Microsoft Opposing California Open Doc Bill

ZJMX writes "Microsoft is going through its email and phone lists asking people to support their opposition to California A.B. 1668 — 'Open Document Format, Open Source' — by writing to the California Assemblymen involved in this bill (contact info in the link). Apparently they fear that California will join Massachusetts in wanting documents based on open standards in their government. Let's see if this community can raise as much support for the California ODF bill as Microsoft can raise opposition."

Allow Me to Summarize

[eldavojohn]

This is what I read:

"Blah blah blah politics. Bitch bitch bitch IBM did this so now we do it."

I read this hoping for some key points in distinguishing the functionality or benefits versus costs in using either format.

Nope.

The closest they get to that is "ODF is tightly tied to OOo." Oh, no! Not that! You know, that argument is null and void, right? Because these document formats are supposed to be open, like the names of both of them imply. Who cares if it's not yet integrated into your product, either format should allow that. It is, in fact, confusing to me why they don't let both formats exist and allow the government bodies to pick whatever the hell the want to store their data in. That's all this is, a political issue which is why it's filed in the politics section I guess.

If Microsoft truly believed their product to be superior to the alternative, they would sit back and let California make the mistake. Then, when everything falls apart, they could step in and save the day, while at the same time setting a precident for one format being better than the other. But, we all know that's not going to happen because I haven't heard Massachussetts hurting due to their choice. So, I guess Mr. Ballmer is going to have to set his fears aside & simply come to the harsh realization that another community developed format is just as good or better than their format. Heads up, ODF community, he just may fucking kill you.

And I certainly don't appreciate them demonizing IBM. "Big bad evil corporation launches national campaign to force their consumers into using something!" Pot calling the kettle black, in my opinion. If you could track the amount of money I have paid to a company--directly or indirectly--I would wager that I've paid IBM far less than Microsoft and I feel that IBM has done far more for me than Microsoft.

Shut up and let the consumer decide, Microsoft. Nothing's wrong with unbiased comparisons in helping them decide but you've got a conflict of interest here so I highly doubt anyone will swallow your tripe.

They're against freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

It's rather interesting to see that Microsoft publicly says: "We want to stop peoples freedom of choice". Cause that's what they're doing. With an open format you have the freedom to choose application, but with being locked down to closed formats, you don't have a choice.

Of course, no one is surprised of Microsoft's behavior, but it's actually very grotesque and anti-democratic, anti-freedom, anti-[everything good].

It's like opposing peoples choice of telephone. If you have [phone-line company A], you need a phone A, and you can't call a friend with phone B... Disgusting.
And perhaps SOS got phone C... Poor bastard.

Re:Why the govt? Why not the fortune 500 companies

[canUbeleiveIT]

Either there is some serious wrong doing by MSFT like bribing IT managers and giving kick backs to PC vendors.

I think that the major PC vendors are in bed with MS for the following reason: it gives them a huge advantage against small VAR PC vendors and/or people who would build their own PC.

My company used to build workstations for our customers; we didn't make a profit on them (it's all about the service) but could price them competitively. At this point, with the prices and availability (or lack thereof) we get from our distributors, we would lose money on each PC sold. It's bad enough that we could buy a PC from Dell, take the components out and put them in our own case and sell it for the same price, but Windows pushes us over the edge. Ingram Micro charges us about $132 for XP Pro or Vista, which is far above the price that they charge Dell.

The same goes for home computer builders I imagine. Once one figures in the cost of a MS OS, there's probably no way that one could build a Windows machine for the same or less money. I'm sure that someone will post a response with links to prices for ten different retailers (probably with rebates), but that's just trading time for money.

Something very simple is going on

[SmallFurryCreature]

Big business leaders don't know IT. For that matter, few people in IT really know IT, but that is another rant.

Someone who can run a transport company successfully and knows that only a fool would allow your company to be totally dependent on one vehicle supllier will NOT realise that the same thing applies to the computers controlling the fleet of vehicles.

Standard example, every truck fleet owner has a favorite brand, yet they always got a couple of trucks that are of a different brand. The reason, simple, it makes negotiations a bit easier. Sure out of the 500 trucks in company 490 will be say Mercedes BUT on the day the Mercedes rep comes to talk about a new order you can bet that the 10 daf trucks will be proudly parked right outside the office. Just a hint that the order does not have to go to Mercedes this time.

That is because trucking company directors understand trucking. They do not understand IT. So when the MS salesrep arrives he will have confirmed via outlook, using documents created in office and be assured of seeing nothing but windows machines as he visits the office.

Offcourse he still gives a nice discount. That is easy. Establish the true price, hike it by a couple of hundred percent, give a discount of 50% percent and you got MS record profits.

And the really odd thing is that all those directors who wouldn't trust a truck maker who reported the same kind of profits as MS think it is a good sign that MS is making such huge profits.

People do NOT understand fields that they are not experts in and this goes triple for IT.

Couple this with the old maxim, nobody has ever been fired for buying Microsoft and you got the current situation.

It is changing but you are going to have to fight a bloody struggle to get anywhere. Remember, if you introduce linux into a company and suddenly costs plummet and productivity soars you will have made an awfull lot of enemies, every single person who said that MS software was the way to go.

I was in this situation once. A company had two websites belonging to different divesions. The one I was responsible for ran a webshop and services for customers and offcourse ran on linux cheapo hardware. The intraweb was purely windows and was run by the internal IT department but it also contained some sites available to our resellers and such. My divesion was brought back in under the umbrella of the mother coorperation, our website sold more products then all other sales efforts combined, so rather then being an experiment we turned into the biggest sales channel.

Anyway, oneday a director asked the question of why the intraweb was down once again, and for some reason the question was asked NOT to the internal IT department but to the web department (probably the doofus didn't realize the difference).

So what was I supposed to do? The reason the intraweb sucked was simple, it was run on windows, with IIS (or ISS, what ever acronym stands for steaming pile of garbage, was run by windows admins, and just wasn't designed by anyone who cared.

Yet for some reason, the idea seemed to be that since the director new that we used linux and windows and that the intraweb sucked that linux was used for the intraweb. And since everyone knows I run Linux I was told to convert the site to windows to fix the troubles and get help from the internal IT department.

Can you guess how many seconds it took me to reactivate my CV on monsterboard?

It was not that the guy in question was an idiot, he knew his business. It just didn't happen to be IT. And what could I do? My department was supposed to merge with the internal IT department and since they wore suits it was pretty clear to me who would end up as whose boss.

So I arranged some job interviews, and just told them that linux sadly wasn't up to the job and that switching the external site to windows was the best way to go, but sadly I did not have the qualifications to do that so the internal IT department should handle it, and handed in

Why Microsoft is wrong and looking like Sony

[mattr]

I submit that:

1. Use of ODF will keep more money in California and less flowing to Washington state.
2. Governments are responsible for guaranteeing archives, minimizing expenses, and reducing barriers, therefore ODF is best choice for them.
3. These days a monetary figure can be assigned what it costs Microsoft in negative PR, lobbying and advertising this anti-ODF campaign. They could make more money by instead becoming the main proponent of ODF and other open standards, and developing commercial SDKs to develop software for all platforms based on truly open standards.
4. Microsoft also is harmed by the effects of its embrace and extend campaign. Not only in hatred by potential developers, but also because of the monetary cost of running the campaign, and the chaos and reduced size of the market it causes.
5. Microsoft could support independent developers by allowing them to rent SDKs and code of other participating vendors, and allowing developers to pay in part by product royalties. By creating a new ecosystem in this way Microsoft can become the facilitator and also own part of the ecosystem's code base, increasing market size and opportunities. It may even by quick footwork, honesty, sincerity and trust building be able to draw in most of the industry for niche products (say an open standards based tax form creation and submission infrastructure).
6. Microsoft is a dinosaur walking on treacherous ground. It has depended on a cynical and unethical strategy relying on bloatware, hatchetwork, lobbying, FUD, legal games, discounts, etc. By reversing 180 degrees its current orientation, away from FUD and Embrace/Extend, it will gain amazingly broad new horizons for profit, reducing risk and not incidentally creating new reasons for people to stick with Office.
7. Microsoft also resembles Sony quite a lot, which is not good for Microsoft. Both companies are impossible to make a deal with, they either try to buy you or destroy you. Both companies are utterly cynical and untrusted. Both companies are a bucket of fragmented interests, their strengths wasted on their habits of looking inward at other divisions and not at their customers. Both dream of huge profits from Hollywood, which is silly (see next point).
8. Both Microsoft and Sony have ignored George Lucas' comments that Hollywood does not make a profit in theaters, which is why he wants to go into TV. They also ignore that the movie industry is not as profitable as it would seem, due to the huge number of flops (since they are filled with cynical crap creators too), is an unsteady earner which also translates to risk, and is the driving force behind DRM which has set the electronics industry back 15 years and spurs development of alternate delivery systems that they cannot control as well (piracy has a tiny effect on actual profit now but has risen to equal the pornography industry in driving creative programmers to invent creative, new systems). Additionally both Microsoft and Sony have a bizarre interest in supporting only the biggest players despite contemporary media distribution systems' being so much more supportive of the medium to long tail, i.e. smaller bands/producers.
9. Take the example of Sony which constantly releases expensive hardware that is lower in quality than the Sony name used to signify and that only works with Sony products. Sony gets its lunch eaten so often, it is its own worst enemy. Microsoft and Sony both share a very similar conceit, inflated self-importance, cynicism, misguided goals, and disparagement of both vendors and customers. Unfortunately they both have corporate cultures that are so strongly biased in this way that the cultures actually warp otherwise sound minds, witness what Mhyrvold has to show for his work there. Since even scientists are swayed by bizarre corporate cultures, the corporation consistently generates failures, seeks to recoup them with grandiose schemes, and in the end needs to draw in new blood from the outside in an attempt to solve the unsolvable.

Re:Why Microsoft is wrong and looking like Sony

[UnknowingFool]

1. Use of ODF will keep more money in California and less flowing to Washington state.

Not necessarily true. While MS employs many people and brings in money to Washington, for tax purposes, they are taxed according to Utah's tax laws. Don't ask me how they do it; the bottom line is that they save a lot of money because Utah has very low taxes. This is another reason I don't like MS. At every turn, they are ethically challenged. They are HQ in WA, but have come up with a way not to pay WA.

Re:Personally...

[DannyO152]

The State of California is a customer and, like you, has to right to choose what it buys based on measurements of price vs. performance. If California says it requires software for its bureaus that uses neutral file formats, then the expression of that requirement is no more legislating people out of business than a requirement that paint bought for state buildings meet minimum performance and environmntal standards. As California, the great state where I reside, is spending taxpayer money, there are occasional efforts towards ensuring that the money isn't being spent in stupid ways. (I shall not be reimbursing any one for keyboards lost while reading the prior sentence.)

Something I'm really curious about: where are the Microsoft shareholders on these questions. Why do they think that when large customers start to evolve different requirements, the proper response is to spend money on publicity, lobbying, and advocacy advertising and to play chicken with the customers, rather than evolving with the market?

Re:Allow Me to Summarize

[itwerx]

contains a very verbose standard

Let's see here, "A lot of hype - and smoke and mirrors obfuscation - surrounds interoperability these days," Microsoft wrote in an open letter published on its Web site.
Mmm-hmm, like about 6000 pages worth...

They are quite easy to read and understand.
Either you're lying through your teeth, (er, keyboard), or you've never actually tried to read the whole thing!

I'm sorry, but when the BlueTooth spec is only 1500 pages and it's been how many years before companies could agree on what it all meant, there's no damn way that 6000 page document is worth even considering even if Microsoft did suddenly do a 180-degree turnabout in their business practices, (don't hold your breath).
      The 500 page ODF at least has a snowball's chance of working well for everybody over the course of a few years.
      All Microsoft will do with theirs is misinterpret and misimplement everything they can, point their fingers at everybody else when nothing works compatibly, and hey presto, nothing's changed! "Gee, so sorry, we tried so hard..."

(Note to mods: the parent post is nowhere near the Insightful it's been given so far, it's somewhere between Troll and Overrated)

Re:Allow Me to Summarize

[swillden]

Given that, I think it's sensible to reduce element and attribute names in order to produce better load/save performance.

I don't, though I'll grant the point a little more validity in the case of spreadsheet data, in which there's basically no way to prevent the tags from utterly dominating the data content. Even in that case, though, performance issues are temporary, especially since the question is CPU-bound, not I/O or even memory-bound, whereas data interoperability and comprehensibility are forever. In fact, I think the Office team has made a number of short-sighted decisions in the interest of performance, including using multiple different tabular data representations for different contexts (spreadsheet, vs table in text document, vs table in presentation, etc.). They ostensibly made these decisions to improve performance, but I have to wonder if they didn't also like -- or at least not care about -- the negative effects on interoperability and comprehensibility to people who aren't steeped in Microsoft's technology.

Note that I'm not generally one to ignore performance. Much of my career has been spent writing C and even assembler on bare metal, using very small microprocessors where every cycle counts. But modern PCs are blisteringly fast, and getting faster (via more cores, but that's okay because XML processing is moderately parallelizable), and interoperability and future-proofing are more important than a few seconds loading or saving a file. Load time is more important than save time, too, so if it's really an issue you could trade one off against the other, including a fast-loading memory representation alongside the authoritative XML representation.

Re:Allow Me to Summarize

[Bert64]

If a country (China) makes it the law to "roll over" on bloggers and IM users, then google have no choice but to comply with the law or cease doing business in China.
The government of China is not a pushover like the EU or US, where large companies can string things along, negotiate their own (non)punishment and get away with paying trivial fines several years late when inflation has made them all but worthless. If you don't do what the Chinese government want, they will come down on your hard.
So google have a choice:

Not do business in china at all (and thus lose potential revenue which wont please their shareholders, and bring no information to the people in china)
Or
Do business under the law (and generate some revenue, and bring some benefits to the people of china).
Or
Do business outside of the law, and get the chinese operations closed down by the government, all assets siezed and staff thrown in jail, and all non chinese services firewalled in china anyway.

The Chinese people haven't lost out by google rolling over, the alternatives for the Chinese people are smaller chinese companies who are just as willing to roll over for the government, or nothing at all.

You may not like the chinese government, but if you want to do business in their country you have to play by their rules.

Also, before you go ranting on about how bad china is, look around your house and see just how many products you use day in day out which were made in china... The companies making those products had to comply with chinese laws too. If your going to complain about google for this, you really should stop using _ANY_ product made in china.