LibreOffice Once Again Slams Microsoft For Using 'Lock-In' With Office Files (xda-developers.com) 50
An anonymous reader quotes a report from XDA Developers: One of the founding members of The Document Foundation and handler of LibreOffice's PR and media relations, Italo Vignoli, took to the LibreOffice blog to call out Microsoft's practices with its Office application. The last time we saw Vignoli take to the stage, we saw him accusing Euro-Office of being just as bad as Microsoft with its practices. Vignoli's new post focuses entirely on Microsoft's strategy. He says that "the dominant format for office documents" is owned by Microsoft Office, particularly the DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX formats. The problem with these formats, Vignoli states, is that they "belong to Microsoft, are controlled by Microsoft and serve Microsoft's interest." This makes it difficult for other formats to take hold.
Vignoli explains his point by stating that open document formats don't hide anything. People developing their own apps can use the format to both read and write the document format with perfection. Meanwhile, proprietary formats such as Microsoft's "contain undocumented features, private extensions or behaviors" that developers can't fully adapt to. That means that a presentation that looks great in the source software comes out strange when rebuilt in a third-party app. This, Vignoli says, is a huge issue [...]. Vignoli claims this creates a huge issue with document preservation. If a Word document was saved in one version of Office, will it still be readable in 20 years? Microsoft has added legacy support to its software before, but the company can one day decide that it's not worth the effort anymore and cut it out. When that happens, you have old documents that are either jumbled or unable to be opened at all.
Vignoli explains his point by stating that open document formats don't hide anything. People developing their own apps can use the format to both read and write the document format with perfection. Meanwhile, proprietary formats such as Microsoft's "contain undocumented features, private extensions or behaviors" that developers can't fully adapt to. That means that a presentation that looks great in the source software comes out strange when rebuilt in a third-party app. This, Vignoli says, is a huge issue [...]. Vignoli claims this creates a huge issue with document preservation. If a Word document was saved in one version of Office, will it still be readable in 20 years? Microsoft has added legacy support to its software before, but the company can one day decide that it's not worth the effort anymore and cut it out. When that happens, you have old documents that are either jumbled or unable to be opened at all.
I'm Sure That This Really Hurts Their Feelings (Score:1)
Leave Microsoft alonnnne!!!
Re: (Score:1)
Mod parent funny.
Even funnier is the book Tech Monopoly by Herbert Hovenkamp, especially when it comes to the area of solutions. The book Careless People was also pretty funny, especially in the parts where it tried to portray Zuck as a real human boy.
Root of the problem thoughts? Good intentions and a charged blaster will get more done than good intentions alone, and Microsoft has plenty of well-charged blasters. Now think about major changes that were linked to good intentions. Stuff like the abolitio
What do you expect? (Score:2)
What do you expect from a company that tries to lock you in its ecosystem?
Same as Apple, Google, Amazon and other large corporations, each in their own way, with anticompetitive practices.
It's called vendor lock-in, and if they could, they would lock you even more in their walled garden.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:5, Interesting)
I was going to use Google as an example of how it should work. Chrome supports open standards, and incompatibilities are minimal because if Chrome doesn't conform to the spec it's treated as a bug and fixed. When Google wants to add new features, they go through the process of getting them added as open standards. Sometimes they fail and have to be abandoned, and Google accepts it, e.g. the pseudo-anonymous ad impression reporting tech they developed.
Google actually has an open standard for spreadsheet programming using Javascript, which it's a shame nobody else uses because it's the last big hurdle to migrating away from Excel for a lot of people.
Re: (Score:3)
As I sad, they all have their own implementation of "Walled garden".
The Google way is not necessarily the documents standards, but they closed Android sources, prevent you from using Play Store with a rooted phone (though not impossible, they make it harder), have a documented monopoly on online advertisement... and much more shit. We're very, very far from their "Don't be evil" moto.
Re:What do you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Chrome supports open standards
Google also abuses the standards-making process through Chrome.
Re: (Score:1)
Unless the standard in question is Manifest V2, in which case the bug is treated as desirable and they work to prevent it being fixed.
Re: (Score:1)
I was griping about this last year, and people told me I was wrong.
I occasionally write fanfiction, and the format the files are laid out is: page 1 portrait (cover), page 2-3 landscape (dream cast, song list (as a table) that fits with story), page 3 and on portrait. Office works fine for that... I tried Libre, and for some reason it opens the file with all pages landscape (even though the first page is portrait). I have to wonder if I went through and redid all the formatting to be like I wanted it, and
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
"I use LibreOffice as my default office application and truthfully I find the fact that I can't set xlsx, docx, etc. as defaults to be the bigger annoyance."
You can.
https://www.howtogeek.com/2811... [howtogeek.com]
Microsoft already abonded Microsoft Write files (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft Write was included with Windows 1.0 in 1985 and was a mainstay until the release of Windows 95 when it was replaced with WordPad, which at first supported the .wri files, but that ended in 2004. Since then no Microsoft product has included the ability to read the old Microsoft Write .wri files, which were quite prevalent back in the day.
Re: Microsoft already abonded Microsoft Write file (Score:1)
Re: Microsoft already abonded Microsoft Write file (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft Works
Possibly the most ironic product name ever.
Re: (Score:2)
The word you're looking for is ... oxymoron.
Re: (Score:2)
And not body thought to use the ADOBE word? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Illustrator files are almost based on a standard. Older Illustrator was based on Postscript and newer Illustrator files are PDF files You can literally rename a modern Illustrator file to .PDF and be able to read it. The old ones can be renamed to EPS. PDF is at least a sort of open standard now, EPS was at least standardized and published.
Back when Word supported EPS files, you couldn't just embed an AI file as a graphic because Word had bad bounding box handling and it would get cut off weirdly.
Re: (Score:2)
Microsoft: Keep paying more. (Score:2)
Micro-Soft
Hugely-Hard
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, their name is a dick joke.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry honey, I can't google you tonight, I'm really microsoft.
Congratulations to The Document Foundation (Score:3)
"LibreOffice Once Again Slams Microsoft For Using 'Lock-In' With Office Files”
One of the founding members of The Document Foundation and handler of LibreOffice's PR and media relations
Congratulations to The Document Foundation, you have achieved quality parity with Microsoft with respect to PR and media relations. :-)
Microsoft Purview (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Whole point of DLP tools is to lock in and control data, but not in the way you are proposing. And also it's not increasingly being used that this manner way, but that's the entire point with these tools have been around for decades for SharePoint and local file servers. The policies are set a platform level rather than stored in the file.
So organizations can just turn off their Purview policies anytime they want and if they switch platforms. And of course during a migration they'd need to deal with organiz
Re: (Score:2)
Companies that use Purview for Data Loss Prevention may not realize that they're locking their data into Microsoft's systems indefinitely.
That's a bit hyperbolic. You can use Purview, SharePoint etc. to remove tags and settings and remove DLP, if you have the rights.
What good is a DLP encrypted file if you could simply open the file after exfiltrating because you used a "compatible product"?
Re: (Score:2)
How could you even secure an open standard that allows read access? All anyone has to do is fork their own viewer without the self-imposed restrictions.
Re: (Score:3)
You can't that's the point.
If someone can view the data, they can copy it. The only way to "secure" it is to prevent them from viewing it in the first place.
Any attempt to allow viewing while restricting copying or modification is theatre at best and only provides a false sense of security. At worst it's actively harmful because users who naively rely on such systems often end up taking less precautions than they otherwise would have.
There are _ALWAYS_ ways to bypass such systems.
Tough (Score:1)
I don't like Microsoft Office, but I don't like LibreOffice any better. They both mess up and do things in ways that I don't like by default.
HTML as well (Score:3)
I'll say it again (Score:2)
At least so far as documents go, LaTeX FTW always and forever.
e
When it comes to spreadsheets, the fact that data, formulas (but not all formulas), and formatting is all squeezed into the thing called a "cell" means they're really a terrible mess that should be banned from everywhere in the Solar System
Re: (Score:2)
When it comes to spreadsheets, the fact that data, formulas (but not all formulas), and formatting is all squeezed into the thing called a "cell" means they're really a terrible mess that should be banned from everywhere in the Solar System
Versus what exactly....manually calculating every number on a report by hand? That's a foolish and seriously error-prone but you do you.
Re: (Score:2)
A structured database, with separate code to query the data and perform calculations if needed.
There are very few cases where a spreadsheet is the best tool for the job, in most cases it's the only tool the user was given so they came up with some frankenstein mess.
Re: (Score:3)
At least so far as documents go, LaTeX FTW always and forever.
I love LaTeX, but I don't expect everyone else to do so. Generally, people are impatient. They don't want to use a tool that requires more than a modest amount of training.
Yes, I know there are WYSIWYG front-ends for LaTeX. Last time I looked at them, they were useful, but a bit janky. Maybe I'm old -- I came up preferring to edit the *.tex source-files.
When it comes to spreadsheets, the fact that data, formulas (but not all formulas), and formatting is all squeezed into the thing called a "cell" means they're really a terrible mess that should be banned from everywhere in the Solar System
Spreadsheets are a write-only language. They're useful for some things, but don't go overboard with cell cross-references. You'll come to a point where they
Re: (Score:2)
I'm a LaTeX fan, and find Kile works well for editing, or really any text editor in a pinch. If the packages that allow picture insertions at random spots in the text were better, there would be no competition. Floating figures can also be a trial. They've improved a lot over the years, and there may well be more modern packages that I'm not aware of, but that aspect is the most annoying to me. Still not enough of a problem to go back to the roff suites or to mess around with Microsoft.
I love the tables of
Re: (Score:3)
When it comes to spreadsheets, the fact that data, formulas (but not all formulas), and formatting is all squeezed into the thing called a "cell" means they're really a terrible mess that should be banned from everywhere in the Solar System
Yes, the very software that created the need for computers in business should not exist. The software that made "computer" an object instead of a person. One of the most useful inventions of mankind, used by a huge swath of people including engineers and scientists, should be banned. A tool that can be used to set up and calculate thousands of numbers with multiple variables and graph the results in less than a minute is completely useless.
Good lord are you sheltered and naive. This is one of the dumbest t
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, the very software that created the need for computers in business should not exist.
Businesses needed computers long before spreadsheets were invented. They just weren't sitting on every desk.
The software that made "computer" an object instead of a person.
That happened in the mid-1940s. LANPAR, the first mainframe spreadsheet program, was invented in 1969. VisiCalc, which ran on the Apple II, was invented in 1979.
One of the most useful inventions of mankind, used by a huge swath of people including engineers and scientists, should be banned.
I wouldn't go as far as "banning" spreadsheet programs, as cellocgw advocates, but I do think they're used far too much. Including by people who should know better. Like engineers and scientists.
A tool that can be used to set up and calculate thousands of numbers with multiple variables and graph the results in less than a minute is completely useless.
There are far better tools, especially if you're
He's right to call it out. (Score:4, Insightful)
Right now I'm on Fedora 44 KDE, but if I boot up FreeBSD 15.1 or OpenBSD 7.9, why should I have to worry about compatibility? If one document can't work everywhere, and can't be opened on almost everything, then you're not writing documentation, you're writing digital e-waste.
Re: (Score:2)
I know this one (Score:3)
"If a Word document was saved in one version of Office, will it still be readable in 20 years?"
Earlier this year retrieved my original Masters thesis from the version of Word that I used in 1989. It was a bit of a challenge. The formatting was largely lost but the text was retrievable by way of Office 98 on a Mac OS 9 session on a 2002 Quicksilver, then that went to Office 2011 on an Intel Mini, then that was imported to LibreOffice.
The graphics were in Pict format and Graphics Converter converted them to png. It was an exercise.
OOXML is open enough (Score:2)
I do not know how many people in this day and age create new (or even have) legacy documents with sections in WordPerfect or SmartSuite WordPro.
All the parts of OOXML pertaining new document creation are well documented. The only parts that are not are those pertaining legacy formats that Microsoft had to reverse-engineer (like anyone else).
Are people really asking Microsoft to develop a standard for renderig QuatroPro spreadsheets inside Word Documents and PowerPoint presentations?
COME ON!
Re: (Score:3)
No, you come on.
OOXML's standards document contains 7,000 pages. Seven thousand. Even Microsoft doesn't implement all of it, and they have proprietary workarounds to enable backward-compatibility for legacy formats. Their own legacy formats, not WordPerfect or SmartSuite WordPro. Strawman much?
Developers of open-soruce office suites have reported consistent problems trying to open and render OOXML documents created with Microsoft Office. That's why you'll hear them discouraging its use.
Re: (Score:2)
M$ doesn't follow its own the published standard. That's the whole point about lock-ins.
They're just now figuring this out?!?... (Score:1)
Microsoft has been bilking, milking, and threatening for about 40 years now by my count. This company is not interested in the commomwealth, the general welfare of man, or preserving any data or status quo unless it has a price tag attached to it. They're in it for the cash, nothing more to see there. I've lost count of the software competitors (like soft PCs and emulators, for example) that they've bought and put on a shelf and forgot about, litigated to death, or just plain unfairly priced out of exist
How is this news? (Score:3)
How is "proprietary formats exist" news? This is all this post is, a randomly timed rant about proprietary formats, and the fact that Microsoft is one of the thousands of companies who use them, nothing else. Was anyone confused what open source companies' position on proprietary formats was?
Did absolutely nothing else happen in tech besides some guy bitching on his blog about an issue that's existed for decades?
Re: (Score:2)
M$ is not just a company, it is THE company. There is no option in the general public's mind. The only question such people ask is when is the next payment that M$ will require.
I tried LibreOffice Recently (Score:2)
This is getting old (Score:2)
Yes. Microsoft is shit. But their software works better than Libreoffice on all platforms. Libreoffice really only shines on Linux also called as 4% of all PCs. And that is also mostly Writer. Impress and Calc are significantly inferior and less versatile respectively.
Look, we know the free as in Libre angle, and the free as in beer angle. But it isnâ(TM)t enough and hasnâ(TM)t been for the last 20 years.
Feature parity with the industry standard is a must if your protests have to be meaningful.