm even more dubious that OpenXML will be be read/write with perfect formatting in other applications. It's a 6000 page specification after all and I'm quite sure there is plenty of ambiguity even if the attempt to specify everything was a good faith effort. And with only 30 days to review all 6000 pages I'm not confident it will be evaluated with a satisfactory level of scrutiny.
OK. Let's assume that IBM is being a bad guy here. It's possible. Wouldn't be the first time. Is there something about ECMA International" [wikipedia.org] that prohibits competing standards? Honest question, I don't really know. If not Microsoft is entitled to complain. But on the other hand the process is moving forward and there is little doubt it will be approved in due time. So I'm at a bit of a loss as to why I should care if IBM was obstructive, even assuming they were? IBM is one of the few companies that really isn't especially beholden to Microsoft's monopoly power so I'd expect them to be a bit more prickly. Let me be clear, for me to trust Microsoft I will need to see a lot more than a format approved by a standards body to believe they are going to compete openly and fairly in the marketplace. This is a company convicted in a court of law of abusing their monopoly power to the detriment of consumers. Implicitly trusting them is foolish.
Embrace and extend? (Score:2)
Multiple vendors and a single standard (Score:2)
The discussion (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know the people involved, and I don't know where they're coming from. But I suspect something. That suspicion colors everything I read in it.
I cannot read a discussion of my peers and believe what I read today. Every peer is possibly specifically paid to market and lie. Therefore, I have no peers.
We need a law against astro-turfing.
MS 4 Choice!? (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong. Office it really nice. I think as a product it could compete just fine, but MS is never going to allow that. They want you locked in. That's just good for the stock. What's good for the stock is often bad for the user. With Open Office I just don't see the need for MS Office. I don't. I'm sure someone can think of a good rea
So, put the lie to their claims (Score:2)
Tell them you're developing a cross-platform application with Linux and OS X versions, I'm sure they'll love that.
Microsoft Standards (Score:3, Informative)
First: They have no idea how to document file formats, this is mostly because of their file format model. I worked as a contractor, indirectly, for Microsoft a long time ago. Their file formats are not "documented" per se'. They are program structure based and can change on the whim of a developer, their name at the time was "chunk format." This works well if you don't expect anyone to use your document format or you supply the access library.
At its core it is because they do not design formats, they code them as needed. Need a feature or special case? Just add a struct, an ID, and a chunk of read/write code and it works. How the hell do you document the outcome of that process? This isn't a bad methodology for internal state or temporary files, but it is a disaster for any sort of long term accessibility and interoperability.
Microsoft develops software like a small company because as long as they have the monopoly, they don't *need* to supply document format information in order to compete. Everyone else has to understand their formats and they aren't going to help at all. Their 'XML' format shows they have not changed one bit. Rather than "design" the document format, they are merely documenting what they have which is just a bunch of special cases.
Second: A true open office document format, usable by everyone, will spawn amazing amounts of innovations. Everything from document searching to intelligent document processing. When anyone can read and create documents on any platform or programming language than everyone else's programs can use as well, just think of what people will come up with. If that's going to happen, Microsoft has to make sure that they are the only benefactor, because except for the monopoly, Microsoft has no inherent value in the face of Linux and OpenOffice.org. At least Apple makes a nice computer.
Puh-leaze (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft blasting IBM over standards is another paranoid delusion of MS. IBM and 20 countries did not object to the its OOXML standard because MS proposed it. They objected because the standard is fundamentally flawed. The arstechnica article doesn't go into depth about the objections but Groklaw had a better analysis. [groklaw.net]
My personal opinion is that MS did a poor job of the standard on purpose. They propose their standard so that technically they are working towards interoperability if anybody asks. However, they do it so badly that it could never be adopted. Then they can point to that reason as why they chose not to open up their format.
And why not? (Score:3, Informative)
Now on the other hand, ODF is already standardised, having a new incompatible standard will simply fragment the industry, which is precisely what standards seek to prevent. What microsoft should do, and what ISO should tell them to do, is either use the existing standard, or go through the proper channels to propose updates to it.
Any deficiencies microsoft believe ODF to have, are entirely their own fault... microsoft have long been a member of OASIS, and were more than welcome to contribute to the original drafting of ODF, they made the decision not to in the hope that it would never get anywhere and be forgotten about.
Couple of WTFs... (Score:3, Informative)
Sure, Open XML was designed to address the need for Microsoft to maintain control over desktop office suites, while ODF was actually designed to be an open standard.
No, really, WTF is this supposed to mean? Would Microsoft mind pointing out some part of ODF that's insufficient? Better yet, offer a suggestion as to how to improve it -- they were, after all, part of OASIS for awhile...
Anyone who's been on Slashdot for awhile should remember how much lobbying Microsoft did to try to prevent ODF from taking root in Massachusetts. So, technically, Microsoft didn't try to slow down the standardization process, they merely tried to slow down the implementation process.
Yeah, note the copyright notice at the bottom of the page. Astroturf, anyone?
And from Ars Technica...
And ODF has to support all the features of:
(ripped off directly from a post by this comment [slashdot.org].)
So there you go. I suppose it's possible Word 2007 could have more features than ALL of those, but somehow, I doubt it. The spec isn't bloated because Word is so great, the spec is bloated because Microsoft is afraid of interoperability.
The fact is not that it's impossible -- it could be done, if you want to reverse engineer about five or six generations of Word. It would be difficult, but not impossible, to support enough of the standard to be liveable -- after all, we've done that with the binary Office formats for years.
No, the problem is that it's prohibitively, deliberately difficult for third-parties to implement perfectly, since it references specific quirks on specific versions of Microsoft's products, and the products of others, and doesn't even try to explain what those quirks are, only that you should support them properly. I would say that Microsoft is being deliberately unhelpful here.
If you're going to make it 6000 pages and unhelpful, why not make it 12000 pages, but actually spell out what we're supposed to do? At least then, we could not only duplicate the features in ODF, but we could do them better, the way they were meant to be done. For example: Instead of saying "Emulate Word 95 Full-Width Character Spacing", Microsoft could actually specify how Word 95 implements full-width character spacing. Then, we'd implement specifications that allow the implementation of any kind of spacing you want.
Let me put it this way: In HTML, we could've had, for example: <slashdot-link story_id="07/02/16/1334234" />. That would've been pretty damned convenient for the Slashdot people, but annoying for everyone else, who would have to go to Slashdot to find out how they did it, and in any case, it's much more limited than our current <a href> style which lets you actually link to anywhere. Standards are not about coddling sp
Required response. (Score:2)