Industry analysts and open source advocates believe that Microsoft
will have no choice but to offer support for OpenDocument when more organisations start following the state of Massachusetts' lead.Earlier this week, a Microsoft executive said that it was not supporting the open file format due to the absence of interest from customers. At the same time, the company said it was adding support the PDF to Office 12 after receiving "over 120,000 requests a month" from customers.
OpenDocument, which was approved by the standards body OASIS in May, has already been embraced by the commonwealth of Massachusetts and is being considered by governments in other countries and US states, according to IBM.
An OASIS spokeswoman said on Wednesday the public sector is making "great strides" in terms of user demand for OpenDocument.
Microsoft will be forced to offer support for OpenDocument if more organisations decide to use the file format, according to James Governor, an analyst at RedMonk.
"ODF [OpenDocument] is quite new, and it will take a while for demand to build. But I don't believe it will need 120,000 requests a month to change Microsoft's mind; just a few more high profile departures like Massachusetts," said Governor. "If Microsoft starts to lose customers because of a lack of ODF support they will offer a plug-in before you know it."
One of Microsoft Office's competitors, the open source productivity application OpenOffice.org, has already added support for the standard in its upcoming 2.0 release. John McCreesh, a marketing contact for OpenOffice.org, said that Microsoft's claim that there is no interest in OpenDocument is "curious".
"Possibly Microsoft is happy to lose the business of US States one after another, starting with Massachusetts, as they shut out Microsoft for failing to adopt the OpenDocument standard. Sounds like interest from customers to me," said McCreesh.
He claimed that Microsoft delaying support for OpenDocument is likely to drive people to migrate to OpenOffice.org.
Mark Taylor, the executive director of the Open Source Consortium, agreed that Microsoft's refusal to support OpenDocument is unlikely to be good for business, but was sceptical that Microsoft had received as many as 120,000 monthly requests for PDF.
"One has to question whether 120,000 people a month would contact Microsoft about anything," said Taylor. "Microsoft will either have to adopt open standards, or continue its slow slide into irrelevance."
Talkback
Mr. Taylor, do you actually know how many customers MS have? Hundreds of millions, that's right. Suddenly 120,000 requests per month doesn't seem so improbable. Of course, OSX has a native 'save as PDF' capability too. When will OpenOffice listen to customers and implement that, or is it content to be the also-ran?
By the way, ODF doesn't properly support spreadsheet formulas at present, instead falling back to plain strings. When challenged on this, ODF propoents replay that they're busy trying to copy the way Excel does it. Yeah, that's innovative.
OpenOffice does have an export as PDF function. I use it daily.
What's the population of Massachusetts? Isn't it more than 120,000 people? Hey Bill, do the math, mate.
There is a very good text about it here:
http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/why-opendocument-won.html
Yet another prediction of Microsoft's defeat. Wasn't Netscape the death of MS? And the Web? And Linux? And Mac OS X, perenially? And Google? And the thin client, also perenially?
What MS does best is to create things that customers will buy. If it's more profitable to support ODF, they will. If not, not.
More likely, a third party will build a plug-in ODF, just as Acrobat has been the third-party solution for PDF.
The problem is, in its search for a philosophical purity, Massachusetts has chosen a road that no for-profit enterprise would. Which is, to limit their users' choices (and productivity) for the sake of "principle".
Perhaps they need to look at their vehicle fleets and office buildings, and remove any proprietary technology out of those?
Does anybody know what the licensing terms are for writing a MS Office plugin? It seems to me that if a big enough organization wanted OpenDocument support for MS Office, they could write it themselves and release it under a closed-source, free-as-in-beer license. Am I wrong?
The logic is inescapable: OpenOffice can happily read MS Office documents, and save documents in MS Office format, but MS Office cannot read OpenOffice documents. So anyone in an environment containing documents in both formats needs only OpenOffice, but cannot get by with only MS Office. Sooner or later this will force Microsoft to provide Open Document support, purely for reasons of self-interest (and self-preservation).
Quote:
"The problem is, in its search for a philosophical purity, Massachusetts has chosen a road that no for-profit enterprise would. Which is, to limit their users' choices (and productivity) for the sake of "principle"."
You just don't get it. Open Document Format is the best technological solution. It is not a philosophical decision. Have you read the documents stating why they chose it? It is a well researched, well reasoned argument that makes perfect sense (and allowed broad public comment) and has nothing to do with "principle" and everything to do with pragmatism.
I have never seen as much zealotry over an IT issue as this one, and all the zealots are on the proprietry side and claim to be speaking from reason.
Get over your prejudice and "get the facts" (to quote a well known campaign) before you carry on like this.
"The problem is, in its search for a philosophical purity, Massachusetts has chosen a road that no for-profit enterprise would. Which is, to limit their users' choices (and productivity) for the sake of "principle"."
The funniest part of this is that he says going Open-Doc will limit the choices available to users. In actual fact it will have the exact opposite effect, users will have a choice for the first time.
What a biased load of crap. Open office is shit. It eats memory and is incredibly slow. Its free, and people still don't use it even though (most of the time) is can handle MS office formats. Its been around for ages and there has been not takeup. The only way you would get me to use it is hold a gun agaist my head. On Linux the KDE apps are much better. They run at a speed of something comparable to office at least.
The Massachusetts case is interesting. Would be laughable if their effort is anyting like Munich, which has been repeatedly dealyed to the point where they are fudging it by using Linux on VMware on Windows with open office. Its a mess, and they have spent the last 2 years writing deveice drivers of all things, for all their out of date hardware.
Right now, my money is on the government of Massachusetts been made a fool of. In the end its clearly going to cost them so much money in a badly managed change over. We know how good governments are at these kinds of projects. Its why all the "big words" are so laughable from these people in your article.
ZDNet normally reports decent news, but I just had to laugh at some of the quotes from that open souce guy. He just stopped short of saying Bill Gates was Satan.
What a biased load of crap. Open office is shit. It eats memory and is incredibly slow. Its free, and people still don't use it even though (most of the time) is can handle MS office formats. Its been around for ages and there has been not takeup. The only way you would get me to use it is hold a gun agaist my head. On Linux the KDE apps are much better. They run at a speed of something comparable to office at least.
The Massachusetts case is interesting. Would be laughable if their effort is anyting like Munich, which has been repeatedly dealyed to the point where they are fudging it by using Linux on VMware on Windows with open office. Its a mess, and they have spent the last 2 years writing deveice drivers of all things, for all their out of date hardware.
Right now, my money is on the government of Massachusetts been made a fool of. In the end its clearly going to cost them so much money in a badly managed change over. We know how good governments are at these kinds of projects. Its why all the "big words" are so laughable from these people in your article.
ZDNet normally reports decent news, but I just had to laugh at some of the quotes from that open souce guy. He just stopped short of saying Bill Gates was Satan.
Can you imagine any other industry where if someone chooses to not buy the product of one particular vendor it seems that the world will end? Should I not choose a Ford Car do I expect lots of people to come out telling me how I'm going to die in a road crash before too long?
What's most laughable is the people who equate "Microsoft, or Microsoft" as having choice and "As long as it implements OpenDoc" as no choice. At least two commercial entities have announced support - Sun and WordPerfect. Such attachment to Microsoft is something I just don't understand.
In the development world I'm moving from Eclipse which is free and starting to use Visual Studio which is expensive, buggy and lacks so many usability features of Eclipse - yet people insist that it's better! All I can think is the fear of change moving all those VB developers to Java, yet the conceptual leaps to move to Dot-Net are huge enough anyway.
Perhaps you've invested so much effort learning how to work around and become comfortable with your computer's shortfalls you are afraid of change to something else. It takes time to learn an office suite or a development environment. Perhaps this fear of change and having to relearn is the problem.
Doesn't anyone else see the problem with MS including support for OpenDocument? They'll "extend" it has they have every other open format so on paper they'll support it but interoperability will be impossible.
It would be better if MS didn't come anywhere near OpenDocument...
Microsoft is gambling that they can break a troublesome customer. I think they will find that many goverment agencies and corporations will demand native ODF support. Will Microsoft write off the EU, China or major corps? I think not but this is really about owning your own data. If your data is not in an open format how do you know you can access it in five years or the next time your vendor changes their data format? There are warehouses of tapes which can not be easily restored today, time to move toward the future.
ODF is _not_ "quite new", it is based on StarOffice's/OpenOffice's XML format that is about 5 years old. Yes, it has been extended and enhanced. That's all part of the standardization process. It has to work for everyone. External links:
Wikipedia on OpenDocument:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Document
See Wheeler's essay on the MA vs. MSFT issue at:
http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/why-opendocument-won.html
> Doesn't anyone else see the problem with MS including support for OpenDocument? They'll "extend" it has they have every other open format so on paper they'll support it but interoperability will be impossible.
To solve this problem, people in the tech community would have to be vigilant about inspecting any OpenDocument format that Microsoft winds up supporting, seeing if there are any extensions or inconsistent standards support, and, if there are, publicly declaring that the format Microsoft is supporting is not in fact OpenDocument at all.
This inspection would have to be done for every modified version of every release of Office (i.e. there could be a patch or an update for Office or Windows that might sneakily alter the support for OpenDocument). In other words, constant vigilance would be required.
Or better yet, just don't use MS Office for working with the OpenDocument format. It'd be too much like sticking your foot in an open bear trap.
Re Matt: Netscape nearly did harm Microsoft. Even though Microsoft adapted, it is thanks to things like Netscape and open standards that Microsoft don't have as much of a stranglehold as they otherwise would.
Imagine being stuck with buggy old Internet Explorer with no chance for competition and no reason for Microsoft to invest effort improving it.
It is only thanks to competition that Microsoft are being forced to develop and improve IE, and without open standards there'll be no competition. It would be easy for Microsoft as competing is expensive, but terrible for the rest of us.
I'd go as far as saying that NT5 was canned and Windows2000 saw heavy investment thanks to competition from Linux, Office sees investment thanks to competition from Open Office and Visual Studio sees development thanks to competition from Eclipse. Without this competition we'd be a lot worse off.
This is why Open Standards are good, and why people like the EU are watching other areas such as media formats so closely.
It is also why software patents are such a hot topic. We've seen massive innovation for the last few decades without them, but all the evidence I've seen shows that with competition reduced or removed that innovation will dry up if they become widely enforced. That would be a shame.
Why do you hate Microsoft Office so much? It's only you who want to be different that's causing too much trouble. With my Windows XP and the upcoming Vista plus some more hundred bucks, I am now with the majority of happy users under Microsoft's wing.
Open Office reading Microsoft Office format easy? I don't think so! I've seen some of my misguided collegues wrestle their way to interpreting Power Point slides in that poor software!
I think MIT SHOULD RECONSIDER the word format as it's de facto.
Ad hominem attacks are the hallmark of MS apologists, astroturfers, shills and other trouble makers. They often go like this:
"why do you hate MS?"
"you know nothing about business"
"because of people like you ..."
"{non-MS product} is shit"
etc.
There are many more variations, but they common theme in all is a personal attack and an attempt to steer the dialog into a debate of opinions rather than facts or just plain drag it down into other non-productive activities like mud sling and name calling.
All I can say is great work Ingrid. The article and the quotes from Mark Taylor must have really hit a nerve in order to invoke such personal attacks from the MS camp.
> Doesn't anyone else see the problem with MS including support for OpenDocument? They'll "extend" it has they have every other open format so on paper they'll support it but interoperability will be impossible.
Actually, as part of the licensing of OpenDocument, it expressly forbids extending the format outside of the normal channels.
Any changes to the format would need to be approved by OASIS and would have to be presented to the OpenDocument steering committee to get through.
Any attempt to extend the format in other ways would see the extendee required to stop using the OpenDocument name, since they would no longer be supporting the format. On top of this, while Sun has stated (legally) that they won't pursue anyone over Intellectual Property issues who uses the format the way it was intended, they have also stated that they will vigorously attack any group that tries to abuse the format.
Any attempt by Microsoft to extend this format would see them in court. A case like this would be big news (remember, they'll only support the format because enough governments move to it that they need to) and Microsoft would be publicly embarrassed about trying to break what people would see favorably as a Good Thing(TM) - that is, an standardized format that lets them choose their software.
> Why do you hate Microsoft Office so much? It's only you who want to be different that's causing too much trouble. With my Windows XP and the upcoming Vista plus some more hundred bucks, I am now with the majority of happy users under Microsoft's wing.
Actually, this has nothing to do with hating MS. It's all about choice and access. Microsoft are more than willing to come to the party and support this format. No one is stopping them. It's their call.
> Open Office reading Microsoft Office format easy? I don't think so! I've seen some of my misguided collegues wrestle their way to interpreting Power Point slides in that poor software!
Office reading Office formats is laughable too. Try opening that 10 year old power point presentation and you'll understand why we need open, documented formats for our data. Try opening that Word 2 file and you'll really understand. Of course the irony is that OpenOffice might struggle with some Office files, but it also opens some Office files that Office can't. ON top of this, it also saves Office files in a more usable (more able to be read by various versions of Office) way than Office.
> I think MIT SHOULD RECONSIDER the word format as it's de facto.
See this is what happens when you just follow some company around like sheep. This isn't about MIT (Mass Institute of Technology), it's about a decision made by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. You know, the governement in Mass.
Besides, defacto standards aren't all they are cracked up to be (see my comments above).
Personally, I've been using OOo for years. Yup, 1.0 was not so much better than MSO 97 - and even a bit worse. However, when 1.1 came out and I had to type dozens of pages of reports with styles and formats not being destroyed from one session to another, then I found all the versions of MSO (97, 2000, XP) that I coudl use to be absolute C-R-A-P. As a result, I was using OOo constantly to, first, restore those documents to readable, and then, to edit them from beginning to end. Once done, I could save them in pdf and read/print them anywhere, or just export them to .doc format and distribute them to my hapless coworkers - who never had any trouble opening them, whatever version of Office they were using.
Now, I'm using betas and DBs of OOo 2.0, and my MSO CDs are gathering dust in a closet. Pity for the 250€ I had to spend on them... And I rejoice that I won't need to pay 300€ for Office 12 when it comes out!
It just floors me how many folks line up in staunch support of a technology that they have to pay through the nose for, that isn't open, that doesn't run on as many platforms as its competitor, and that doesn't support as many file formats. Does it take a rocket scientist to connect the dots? Did I wake up this morning so much more intelligent than last night that this seems so easy to me?
People want to compare OpenOffice -vs- Microsoft to Netscape, but they don't really. To look at the argument you'd think the only important factor was the company of origin. Well, here's a clue for you - Netscape users had to pay for their ware, Internet Explorer was free. Gee, I guess Microsoft would be the Netscape in this situation!
Another argument goes along the lines of 'OpenOffice is so gawdawful slow, it blows chunks'. Well, I'm not gonna lie to you, starting up OpenOffice could be faster. But that is the startup. Heh, if I get the functionality I need, do I care that I have to spend an extra twenty seconds for the app to start? Not if having faster startup means forking out big money I don't!
Probably the most honest thing we can say of all the sheeple lined up to defend overpriced proprietary software is that they are sadly misinformed of the nature of the competition. 'Microsoft now supports PDF so HAH'. Oh, so you mean it hasn't been doing so for OVER A YEAR like OpenOffice? 'OpenOffice prevents people from using their MS formats'. Gee, and I thought that I'd been able to save documents in Word format (various versions no less), WordPerfect, HTML, PDF, RTF, etc, etc, etc for some time. It never occurred to me to ask my colleagues if the .DOC files I've been sending over the years had actual content or not.
C'mon people, use your brains. Why would so many of you think that supporting something that runs counter to your own self interests is A Good Thing? Is being religious so much more interesting than being right? And how sad a commentary is it that when Mass. chose a pragmatic vehicle for their future documents, such vitriol erupted.
Astounding, absolutely astounding.
I disagree. MS Office is used so extensively that .doc is a virtual standard. Every open source office suite has to advertise its ability to read/write in MS Office formats, not the other way around. And what about .rtf?
Perhaps if OpenOffice.org and other alternatives become vastly more prevalent they could start to move users away from MS Office formats. That's the only way to get MS's interest in adding support to yet another format, which would not be difficult for it do, and they would still make it so that .doc was the default.
What is important is that OpenDocument is forcing MS to discuss 'open' standards.
%^SJAKDH ASL J^(A^ AOS A) )AS)A(US )(A*S
That's how a telephone call would sound without standards.
If MS insists on keeping it's standards secret, that's how it want's our communications to sound.
Simple.
"MS Office is used so extensively that .doc is a virtual standard."
A standard that is changed reguarly, forcing users of older versions of Word to upgrade or face total incompatbility with files created with newer versions, thus forcing continuous payouts to Microsoft. Standards don't work this way.
Do people really believe in 5 years time that 99% PC's sold wont be preinstalled with Windows and Office?.
There is no more chance of people changing from Windows as there is of them ceasing to use Qwerty keyboards
>There is no more chance of people changing from
> Windows as there is of them ceasing to use Qwerty
> keyboards
Bad argument, I life in Belgium where the deafult keyboard is (just as in France) the 'azerty' layout.Everybody starts swearing at me when they have to use my computer, which has probaly the only qwerty keyboard in a ten miles radius.
So in these regions were azerty is the default layout, you're suggesting that all computers will be delivered with a non windows OS in the years to come :-)
Point is people dont really care what the 'best' is, they want to go to every office in the world and see the same software
Re: "Do people really believe in 5 years time that 99% PC's sold wont be preinstalled with Windows and Office?."
Why should that be? The PC maker has to pay for Windows and Office. It would be cheaper for PC makers to ship with Windows and OpenOffice as OpenOffice is free.
The only reason I'd expect to see Office installed as standard is if Microsoft are up to their old anticompetitive tricks - things like bundling or threatening to make it hard for the maker to sell Windows if they dare to sell Open Office.
Ejaculate on Microsoft!
Standards are not meant to be static. They are only meant to be 'standards.' Many get updated, whether it is a standard format, protocol, language, or application. I wouldn't even be surprised if one day there is an update to OpenDocument, requiring an update to your favored office application in order to use it.
Standards are meant to be fully backward compatible. Big difference. Reasons should be obvious by now.
One-way streets only push you one way. You can't go back. You can't go left or right. Digging a hole in the ground is not an option. Nor is flying. To stand still is to be left behind. Less diversity means fewer choices. Fewer choices means the price goes way up for not that much more. Economics 101.
makes sense
i understand your point, but opendocument gives a standard that everyone can use and adapt to. it will only evolve if a majority of stakeholders believe it is necessary. eg for more features. it's better that this standard is handled by a consortium of representatives than a single entity, since, through negotiation, they can reach what is the best format for everyone and not just themselves.
Now I would not go as far as saying 99% The issue is really that Microsoft is expensive. Look into buying a pc without an operating system on it. They run about $100 cheaper than one that ships with Windows. Consider how much the price of Windows and MS Office have climbed in the last 5 years. Conisder all the 3rd world countries that are beginning to get computers of their own. Now they can either run pirated versions of Windows and not get any updates, or they can find an alternative. Singapore and China are great examples of where open source software has flourished. It is easily attainable and you donate if you think the software is worth it.
The fact of the matter is that this is more than just an argument over a format. This is Microsoft doing their best to make sure that the .doc format becomes a standard for the world and not just developed countries. Microsoft will probably still be the OS of choice in 5 years. Matter of fact, Microsoft is here to stay. But the world is changing and where they fail to keep up they fail to win. Google is the king of the internet as compared to Microsoft. Somehow it has become one of Microsoft's biggest competitors.
Whenever Microsoft drags its feet a race to catch up to the rest always follows. Microsoft is here to stay. 20 years can change a lot. In 30 to 50 years Microsoft may have to completely redefine itself as IBM has. Folowing one company and not allowing others to compete makes software and an industry stagnant. Look at IE.
Most people seem to either hate them or love them :S. Dont see many neutral comments.
Arcon5.com has a few comments and it seems to be the case.
E.g. http://arcon5.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewforum&f=3