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Massachusetts Likely To Approve OOXML
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jul 03, 2007 08:08 AM
from the et-tu-deval dept.
from the et-tu-deval dept.
Ian Lamont writes "The IT department of the state government of Massachusetts has designated Microsoft's Office Open XML as an open document format, along with ODF, plain text, and HTML. It's only a draft policy, but it sets the stage for the format being given an official stamp of approval by state authorities — and weakens earlier Massachusetts support for the Open Document Format. Microsoft got a big boost at the end of 2006 when Ecma approved OOXML, and again this spring when pro-ODF legislation was being defeated or watered down in six states."
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Pro-ODF Legislation Loses In Six States 264 comments
ajanp writes "Computerworld discusses the defeat of pro-ODF legislation in the states of California, Florida, Texas, Oregon, and Connecticut which 'would have required state agencies to use freely available and interoperable file formats, such as the Open Document Format for Office Applications, instead of Microsoft Corp.'s proprietary Office formats.' A similar bill in Minnesota was changed to study the issue instead. There was heavy lobbying being done in private on both sides with one problem being 'the jargon-laden disinformation that committee members felt they were being fed by lobbyists for both IBM and Microsoft. Although lobbyists would tell the committee one thing in private, they got cold feet when asked to verify the information publicly, under oath.' However, 'Despite the string of defeats, Marino Marcich, executive director of the Washington-based ODF Alliance, said the legislative fight has only begun.'"
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ob (Score:3, Funny)
Re:ob (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed, the name in itself has been chosen just to confuse Open Office and Office Open XML being the same thing. I can imagine the standards body meeting now:
"OK great, we'll pick the Open Document Format over Office Open XML"
(Some poor sod writing up the meeting notes)
Right, they've chosen the standard by the guys who do Open Office... aha! Here it is, Office Open XML...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ob (Score:5, Informative)
StarOffice [wikipedia.org] started in 1986. Microsoft Office [wikipedia.org] debuted in 1989.
So, now it has your sympathy?
Parent
Re:ob (Score:5, Insightful)
That's one reason, at least.
Parent
Re:ob (Score:5, Insightful)
Word processors generally have default style for headings. Which of these would make more sense in a standard:
- Have an element indicating the outline level, and one indicating the display style to use.
- Have an element saying 'use Word 95 format headings,' one saying 'use WordPerfect 3 format headings' etc.
Implementing a spec using the first is non-trivial. Implementing a spec using the second is almost impossible, unless you happen to already have code for importing documents in those formats. OOXML doesn't do this for heading styles (I don't think it does, anyway), but it does do this in a number of other elements.In summary, the correct place for legacy support is in the importer, not the format. If you're doing things the OOXML way, you may as well have a couple of bytes reserved at the start of the file with one value reserved for 'this document is in Word 95 format' etc.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Also, Microsoft could provide conversion programs that convert your old documents into the current standard (whether it be ODF or a version of OOXML witho
Re:ob (Score:5, Insightful)
Any "standard" which is so clearly developed with ease of implementation by a single vendor in mind has a rather obvious scent of unilaterality to it.Is Microsoft's clipart library no longer largely WMF? Even if that's the case, modern OOXML implementations will need to implement these ancient, antiquated formats to be able to read documents which were imported into OOXML from Word 95 (or other versions which *did* use WMF as the primary format for imported documents) -- meaning that backwards compatibility will remain much of the headache it was even before documents were converted into a "standardized format". The right way to convert things is normalization, damnit -- if, rather than simply forcing all implementors of the new format to support all the quirks of the old, the conversion process always normalized out the old quirks (ideally into modern, standards-centric formats for which preexisting implementations are available under a variety of licenses), the standard would be much smaller, more manageable and simpler to implement. As an additional benefit, we wouldn't see things like buffer overflows in the parser code for Microsoft's more obscure, obsolete formats causing security holes (as has happened in recent memory).
Part of the point of having a standard is that anyone should be able to implement it. If the standard incorporates by reference other specifications which are not open standards, then the standard can only be implemented in full by those who have licensed said specifications. Is this not an obvious problem on its face? You say that those creating such documents are "(l)users" -- but most office workers just want to Get The Job Done, and don't care (and shouldn't need to care) what format their clip art library is in.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I believe ODF worked the same way. They defined the format and then allowed it to be open so others can implement it. It's not exactly the same because ODF is Op
Microsoft lobbying (Score:5, Interesting)
What many people probably don't know is that Microsoft have been lobbying companies, especially technology partners, to lobby their local standards body to get them to lobby ISO. You receive an email talking about "choice" and why that is important and what OOXML is all about, you also get a handy word document (not in OOXML ironically) which you can fill in, sign and post, or an email template that you can send off to the organisation in question. MS also would like a "quote" from the companies to say that they support "choice" and hence OOXML.
And of course good partners of Microsoft often get cash investment in sales campaigns and go to markets.
The noOOXML.org petition (Score:5, Insightful)
One example: in Italy's technical committee a few weeks back there were 11 organisations. When Microsoft had finished mobilising their partners, there were 70. No surprise that Italy will vote "yes" on the OOXML vote. It is disgraceful; ISO will become a "made in Redmond" rubber-stamping tool that helps Microsoft sell upgrades and kick away ODF.
There is an online petition with 16,000 signatures [noooxml.org] and a lot more information on the noOOXML.org [noooxml.org] site.
Everyone who cares about open standards needs to sign this petition.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There's no irony in complaining about a corporation mobilizing its partners, but closing with your own attempt to mobilize your partners. None at all.
Partners? I'm thinking that we're just talking about people here, not organizations that depend on the parent-poster for their financial welfare. I also don't see any irony involved in pointing out that letting Microsoft purchase the approval for their standard doesn't benefit anyone but Microsoft, and that if you agree, you can sign a petition stating that. No financial involvement or coercion of any sort is involved. Definitely not the case with Microsoft's partners.
Re:Microsoft lobbying (Score:5, Insightful)
The pertinent question is this: is OOXML an open format?
No. I think openxml is a scam. My unverified assumption is that at present there is no translater that is 100% compatible with any document MS Office might produce with openxml, including Novells [novell.com]. Even if my assumptions are incorrect (I'm convinced they are not), it will still be possible for MS to "extend" openxml later with new shiny features that will effectively keep documents locked in.I can't imagine that any intelligent human will not realize this. The only explanation for openxml approval by ECMA, ISO, or the State of Massachusetts is corruption and bribery.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
OpenDocument and the Move to XML Formats
http://osc.gigavox.com/audio/download/itconversati ons-1810.mp3 [gigavox.com]
[runtime: 01:14:48, 34.2 mb, recorded 2007-04-30]
OpenDocument expert Gary Edwards believes that adopting OpenXML means lock-in to Microsoft products on an unprecedented scale. In this podcast, Edwards defends OpenDocument's capabilities but also challenges the ODF community to out-innovate Microsoft to provide a competitive alternative to Microsoft's lock-in. He also challenges the open standards community to focus on delivering alternatives to Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint servers. Edwards also describes Open Document Foundation's da Vinci plug-ins for Microsoft Office.
Listen to it and see for yourself.
can someone explain (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:can someone explain (Score:5, Informative)
Because this is the first crack in the dam of Microsoft's vendor lock-in. If Massachusetts stores and releases all government material in an open format, then Microsoft must support that format, or lose a lot of business. Remember that Massachusetts is the home of MIT, lots of businesses there that care about government regulation. And once a couple businesses in Massachusetts stop using office, it can spread. They email some document to another company across the globe, in ODF, then that company comes into contact with ODF, and it will have to either install separate software for it, or even switch away from office, if Microsoft still refuses to support ODF.
Of course, if they do support ODF, then they lose their vendor lock-in outright. No problem switching to OpenOffice if all your clients have Office, just send your stuff in ODF, and they can open it. Microsoft chose the one way out that would let them have some control, develop their own open standard, and lobby like mad to get everyone to use that instead of ODF. That way, at least they own the standard, and that's what Microsoft's always been after.
Parent
Re:can someone explain (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Since microsoft is going for ECMA and ISO standardization of thier file format, personally I think it should be approved; once the ECMA and ISO approval is done.
Given some of what has achieved ECMA and ISO standardization, and indeed, the quality of the documentation of the "standard" that OOXML purports to be, you're basically just asking for rubber stamps, not openness. Then again, this is government, so perhaps rubber stamps are actually more important than the qualities the rubber stamps are supposed to guarantee.
This does raise an interesting question though, because MS is successfully slipping through the door here. It is a case of following the letter of, b
ODF is not being dismissed (Score:4, Insightful)
It weakens ODF's potential for exclusive adoption in Massachusetts. It would be very unlikely that a state (particularly one as large as Massachusetts) would ever completely refuse to accept documents in a format as soon-to-be-common (like it or not) as OOXML.
Granted if they did it, they'd have a better chance of getting private vendors to use ODF than, say, Montana. But you've got to figure that as OOXML gets slowly adopted, there are going to be a lot of outside vendors (not to mention other states) with whom Massachusetts will have to interact who will make the jump to OOXML. And if you think the conversion from old Word to new Word is rife with peril, the conversion from ODF to OOXML and back would likely cause quite a bit of inefficiency and lost data.
Multiple Programs/Vendors (Score:3, Insightful)
Did that change, or is someone else licensed to use their formats to write competing software with MS formats, or is there some other way that MS is trying to get around that?
Why support any lock in? (Score:3, Insightful)
OOXML is an open standard. People are making a mountain out of a molehill based on the corner case of importing a document from wordperfect of many years ago and having a clause in the formatting that just says "this footer here shall be aligned as it would be in wordperfect x.y" or whatever. For all intents and purposes its open, people are just nitpicking over the fact that importing files from long ago and having the description for how a few obscure formatting issues should be handled is a little vague.
Re:Why support any lock in? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's rather disingenuous to say "locked into ODF" since ODF is an open standard which means that anyone can generate their own ODF reader and writer. In fact, every computer on the market right now can basically read ODF (in a primitive way), since any modern OS can extract a zip archive and read the plaintext that is inside. Yes, ODF is really that open! You can read it and work with it with very simple tools. There are also many full office suites that can read/write ODF. So it's hard to see how you can say that the government will be "locked into ODF" when it will be trivial for them to convert the data to other formats, copy the data elsewhere, extract it for other use, automate searching through the data, etc. Where's the lockin?
The point with ODF is that you are not locked in. It is so open that it is very easy to convert your data, using a wide variety of tools (many of them freely available). The same cannot be said for MS's offering... which is why it cannot be legitimately called "open" and is a poor match to the needs of archiving and disseminating government data.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Can you read the specification and then write software that implements it? No? How is that an open standard?
Idiots! (Score:3, Insightful)
Ecma sounds like a skin disease.