I retired from personal blogging in July 2008 but you can find me over at blog.xero.com
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Chatting to local Microsofties over the past few days, a big thing that is happening in New Zealand right now is a meeting with Standards New Zealand about the Open XML data format.
I’ve spoken about this earlier … Open XML
My understanding of the issue is that there is already an Open Document Format standard, supporters of that format are resisting the Microsoft office format as an international standard. We’ll that is natural, but is that good?
Each country gets to vote on whether the Open XML format should be an International Standard.
I got Microsoft to send me their reasoning why the ratification of OpenXML is a good thing.
Framing the discussion in terms of the role of Standards New Zealand.
The Standards Council’s primary functions are to develop standards, and to promote, encourage and facilitate the use of standards, which benefit all New Zealanders by improving safety, quality, prosperity and convenience.
Microsoft argues:
- Convenience: People use Office today because it is the most convenient product to meet their needs – it is the de facto standard for document creation and exchange today. A significant volume of documents have been created by thousands of products utilising the current binary formats of Microsoft Office. Open XML is good for everybody, because it takes a specification compatible with our current documents and moves it into the public domain.
- Prosperity: Not standardising Open XML means over time all orgainsations with legacy Office documents will need to migrate them to a new format that was not designed to maintain compatibility with what has already been created. This will have a cost impact and productivity impact for all organisations because it forces you, a software user, to choose between openness and compatibility for your documents.
My feeling is that Microsoft have often been criticised for not having open formats for interoperability, here is a great example of them doing the right thing by opening up the document format and passing control it to a standards body. (Which they have done - Open XML is already an ECMA Standard.)
I believe this is great news for organisations like us who partner with Microsoft and have built upon Microsoft document formats. Office is a standard by default.
No vendor is impartial in this debate. Forrester cover that off here. So this is a tech/political debate (looking forward to your comments) and on Thursday/Friday the front-line of that debate is here in New Zealand.
I think Standards New Zealand should endorse the standard. New Zealand has had huge adoption of Microsoft technologies and we have a long history of developing local technology companies in partnership with Microsoft. Of all the multi-nationals Microsoft have stood out as embracing the local community and developing in country expertise. In practice and especially in New Zealand, Microsoft data formats are already a standard.
I don’t think we have anything to gain by rejecting this.
blog
Interesting. After seeing Kiwi objections to MS Open XML being standardised hit international news recently, it will be interesting to see what comes out of the meeting.
I understand that one of the primary objections has to do with the legal uncertainty surrounding patents and the standard. It seems that it will be possible to have Open XML documents that you aren’t allowed to parse,
because of patent licensing issues.
As for the Technical Objections, I don’t see that as a barrier to standardisation, merely to fast-tracking it. They are all fixable.
Honestly, do we really want to keep on having a file format that assumes that 1900 was a leap year? Isn’t 25 years long enough?
I’m with you, Rod. This is what I wrote to Standards NZ:
I will not put forward any technical arguments for Open XML - others can do that far better than me. I will however focus on one very practical issue – the longevity of access to the many billions of existing documents. It is vital that easy access to this vast array of knowledge, records, decisions, contracts and literature continues. In this digital age, no-one keeps physical copies of anything for very long – there is just too much information. Searching and finding physical records would be impractical, as would translation of all those documents to a new standard. We absolutely must retain the ability to access the digital form of earlier documents. The Open XML standard supports backwards compatibility.
There are some who see the document standards debate as a battle between proprietary standards and open-source standards. I have little time for zealotry by either camp. What matters to me is what works. Open XML – an open standard over which Microsoft has ceded all rights – works.
I support the fact that Microsoft finally wants to open up their file formats.
What i don’t understand is why they have to create a new standard when there is already an existing one out there.
The governments in the EU have adopted the Oasis Open Document format which surprisingly enough is very similar to the microsoft one.
The ODF has already been adopted in many other places and will be free to read/write to unlike something that comes out of the microsoft house which will have patents and licensing attached.
my 2c
Yeah, but …
How many standards is the right number? With too many we get into the situation where the poor software vendors have to write interfaces for all commonly used doc standards increasing the cost and complexity of the software at limited value to most users. Time surely better spent on additional functionality in the product. And as you commented before, most products handled the .doc format very well.
So why create a standard, rather than a de facto standard? I would guess the motivation behind MS getting this standard is so they can better qualify for government business that demands open standards for document exchange and archiving.
Reminds me of the really old joke: how many MS engineers does it take to change a light bulb? None, they redefine darkness as a standard.
Rod, I think you should read this:
This will change your position or perhaps you have declare your financial interests in Microsoft and products written for the Microsoft platform.
Hi Rod, have you read the local Open Source Society’s stance on OOXML?
http://nzoss.org.nz/node/179
…which links to the white paper I helped author…
http://holloway.co.nz/can-other-vendors-implement-ooxml.html
Microsoft Office is the defacto standard (I think we’d all agree on that!) and Microsoft will use OOXML whether they achieve ISO standardisation or not. I think that de facto standards shouldn’t necessarily become ISO standards because the ISO have broader criteria (such as reuse of existing standards, interoperability, internationalisation, precise definition, patent grants, and so on). It’s when you start to consider these criteria that I think OOXML falls down.
The main arguments against as I see it are that OOXML isn’t sufficiently defined (read: it’s full of holes) and although this is expected in any standard developed at OOXML’s pace most don’t try for ISO standardisation at this early stage of development. In contrast OpenDocument went through over 3 years of weekly meetings and public debate on public mailing lists, which should demonstrate what’s required for an ISO standard.
The idea of OOXML standardisation and interoperability is fantastic and I hope Microsoft continue in this route but right now the detail isn’t there.
I think that what we’d gain by rejecting the proposed standard at this point is the possibility for a better standard and greater integration between OOXML and ODF.
Thanks :)
Heh… I’m a little too slow for Berend de Boer ;)
Rod,
Firstly, you can hardly be considered an objective source of information, given the partnership between Xero and Microsoft. Secondly, Open XML can hardly be considered an open standard given several parts of the specification refer to (paraphrasing) “doing what Word does”. It is hardly an open standard when parts of the standard require knowledge of the workings of proprietary software. Thirdly, the Open XML standard is several times longer and incredibly more convoluted that ODF. It is a standard designed to be difficult, if not impossible to implement by vendors other than Microsoft.
Adopting the ODF standard would in no way prevent compatibility with past office formats. Indeed, OpenOffice.org handles older .doc files better than current versions of Word. It would be trivial for Microsoft to include default support for the ODF standard in Office, but that would weaken their as reigning hegemon.
So instead we have this three ring circus where Microsoft try to push their “Open” standard through in order to stifle competition and further their monopoly. It’s a shame kiwi tech leaders like yourself can’t see through this sort of rubbish.
Rod
I understand your desire to be nice to MS and I really, really wish they were doing the right thing here. If they *were* I believe they would cement their place in Government for years to come. Unfortunately they have not done so. This proposed standard appears to be more about perpetuating lock-in than anything else.
Obviously in my role as President of the NZ Open Source Society I will be seen as having an ax to grind. But we have taken our work on this very seriously and gone way beyond the glib responses seen in your post and comments above as well as in the FOSS community.
We invited Rick Jelliffe to talk to us about the what he sees as the good things about this proposal. We have developers who have implemented other document standards and reverse engineered MS binary formats.
Our white paper has been publicly available for a week here:
http://nzoss.org.nz/node/179
In ODF, PDF and HTML formats :-)
Jason comments about technical issues - “They are all fixable.”
Erm, well no they are not. At least, not with the current approach.
A standard is only worth as much as it is supported by the industry. MS may go ahead and buy/bully standard bodies into acceptance, but what’s the difference? A good standard is based on consensus, which is non-existent in this case. This is a pure future-proofing of a sales channel into governments. Websites and applications will be generating office documents regardless of the standard status as long as there are users and sufficient developer documentation.
Of course I benefit from Microsoft. That is the point. A huge segment of our technology industry does. That’s why I’m relaxed about the standard.
I even have Microsoft shares (not so great) and Apple (woohoo!) and IBM - I think.
Is it a great standard? No. Does it have issues? Yes. Is MY world a better place if this is a standard? I think so. Will this be a fun debate? Ubetcha.
But I read your comments and links with interest - I’m certainly not an expert in this space and welcome the discussion. It’s tech-political rather than just pure technology. I’m fascinated to see how it plays out.
“Is MY world a better place if this is a standard. I think so.”
Why?
Honestly, you need to justify this, because ISO itself is losing credibility in this process and if *that* is worth while then it had better be for a damn good reason.
Public confidence in an ISO standard is reasonably critical to the ongoing success of the whole idea of standards.
You appear to say you are willing to support a bad standard because your business life gets a little better.
I wonder if you would feel the same if you had purchase some ISO standard, fire retardant pajamas only to find they caught fire because, well, sorry, it was a bad standard but it suited a few local suppliers to have it pass?
Apologies, my Rick Jelliffe link was supposed to go here:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/blogs/passthesource/2007/07/30/truthiness-hype-and-cigars/
Happy to.
Judging by the number of people at TechEd last week, there is a huge number of New Zealand developers who have based solutions on Microsoft Technology. We want stability and openness on some of the base data formats.
For years we have asked MS to open up their document format. I almost fell over when they did.
Those developers are investing big time in applications over that platform. Having Open XML as standard gives the confidence to keep investing and certainty over that format.
For example, without installing Word on a server, developers can bulk generate large numbers of custom Word documents server side. That would have been a pain to do earlier.
Look I’m not going to die in the ditch over this. I think it’s an interesting debate and appreciate your comments.
Rod, yes but if you read the white paper you will discover that OOXML doesn’t really let you do what you hope it will do (develop software to produce Word documents on a server or accurately redisplay docx files in software other than MS Office).
This application might:
http://holloway.co.nz/docvert/
Written by a kiwi as well.
So would this one:
http://www.openoffice.org/
But no thanks to OOXML.
It’s nice MS has given you a glimpse of some of the stuff you need to achieve your goals. And their stated intentions are laudable.
But they could do so in a much better way. They are very smart and would know this. So why have they not done so? Grr.
What the Forrester blog entry fails to note is that many competing organisations collaborated to produce ODF and many other standards, like HTML, and XML. That is the normal process for producing a standard.
It also fails to tell you that there are *lots* of ODF implementations out there, largely because it is such a straight forward standard to follow.
I have to agree with Rod on this one, and it is tech-political.
I think that any attempt to create a “standard” in such a naturally creative field ( software development ) is always going to create debate and disagreement about what the desired standard is, and I think that’s a good and healthy thing. It’s just human nature, and more often than not the adoption of “standards” means “this piece of software will conform to one of 17 standards and it’s up to you to figure out which”.
But let’s look at the reality. Rod is quite right - New Zealand has a massive software investment in software developed using Microsoft Technology, and that’s just a business reality. So for me - I am a Kiwi developing software using Microsoft tecnhologies for a reasonably large enterprise in London - I am less interested in the finer points of the standard that I am in protecting and preserving huge existing investments in that technology.
And so from that perspective what Microsoft are doing can only be a good thing.
In other words, those of us who have legacy investments in Microsoft technologies have a perfectly legitimate interest in sticking with Microsoft, because they won the farm, and this in my view is significantly more important than the finer points of the standard.
Rod respectfully, I suspect that you have been talking to far too many people who have already hitched themselves to the Microsoft horse.
I work in Government and there is serious concern throughout government that this standard will perpetuate monopoly and achieve nothing else, except get around some mandating of standards in Government purchasing.
Microsoft has documented OOXML, great.
OOXML has different use-cases to ODF, great.
OOXML preserves legacy document formatting, great. Lets hope that Microsoft Office will actually display it correctly across versions, they often fail.
But why do we need to standardise something that is looking backwards not forwards. Standards are designed and discussed in order to serve the requirements of the future, and this standard wasn’t designed to address the future and is badly designed for it. Why do we have to allow this standard that has massive holes in Internationalisation, Documentation, flexibility and implementability.
Ask your Microsoft friends to please throw out this insulting ‘Promise not to sue’ and actually give us a licence (irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide, sublicencable). We don’t even have the right to amend the documentation for the standard to fix the gaping holes.
The standard will go through even with my vote of “No, with comments”, because Microsoft and the ISO working group will fix many of the issues and re-submit the standard, because this isn’t about not having a standard, it is about having a good one.
Andrew.
Additionaly it is named (or perhaps misnamed) Office Open XML, which is bound to confuse, unpronouncable and misleading compared with OpenOffice.Org (ooo). The earlier name “MS Office Open XML”, is much clearer and accurate.
Andrew
Of course a lot of the debate is all about what is “right” and “wrong” & everything in between … not what the real debate should be, which is what format gives users, developers and everyone else the best experience.
I am no expert in this area either, but the reasons I have read about on the net and seen in presentations from people is that the non-MS proposed format does not do a good enough job i.e. Word could not achieve a full fidelity representation of a regular .doc document.
If you can’t get a full fidelity XML based document from a .doc based one then the format is purely academic.
Just girding my loins for today’s debate…
“I have to agree with Rod on this one, and it is tech-political.”
Which puts you in a win win situation. If the proposal is reject it was for political reasons, if accepted for technical ones? That is pretty insulting to those (in both camps) have have actually bothered to try and understand the tech. and legalities.
“Microsoft, because they won the farm, and this in my view is significantly more important than the finer points of the standard.”
Well the “because they won farm argument” is pretty weak (and not true in any case). Here are some examples of the end game you seem to welcome:
http://www.drury.net.nz/2007/08/21/xtra-email-is-now-in-australia/
and
http://www.drury.net.nz/2007/08/17/moble-data-charges-even-crazier/
I’m actually sitting in the Standards New Zealand meeting on this matter right now.
I note with interest that the response from the ‘home grown’ IT services companies such as Gen-i, Fronde and Intergen has been resoundingly positive.
I think we need to ensure that todays session is about what is best for New Zealand and New Zealand businesses, citizens and civil society at large.
It must not be about what is best for Google, Microsoft, IBM, Sun or any other multinational organization.
there’s a maxim often used in the standards world that there should at least be two independent and complete implementations of anything that’s being considered as a standard - Microsoft really need to get someone else to do an implementation from the spec to iron out the spec-bugs before submitting it seriously. I’ve sat on standards committees for international standards before (and tried to implement the results) and I’m personally painfully aware just how important this is.
(remember the Open XML is NOT really a ‘defacto standard’ - it’s a actually new format for office, most people still use the old .doc format - I believe a recent survey of the web showed about 10 times more ODT files out there than OOXML files)
Rod & John Y,
I’m somewhat confused by your argument. You appear to be saying the primary benefit of the standard is to lock-in the state of the Microsoft format, thus preventing Microsoft from making future changes which stop your document production system from working.
Surely forcing in such an unpopular standard is not the best way of doing this?
Day 1 at Standards NZ is complete. Rod, you were quoted twice by MS and once by me :-)
“Will this be a fun debate? Ubetcha.”
Yes, it has been fun and very interesting. I am particularly grateful to the three folks (out of 15 stakeholders) who have come from overseas to present their views.
They have *all* been thoughtful and intelligent.
Whatever the outcome, however, the NZ reps were also onto their metal and this is yet another example of how NZers add value to international processes and systems when they are open.
The oddest thing about this standard is that it contains parameters to render old documents in an unspecified way. Presumably when an application opens a legacy document it _should_ resolve any rendering quirks and translate those into the new (and presumably) less buggy version.
The existence of these parameters in the spec suggests that legacy documents are going to be saved in OO-XML format with the original rendering anomalies baked in. The legacy instructions are for rendering the OO-XML. I’ve read somewhere that OO-XML is really an XML version of the current binary format.
So I don’t subscribe to the argument that these are needed to open legacy documents. What it seems to suggest is that any legacy documents opened in an MS product are converted to OO-XML with the original anomalies intact.
When another vendor’s product is used to open the ‘legacy’ OO-XML document they will not be able to render it correctly as the rendering behaviours referred to in the standard are not documented anywhere. Or if they are (like the 1900 bug) they will have to follow the MS way of treating the value.
I’m sorry, but it reads like ‘lock in’ to me.
Those of you at the meeting might like to ask the question: Does MS intend to save legacy documents in OO-XML with previous rendering anomolies intact?
As a standard it need a lot of work.
I’ve been wanting to reply to this since I saw it come through on RSS earlier in the day. Unfortunately something kicked off and only now do I have a chance to throw in my 2c. But there’s no need. Don Christie, in particular, has done an excellent job - I find just one aspect of the debate that has not been explored…
If we look at the history of technical standards, and particularly those over the last (say) ten years a common pattern emerges: Regardless of vendor, it is the simpler technology that actually gets implemented and hence the simpler technology that actually delivers value. Look at what the Internet has been built on: HTTP, HTML, SMTP, POP … all ludicrously simple text based protocols. And now, our beloved Web2 is taking the approach one step further - XML being replaced by REST; J2EE/WebLogic being replaced by Ruby/Rails or Python/Django; and new protocols such as RSS being embraced to great benefit. And not necessarily for what their authors thought they were going to be used for.
There is no doubt across both sides of the debate as to the benefits of standardising on a good quality plaintext/structured document format. But OOXML is not that format and it’s adoption would mean the loss of some truly astounding applications and considerable value to New Zealand society as a whole. Much better if the governments, standards bodies, businesses, geeks and consumers of the world send a clear message to Microsoft - implement ODF, or we’re off.
Hi Rod (and other posters),
I would like to say that I fully support Don Christie’s position on the OOXML issue. We only need one standard, and that standard is already here: ODF.
Rod, in an earlier comment you said: “For years we have asked MS to open up their document format. I almost fell over when they did.”
I think we can all agree that Microsoft exists for a single purpose: to maximise the return to its shareholders (as any business should). If being nice to their customers increases their profits, they’ll do so. If bending ethics, destroying competitors, consuming partners, and wringing money out of customers (Microsoft Genuine Advantage anyone?) maximises their profit, they’ll do that too. Due to the market dynamics of Monopolies, with Microsoft it’s more often the latter. So why would Microsoft do something “nice” for their customers, partners, and competitors, like offer to open a file format? I don’t think it’s because its nice. It’s because Microsoft knows something most people don’t: they’re on the brink of losing their Monopoly. They’re about to start their decline.
Rod, I appreciate that you make most of your money building software on Microsoft technologies. As a conscious choice, neither I nor my business colleagues use Microsoft technologies in our companies. We use and build on technologies that compete with those that Microsoft produce, despite the fact that we’re currently on playing field that is decidedly skewed in Microsoft’s favour.
We are part of the quiet masses of open source developers rather busy running small, successful IT businesses that don’t use any Microsoft technologies - and who therefore see little value in turning out for TechEd… As a result, you might’ve got a slightly misleading impression of the support within NZ for Microsoft’s OOXML from the sycophantic demographic who did attend.
I assert that the company I run actually represents a proportion of the kiwi IT industry comparable to that made up of Microsoft-dependents - the sort of folks who turn out for TechEd. I don’t think you’d find much evidence to contradict me. Sure, you don’t hear about us much because we’re lower profile - we don’t have the benefit of Microsoft’s momentum in the public eye, nor the marketing budget assistance they lavish upon their favoured partners. To be fair, many of us are a bit rough around the edges with regard to marketing. We might not even make as much money (although there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with that, either). We do, however, cut a lot of code. And build very good technologies. That integrate very nicelyDigital Dark Age is real threat. A truly open standard, ODF, already exists to help remedy the situation - hell, Microsoft even helped create it as part of OASIS. Of course, Microsoft has attempted to make it look like whole idea of heading off the Digital Dark Ages was their idea - but in fact their self-serving business practices are the main reasons that it exists in the first place. How would their OOXML actually help the situation? It wouldn’t. Not a bit. But it might help Microsoft buy some time.
OOXML isn’t about offering a better way to store new files, or retain access to old files, or allow competition, or about being “nice”. It’s about a company that fears being legislated out of existence (and with good reason). They’re absolutely desperate to see this pass for their very survival. Look at the fuss they kicked up in Massachusetts - they pulled out all the stops and employed some rather heavy handed tactics resulting in the resignation of the key advocate within commonwealth’s government. Not cricket. They’ve used the same heavy-handed approach in every other “bell-weather” jurisdiction. Once the first domino falls, the rest will soon follow.
From your admittedly self-interested perspective, I can understand your support of OOXML. But perhaps you can also see how you could just as easily succeed in a world in which Microsoft was somewhat less dominant or even non-existent - you’re a smart guy, you can continue to succeed on your own merits. Why ride on Microsoft’s coat tails?
Rod, you have earned a degree of influence for your demonstrable savvy in a competitive business climate. Since your initial victories, however, I think you’ll agree that the climate has changed. I respectfully encourage that you to reconsider your position on OOXML.
Sincerely,
Dave Lane
Director, Egressive Limited
Director, Effusion Group Ltd.
Apologies - my previous comment didn’t come through correctly - here’s a corrected version:
Hi Rod (and other posters),
I would like to say that I support Don Christie’s position on the OOXML issue. We only need one standard, and that standard is already here: ODF.
Rod, in an earlier comment you said: “For years we have asked MS to open up their document format. I almost fell over when they did.”
I think we can all agree that Microsoft exists for a single purpose: to maximise the return to its shareholders (as any business should). If being nice to their customers increases their profits, they’ll do so. If bending ethics, destroying competitors, consuming partners, and wringing money out of customers (Microsoft Genuine Advantage anyone?) maximises their profit, they’ll do that too. Due to the market dynamics of Monopolies, with Microsoft it’s more often the latter. So why would Microsoft do something “nice” for their customers, partners, and competitors, like offer to open a file format? I don’t think it’s because its nice. It’s because Microsoft knows something most people don’t: they’re on the brink of losing their Monopoly. They’re about to start their decline.
Rod, I appreciate that you make most of your money building software on Microsoft technologies. As a conscious choice, neither I nor my business colleagues use Microsoft technologies in our companies. We use and build on technologies that compete with those that Microsoft produce, despite the fact that we’re currently on playing field that is decidedly skewed in Microsoft’s favour.
We are part of the quiet masses of open source developers rather busy running small, successful IT businesses that don’t use any Microsoft technologies - and who therefore see little value in turning out for TechEd… As a result, you might’ve got a slightly misleading impression of the support within NZ for Microsoft’s OOXML from the sycophantic demographic who did attend.
I assert that the company I run actually represents a proportion of the kiwi IT industry comparable to that made up of Microsoft-dependents - the sort of folks who turn out for TechEd. I don’t think you’d find much evidence to contradict me. Sure, you don’t hear about us much because we’re lower profile - we don’t have the benefit of Microsoft’s momentum in the public eye, nor the marketing budget assistance they lavish upon their favoured partners. To be fair, many of us are a bit rough around the edges with regard to marketing. We might not even make as much money (although there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with that, either). We do, however, cut a lot of code. And build very good technologies. That integrate very nicely because they use open standards. Innovative technologies, something which really troubles Microsoft. The sort of technologies which will disrupt the current incumbents and power the next generation of businesses that will make NZ a real knowledge economy. And they will make Microsoft and any business too tightly bound to their proprietary technologies… decidedly less bankable.
Conscientious individuals and groups in the governments of the world - who take seriously their responsibility as guardians of the citizens’ information - are realising that the Digital Dark Age is real threat. A truly open standard, ODF, already exists to help remedy the situation - hell, Microsoft even helped create it as part of OASIS. Of course, Microsoft has attempted to make it look like whole idea of heading off the Digital Dark Ages was their idea - but in fact their self-serving business practices are the main reasons that it exists in the first place. How would their OOXML actually help the situation? It wouldn’t. Not a bit. But it might help Microsoft buy some time.
OOXML isn’t about offering a better way to store new files, or retain access to old files, or allow competition, or about being “nice”. It’s about a company that fears being legislated out of existence (and with good reason). They’re absolutely desperate to see this pass for their very survival. Look at the fuss they kicked up in Massachusetts - they pulled out all the stops and employed some rather heavy handed tactics resulting in the resignation of the key advocate within commonwealth’s government. Not cricket. They’ve used the same heavy-handed approach in every other “bell-weather” jurisdiction. Once the first domino falls, the rest will soon follow.
From your admittedly self-interested perspective, I can understand your support of OOXML. But perhaps you can also see how you could just as easily succeed in a world in which Microsoft was somewhat less dominant or even non-existent - you’re a smart guy, you can continue to succeed on your own merits. Why ride on Microsoft’s coat tails?
Rod, you have earned a degree of influence for your demonstrable savvy in a competitive business climate. Since your initial victories, however, I think you’ll agree that the climate has changed. I respectfully encourage that you to reconsider your position on OOXML.
Sincerely,
Dave Lane
Director, Egressive Limited
Director, Effusion Group Ltd.
Rod, you don’t need this standard to generate XML MS Office documents on the server. Been there, done that. The documentation is fairly ok, and it’s easy to reverse engineer how it works. If only the XML matched the binary formats, for example when I did this you couldn’t include images in the Excel XML format, sigh.
So there is no technical reason we need this standard.
There is a business reason though, and it’s bad for every open source developer. If this becomes a standard, it can be used as a wedge: as no one, for technical reasons as I showed above, can implement this standard, only Microsoft and Microsoft developers can become software suppliers of the government.
So it’s a big win for corporate interests, and the little guy and open source developers are left in the cold.
Sorry for the delay in approving comments yesterday - was traveling.
Good debate.
Good debate so far :)
IMHO, surely the point here is help move the industry as a whole towards conformity. To my mind, confirming MS OO-XML as an open standard helps achieve this aim and provides formality to one of the most common electronic document formats in use - in this case, it helps move the Microsoft sphere of the industry towards conformity.
It strikes me that maybe one of the problems here is that ODF “snuck in” as a standard but without actual widespread adoption among product vendors. So people continue creating content in their format of choice, standard or not. Now that some of the other formats want to standardise they are running into the argument of “there is already a standard”. While of course true it seems a shallow argument because these parties currently control the mass market adopted proprietary formats standard or not - why should we not let them standardise their formats with an aim for a future single document standard rather than just perpetuating the status quo?
So maybe the bigger question here is: Why does there only have to be a single document standard (just yet) particularly if we have such an impossible time agreeing about things.
Lets assume for a minute that neither MS OO-XML or PDF get standardised. Will people stop using them? Doubtful. Will Microsoft or Adobe change the formats to align with ODF? No, again highly doubtful. So what have we gained here?
While I don’t think anyone would disagree with the desire to see a single standard emerge, practically we don’t really seem have the ability to stamp down an ultimatum on the industry in any direction just yet.
One other thing I have not heard much thought on and would love to hear other thoughts about (since I have yet to understand much about it either); Given PDF 1.7 is currently in the submission process as well - should we reject it on entirely the same grounds?
Jeremy, please see the technical reasons why this can’t be a standard. These are not minor matters. No third party can implement this standard. That’s the problem. No one is opposed to standards they can implement. But this Microsoft proposal has been written such that only Microsoft can implement the standard.
Berend said…
Jeremy, please see the technical reasons why this can’t be a standard.
May be I am gonna throw in my 2 cents here. I tend to agree with Berend’s statement above. I think that for something to be a standard it has to be defined by many parties and not just one person or organization. I am a member in one of the JSR (Java Specification Request) group that define the standard API for data-mining in the Java platform. I am with 2 others who are members of this expert group are individuals (ie, not a representative of a company), plus at least one member or more from companies such as IBM, Oracle, BEA, Sun MicroSystem, SAP, Fair Isaac Corporation, KXEN, Hyperion Solutions Corporation, SAS, SPSS, and others. There are nearly about 30 members all together who are involved in this standard group. We do a conference call once a week to discuss what new features to be added or old ones to be revised for inclusion in the current version of the data-mining API. In the last 4 years since I got involved with this group, sometimes some vendors have tried to push some new features to be included in the data-mining standard API in which they have already implemented them in their tools (business intelligence or business analytic), only to be rejected by others.
I think that this is what a standard should be, all voices are treated equal regardless whether you’re a big corporate or not, even individual like myself have proposed new features which are then agreed upon by the group and accepted to be included in the upcoming next version of java data-mining standard API. Features that I have proposed were accepted not because I am an individual or because I represent one of the big corporate, which I am not, but because, the group thinks that the features that I have put forward for discussion, are where the data-mining technology of today and the near future is heading. Vendors who want to make their data-mining or business intelligence tool compliant with this standard, must implement part or all of the java datamining API. The certification of a java datamining compliant tool from any vendor is done by a third party which is independent from SunMicrosystem even the vendors who are involved in drafting this standard. If a tool is verified that it passed this test, then it is then certified a java datamining compliant tool. The java datamining standard API is competing against Microsoft own data-mining standards, where Microsoft was invited to join the drafting of this standard prior to formation of the group (pre-verison 1.0), but they didn’t accept the invitation. All the major vendors are involved in this standard except Microsoft.
IMO, I think that an industry standard should represent the interests of the whole industry, rather than a single vendor. My experience in getting involved in drafting the java data-mining standard API confirmed to me that it is the case, ie, if it is a multi-party agreement then you can call it a real standard.
This isn’t about taking sides with Microsoft or IBM; it’s about looking after ourselves. Face facts, everyone reading this blog extracts value out of products and services based on the Office formats. Yes, I certainly am in favour of them becoming ISO standards - just to make my life simpler delivering to my end customers. And yes, maybe this means additional clarification from Microsoft on some of the less well specified details, but big deal, it doesn’t change the fact that ISO standardisation is strategically beneficial to us.
Is Open XML the be all and end all of document specification and will it be the last document standard to be proposed to ISO. Of course not; new office technologies will be bound to come along and pull the rug out from under us. In the meantime though I’d like to see this issue put to bed so we can get on and work. You know at the end of the day the customer is always right. If the vast, vast, vast majority of customers choose to use the Office document formats then ISO are of little value to me if they ignore it.
I can only agree with what Falafulu had to say. Any standard must be based upon Standard Group involving more than one member. How can a standards group of one interested party actually call what they are creating a standard?
OOXML was designed to cover off Government mandated requirements that Microsoft move from their legacy binary formats into an XML format.
The problem is it is just a direct translation of the legacy document formats into a new document format.
Making the spec 6000+ pages long, the spec un-readable and the documents created crytic and thus unable to be read without having the specification side by side the source document. And missing ways to describe basic functionality (Vector Graphics, Macro’s and DRM to name just three) from the specification.
It makes me feel like someone has handed me a book in greek, ripped off the last 1/3 of the book and told me it’s an open standard.
Why should this make it’s way into a standard as none of the previous Microsoft Binary formats were made into an ISO standard.
That being said Microsoft moving towards open standards can only be a good thing for all NZ citizens. It’s just a shame that they designed it to ensure that Office is the only product that can use it now and into the future. This guarantees customer lock-in why maintaining the guise of “Open Standards”.
And using “Office Open XML” sounding very much like “Open Office”…… Hummm
There haven’t been nearly enough comments ;-) so here is my bit
- A standard should be just that - open, free and, well, standard
- Idealy a standard should be “owned” neutrally - It would be a sad day if Bell Helmets “owned” th bike helmet standard
- Rod would, I’m sure, admit freely that he isn’t a neutral observer - his viewpoint is still entirely vaid, just a little biased
- Similarly some of the open source crew are biased, I’ve often been amused/frustrated by reverse anti-competitive action in th software space (see http://benkepes.wordpress.com/2007/08/13/thats-pretty-closed-open-source-software/)
- Just becuase MS have a history of (arguably) dodgy anti-competitive behavior doesn’t mean they wil always be like this but
- Given MS’s history of (arguably) dodgy anti-competitive behavior the industry should be over zealous in ensurng a good, neutral and mutually beneficial outcome
Thoughts?
I just noticed this (linked off reddit)
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/Software/India_throws_Microsoft_open_format_out_of_the_window/articleshow/2305780.cms
We should embrace ODF because that’s what our trading partners are doing.
http://jimdonovan.net.nz/2007/08/24/microsoft-vs-open-document-standard-debate/
Hey all
As far as I am concerned this has has turned into a typical “open source vs Microsoft” debate. And if you think it through, that is exactly what the original question really is, isn’t it ?
Jim D - what’s wrong with self interest ?
As I said earlier, many of us have a huge legacy investment in code that was developed using Microsoft technology. Our interest is purely in ensuring that that legacy is protected, going forwards.
Why on earth should we say to ourselves “we are going to develop using this piece of Microsoft technology here, but only if those developers out there who choose not to develop using Microsoft technology are happy with it” ?
That just makes no sense to me.
To fan the flames from earlier comments : in the context of decisions that were made years ago about which technologies to develop on in the first place, Microsoft most definitely won the farm, and that is the business reality my fairly large enterprise client here in London now live with.
What is, or is not, going on in the non-Microsoft development world is of academic interest only and does not have any impact on day-to-day development decisions. Some of you seem to think that is selfish. Why exactly is that ?
And I wonder how many of the anti-Microsoft people who have participated in this debate use Windows, or other Microsoft products ? Particularly Microsoft Word ???
Have a nice weekend all
John Y; Nothing’s wrong with self interest. On reflection I deleted that sentence from my blog post, because it made no sense since my argument was about larger self-interest, and anyway wasn’t fair on well-meaning people from both camps.
Not sure what went wrong with my previous comment, which was essentially:
1 MS has created the defacto standard, and it’s now been made open by them.
2 Given the billions of extant documents, I see no advantage to business in moving away from it. Backwards compatibility is essential or any alternative standard won’t be adopted.
John Younger,
Please don’t tar all of us with your “compromised” brush. I’ve run a business for the past 8 years without need to use a single piece of Microsoft software. We’re experiencing unprecedented interest in our open source offerings, and are growing.
If the open source viewpoint is only of “academic interest only”, why is it that the academics are “wagging the dog”? It should be obvious to any moderately intelligent person that Microsoft would only try this twisted OOXML standarisation stunt if they knew *not doing so* would cost them that farm they won. Otherwise, why would it need to be on the “fast track”?? If this was a game of check, open source is saying “check”.
I believe you’ve got a very blinkered perception of the IT world, as those who believe themselves to be on the top of the heap often do. All I can say is best of luck to you, and I hope you packed your own parachute.
Dave
I would like to respond to Jim’s comments, as essentially that is the whole crux of the problem:
1 MS has created the defacto standard, and it’s now been made open by them.
Yes DOC is the defacto standard, but DOCX / OOXML is not “open” at all. This has been the point of all the anti-OOXML argument, the proposed standard could never be considered to be anything other than a continuation of MS’s proprietary file formats “wrapped up” and heavily lobbied by MS worldwide to look like an open standard to non technical people. DOCX /OOXML is not going away, nor is MS,
If any technical Pro-MS person who had actually bothered read the spec, or look through the XML in the files would know that OOXML is IMPOSSIBLE to implement in anything meaningful and be assured it would work in Office 2007.
If it was truly an open standard why would the OSS community and most other non-MS aligned companies be complaining about the fact it is not?
It’s sad that you dismiss all arguments by the OSS community & others as pure anti-ms bashing rather than actually seeing if they have a point.
2 Given the billions of extant documents, I see no advantage to business in moving away from it. Backwards compatibility is essential or any alternative standard won’t be adopted.
The spec does nothing to handle the “billions of legacy documents”. There is no mention of the legacy binary file formats, how to handle them or anything. It only talks about the current OOXML based format that MS have offered.
MS’s Office Migration Toolkit ™ handles conversion into their new OOXML format, but that is not the specification. This is a free download from MS but it is not bound under the CNS or OSP, has a very typical MS EULA you have to agree to :). And yes the Binary file formats are now available, but have you had a look at them… holes, a lot of holes is all I can say.
To end, I know there is a lot of anti-ms sentiment on the OSS / other companies with vested interests.
Personally I recommend you visit http://www.noooxml.org/ with an open mind see that yes there is a lot of anti-ms babble on there, but there is also a lot of VERY valid points as well.
The problem has been and will always be the specification is fundamentally technically flawed. End of story. Letting it become an ISO standard would just be garbage in, garbage out (or money in the bank for MS as they would be the only ones who could implement it).
“2 Given the billions of extant documents, I see no advantage to business in moving away from it. Backwards compatibility is essential or any alternative standard won’t be adopted.”
Which is why it is a shame you need specification that are outside the Ecma OOXML standard for this goal to be achieved. That was what Gray Knowlton from MS Redmond told us two days ago.
Jim, I am not sure what your bee is with this particular point, but I think you need to do a little more than read press releases before propagating it as a key and critical reason for OOXML being adopted by ISO.
Of course, Microsoft opening there specifications is a good thing. Writing *good* specifications would be a better thing, and complying and using existing international standards would be a brilliant thing.
“Which is why it is a shame you need specification that are outside the Ecma OOXML standard for this goal to be achieved. That was what Gray Knowlton from MS Redmond told us two days ago.”
No. from my recollection that is not what he said. Once the proposed changes have been made by ECMA to specify the behaviours of legacy attributes no other documents will be required. All this posturing really puts ECMA into a $#^%$ed if you do $%^$&ed if you don’t position.
The antagonists seem to change between the spec being either
a) Too long and detailed for people to be able to implement or;
b) Too vague and lacking in specific detail for people to implement.
A key stated design goal of ECMA OOXML is, as JimD has noted, to preserve legacy compatability with many billions of legacy documents. This means, unfortunatly that it’s got to carry with it a large amount of detail.
Anyway.
I’ve posted a couple of notes on this into my PoliTechlaw category. http://www.syringe.net.nz/CategoryView,category,PoliTechLaw.aspx
I’ve got my first summary post plus a response to Don’s post on the NZOSS site- I would have posted there but they require registration and give me no commitment that they will not spam me with bollocks….. so I’m just going to note my response here and hopefully Don might link to it.
Is Peter L above the Peter L from Novell I sat next to at the meeting?
Hi Chris,
“No. from my recollection that is not what he said. Once the proposed changes have been made by ECMA to specify the behaviours of legacy attributes no other documents will be required.”
The issue of parsing the billions of legacy binary documents is addressed outside of OOXML in binary specifications provided by Microsoft under various licences (which are “open depending your definition of open” as Gray said). This particular issue is not open for interpretation — there is no information on parsing binary formats in the current OOXML spec, and there is no stated plan anywhere for legacy binary parsing to be added to OOXML, as Don correct says.
So perhaps you’re getting confused on this technical issue Chris. I think you’re mistaking it for the separate issue of representing binary format quirks in OOXML through the use of XML nodes like autoSpaceLikeWord95 (not “Word 98″ as you said at Standards NZ). OOXML does not currently provide enough detail for this but Gray (and indeed wider Microsoft and Ecma) have said this will be addressed in a later revision.
I think it’s important to say that the binary format documentation hasn’t received the same scrutiny as OOXML and I think it would be premature to comment on its quality until we get some independent reviews of that.
I hope this helps clarify this techy issue for you :)
ps. For those looking to convert legacy binary formats into OpenDocument there’s mature conversion software libraries like Sun’s ODF Toolkit (whose code base goes back through 20 years of bugs!), and, you know, my Docvert.org software. There’s a long list here http://urltea.com/1bdf
Sorry, but I just have to pick up on this statement from Jim:
“And I wonder how many of the anti-Microsoft people who have participated in this debate use Windows, or other Microsoft products ? Particularly Microsoft Word ???”
Using Microsoft products is not the same as endorsing a closed (or rediculously complex open) standard.
ODF is one of a few solutions for a truly open document format - one which works _independant of platform_ - and when it comes down to it, the powers-that-be should be chosing the format which is
1) most reliable
2) most portable
3) most flexible
4) best hybrid of all ‘most’ or ‘best’ categories.
Selecting .doc as a standard is infeasible as it is not ‘flexible’ nor is it ‘open’ or readily available for people who don’t want to be locked in to a single vendor’s solution. It is thus also not Portable.
Selecting OOXML is inflexible because of its complexity - and theres plenty of other more detailed explanations in this thread already.
So don’t see this discussion as necessarily being a case of ‘the MS fans vs the open source fans’ (or as some might see them - zealots) - Many fans of Open Source can (and do) choose to use Microsoft based systems for particular reasons.
My personal case involves the fact that I need to use MS operating systems and document formats because of my employers requirements. Thus I have a mix of Windows, Mac and Linux systems at home.
In my world the best solution will be a document formatting standard that I can move between all platforms regardless of their origin. I want to be able to work on the document in my windows PC (OpenOffice), send it to my Fiancees Mac for her to edit, have her send it to me to use on my windows PC at work (MS Office), and then for me to be able to send a finalised version back home to my Linux desktop (Open Office).
That to me, defines a truly portable, flexible, _useful_ standard. If I can still read my legacy .doc format files in some way 5 years from now, much the better - but I don’t want to be locked into a limited suite of applications available on limited platforms in order to be able to access ’standard’ documents.
Yes, it was me was sitting next to you chris. And these are my views and not those of my employer.
And from my perspective I am actually concerned about:
The spec being Too long and detailedobsificated or cryptic by it’s very nature of not re-using existing open standards requiring the spec open at all times for people to be able to implement while at the same time the spec being Too vague and lacking in specific detail for people to implement in certain areas of basic core document functionality such as Macros, DRM, Vector Graphics to name a few.
Again, should an Alpha 0.1 release of a specification be used as an ISO standard.
Damm, that HTML tag didn’t work, The
detailedword was supposed to be striked out. Replaced with obsificated or cryptic.This is about the fourth time I have started to write a comment on this article and each time I delete them as I just cannot believe some of the comments people have left.
About the only person who approached their comment from a business perspective was Jim Donovan with the “Given the billions of extant documents, I see no advantage to business in moving away from it”. (and just so I don’t appear as a “compromised brush”, I don’t know Jim, have never met him, don’t work for Fronde, don’t own shares in Fronde, or Xero or Microsoft).
We have a standard, its called Office, get over it. Its a standard because more people use it than anything else. The last comment by Matthew to suggest that businesses would consider converting documents is just unbelievable. Do you guys really think most businesses care about this? Maybe a few people on a standards committee might, or in government but no one else cares.
And for people to suggest that people here have an agenda because they use MS development tools is simply petty, everyone here has assumptions.
All the comments have proved to me is that to most people here this is a religious debate. The purpose of software is to serve the needs of users; software is not an end in itself.
Why do M$ need a standard if Office is by default the standard. Even though I would agree that Open Office is only 10% of M$ Office most people only need 10%.
The simple reason is Public Sector, which is a big market needs a standard open format to store their documents. Recently vocal groups in Public Sector IS Organizations and even Countries are hanging out to break out of being M$ dependent and they are using the closed file format issue with M$ as their get out of jail free card.
Now if M$ can say we have an open format and it is approved by all these standard organizations this will make it harder for these people to migrate to something more open.
A cynic would say that M$ Office is where M$ earn all their money, no M$ Office no M$. The rest of their business pales in comparison to the $ they make out of M$ Office.
It is quite easy to understand the massive lobbying that they are doing at the moment.
I personally think that it would be ignorant and wrong to accept a standard supported by only one software vendor even if they do have 90% of the market share. M$ and it supporters seem to be treating the standards process similar to a patent process.
M$ should stop wasting everybodies time and adopt ODF as an export format from its M$ Office Products and start revisiting its business plan to accomodate the happier relaxed and more open world. OOXML is just a complex unimplementable behemoth, it almost appears that M$ implemented XML exports for their files and then retrofitted a standard to it.
It will actually do M$ a whole lot of good on the marketing front if it stopped resorting to such underhand tactics and just focussed on with providing innovation and value for money.
I actually prefer to see more M$ in the Public Sector as it has the most compelling story to tell in terms of least complexity for most value. Sharepoint is fantastic and the fact that the very wonderful M$ Excel 2007 now supports 1,000,000 rows. M$ Excel is a fantastic product especially for data analysis.
.NET and Visual Studio are a lot less hazardous in terms of integration risks and expensive decision processes offered by the Eclipse J2EE crowd.
Hi Dermott. Unfortunately, I’m not “over it.” MS Office isn’t a standard and it can never be until it is available for all the platforms that potentially need to be able to access and generate word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation information. If the NZ government legislated that all kiwis wanting to do business with the government were required to purchase the product of a single overseas convicted criminal monopolist, I don’t think they’d find themselves in a politically tenable situation. Ask the IRD. My accounts person files our online returns with Firefox, because IE doesn’t normally run on Linux (nor would any intelligent person want it to)…
Calling Microsoft Office a standard is absurd. Linux and Mac OS X are growing in market share at the expense of Microsoft Windows. For fear of losing their monopoly, Microsoft will not release MS Office for Linux and, as far as I know, offers only moderately compatible versions of MS Office for OS X. Everyone I know who uses Macs uses NeoOffice. Microsoft’s dropping of support for other MS applications on OS X has spooked that market permanently. Linux users employ Open Office or KOffice. All of those applications already support ODF as their native format.
The Ministry of Education is already recommending ODF fluent applications to schools - many schools already use them. Microsoft knows this (even if many of its shills don’t), which is why they’re in such a hurry to push through OOXML - so they don’t get legislated OUT OF CONTENTION. Has Microsoft mentioned to you how many schools use Macs and Linux? I think they’d be a bit sheepish about those numbers because it shows how they’re losing control of their formerly captive market.
Until it is available on all the relevant platforms used by any organisation (schools, businesses, NGOs, CRIs, etc.) that must do business with the NZ government, Microsoft Office is only a standard for the poor people who don’t know enough to demand an operating system that actually works.
Do you run Microsoft Windows, Dermott? Is your virus scanner up to date? I hope so, although I still encourage you to remain vigilant due to the host of zero day exploits your Windows system sports. I help poor customers deal with the ravages of a poorly designed operating system daily - in fact adding a modicum of safety by transferring them to open source applications like Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird, and Open Office is a good littler earner for us. Luckily the Linux desktops and servers we provide don’t really seem to have similar problems. People are asking us about them more and more…
Actually, I think you’re a bit misguided if you think this is a religious debate. Different ideologies perhaps, but more likely, I suspect it’s a clash of the old guard grown fat thanks to monopoly profits and the next, somewhat hungrier and more posterity-minded generation.
Unless the OOXML format can be implemented on any platform, without any proprietary extensions, it’s purpose is purely for monopoly maintenance by a convicted criminal (Microsoft) that fears a level playing field. Moreover, it attempts to compete with an existing global standard, ODF, which already has multiple working, independent implementations. Why not implement ODF as a native standard, Microsoft, alongside OOXML? Have Microsoft even successfully implemented OOXML yet? Is there any guarantee it’ll even work? How can it become a standard if it doesn’t even have a reference implementation? Microsoft’s reasons for OOXML and rejection of ODF are everything to do with deceit and a slanted playing field and nothing to do with openness, “innovation” or allowing competition.
OOXML is a faux standard which exists only to help Microsoft avoid competing on a level playing field because they know that their dominance will end the moment they have to compete on the technical merits of their software vs. anybody else’s.
Kind regards,
Dave Lane
Pop over to my blog for a few posts that answer many of the common questions here:
IP Issues today
How to implement and who has already
Who made the standard (not just MSFT)
Why have more than one standard
…
blogs.msdn.com/smcbreen
Cheers,
Sean
Dave Lane, I believe in having an industry standards just as you do, however I don’t believe in labeling Microsoft as a convicted monopolist is a fair one. I think that the anti-trust law, where Microsoft was charged under, is an outdated legislation and should be tossed out, because it violates property rights, yes Microsoft intellectual properties (Windows operating system & other associated software). Microsoft was convicted for no other reason other than it is a successful business. Head over to this blog and read what the Libertarianz have to say about monopoly.
Cue Card Libertarianism - Monopoly
Wow, Falafulu,
As an expat American appalled at the state of my former country, thanks in large part to the catastrophic Bush “administration”, you’re waving red before a bull by a) excusing Microsoft’s behaviour in the US, EU, and everywhere else in the world in which its business practices are being examined in the courts,
b) pulling out the “intellectual property” card - I think you’ll find vastly differing opinions on that - software patents are, in my opinion, ludicrous,
c) and I think you’ll find that Microsoft’s business is pretty close to the opposite of capitalism.
Intellectual property protection is, at best, a distortion of the free market. At worst, it is government granted monopoly. Microsoft are - in financial terms at least - a success corporation. They did not, however, achieve their success through the mechanisms of capitalism. They are, however, extraordinarily good at exerting pressure on governments, influencing favourable legislation, hobbling would-be competitors by eschewing standards, distorting markets by leveraging their existing monopolies with loss leaders, and spreading invalid information in the marketplace. If that’s capitalism, then it’s like no capitalism I’ve ever heard of.
Actually, capitalism has to do with minimal government intervention except to prevent distortion of the free market (which is where Microsoft have been found guilty in both the US and EU). It is also anti-capitalist to introduce artificial barriers to entry into a competitive market (DMCA anyone?). Microsoft have made ample use of both of these anti-capitalist methods throughout their hegemony - in fact, they’ve exerted considerable influence in governments around the world to strengthen them. To the winner go the spoils, eh.
Open source, on the other hand, is actually very true to capitalism. Because it has no incentive to deny or break existing open standards as Microsoft has at every opportunity (including now with OOXML - why not just implement ODF??), open source applications can become commodities - near perfect examples of free market forces. Open source applications compete on - get this - things like technical quality and fitness for purpose. Anyone who considers open source software anti-capitalist while holding up Microsoft as a poster child for capitalism must’ve slept through economics.
But then again:
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” - Upton Sinclair
Regards,
Dave
P.S. have you wondered why, Falafulu, it’s taken Microsoft this long to even attempt to produce an “open” standard? Ever wondered why they didn’t do it before? Or why they didn’t adopt existing standards where they exists (without breaking them, that is)? Capitalism is Microsoft’s GREATEST FEAR.
On Sean’s comments I would like to rebuff (as I rebuffed MS on Friday).
1) IP Issues, it’s not what is in the spec, but more what ISN’T in the spec that is the IP concern from my understanding but then again IANAL - Binary formats, Vector Grahpics, Macros, DRM to name but a few. They aren’t covered in the spec so aren’t in the CNS or OSP.
2) Who has implemented OOXML already. I have seen this “list” posted a number of times on MS related sites. Firstly anything listed under the “windows” platform can be instantly dismissed as it will be using the Office API and not directly interfacing into the file format I think I can safely assume. On Linux they are all using odf-converter from sourceforge which IMHO is rubbish (to convert the ODF 1.1 spec (738 pages of pure text) into DOCX took 7 1/2 mins on my P4 Mobile with my CPU pegged at 100%, whereas to open it in OpenOffice or MS Office (with the Sun ODF Plugin) took 3 seconds). Which leaves the mac’s which I haven’t checked out how they are doing it but would suspect they are also using odf-converter as well (would love to be proved wrong on this). A very short list indeed…. And how functional are the non MS Office API documents? Can they open documents with embedded data from other applications (spreadsheet / WMF in a word doc for example).. I think not.
3) Who made it standard? Does a rubber stamp from ECMA TC45 make it a standard?
Again I have no issue with OOXML being the standard file format for Office 2007 Documents as MS Office is the defacto standard, and IMHO OOXML is just the next release of MS’s document file format, it’s just as closed as it always has been. Since MS have “released” their Binary file formats should we make those an ECMA/ISO standard as well??
My issue is with it becoming an ISO standard, which gives it legitimacy where there is none in the eyes of non MS pragmatists. How true is the above quote from Upton Sinclair…
There was an interesting post I found this morning by Stéphane Rodriguez, stating that the Opem XML format is defective by design. He puts forward a good case.
Read his article here:
http://www.arstdesign.com/articles/OOXML-is-defective-by-design.html
Peter L said:
“Firstly anything listed under the “windows†platform can be instantly dismissed as it will be using the Office API and not directly interfacing into the file format I think I can safely assume.”
As Steven Segal would say….. “Assumption is the Mother of all $%^$^% ups”.
You are quite simply wrong here Peter. Whether by ignorance or deliberate obfuscation I’m not sure.
The work that we have done with ECMA OOXML has no reliance whatsoever on the Microsoft Office APIs we generate plain old XML. Yes we do use the .NET Framework XML classes to actually generate the XML but we could have just as well have implemented it Javascript of C or whatever- it is after all just text parsing.
> The antagonists seem to change between the spec being either
> a) Too long and detailed for people to be able to implement or;
> b) Too vague and lacking in specific detail for people to implement.
It’s entirely possible for both of these to be true at the same time — when you’re trying to specify something that is much too complicated, so that a specification with all the necessary details is much too large to be correctly implemented by anyone.
That is exactly the situation OOXML is in; it wants to specify every detail of the behaviour of Microsoft Office, millions of lines of code accumulated over 20 years.
Hi Chris Auld,
Peter L’s comment was “Who has implemented OOXML already. I have seen this ‘list’ posted a number of times on MS related sites. Firstly anything listed under the ‘windows’ platform can be instantly dismissed as it will be using the Office API and not directly interfacing into the file format I think I can safely assume.”
I took this statement to mean that this was about implementations using the Office API, not the OOXML standard using the Office API. If I’m wrong however then please correct me Peter L.
If this is the case then I think your reaction was unjustified.
While I wouldn’t go as far as saying that all OOXML software on the Windows platform uses the Office API it’s certainly true that some do, and being on the Windows platform will certainly make OOXML’s references to OLE possible to implement.
For example, R2Net from Logictran builds upon Office 2007 in order to support conversions from OOXML to RTF. This one also doesn’t directly deal with the OOXML format, as in Peter L’s assertion.
I know there’s a lot of ego in this thread but please could we not take every chance to jump down each others throats. We’re all adults here — there’s no need for posturing. It’s ok to ask questions and to suggest ideas and for us to take the time to research this.
BTW, I’ve posted my notes from the meeting here,
http://nzoss.org.nz/notes-from-standards-nz-meeting-on-ooxml
I don’tr think the reaction was unjustified.
Peter said anything on windows could be instantly dismissed as using the Office API (and yes I took the same interpretation as you Matthew).
The ’safe assumption’ was just plain wrong.
A key advantage for us with OOXML is that we no longer require Office for document manipulation…. Office is not a server grade tool so the ability to do all our manipulations in .NET and XSLT as opposed to using Word APIs means we can literally work as we have done for HTML for some time.
I don’t want to jump down peoples throats…. but, ‘instantly dismissing’ on the basis of a ’safe assumption’ is just plain silly.
Hey Dave Lane
I have to say your posts seem a little over-zealous to me, and you are taking this debate personally.
I fear you misunderstood my comment : “What is, or is not, going on in the non-Microsoft development world is of academic interest only and does not have any impact on day-to-day development decisions”.
This was made in the context of the very large enterprise I design software for, here in London. It wasn’t meant to be a comment on the larger world. It is in fact of academic interest only here, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that at all. We have literally hundreds and thousands of legacy Word documents, and Excel reports, and we like coding using the Microsoft object libraries, and we will continue to do so because that makes the most business sense to us. We are not blinded by any light - the day someone shows me software development technologies that are more fit for purpose or more efficient than the ones we use, we will change. It’s that simple.
Here is some Microsoft code for you :
Try :
To accept that Microsoft developers are intelligent people too
Catch :
Isolate yourself from Microsoft development technologies, and have no customers
Finally :
Go and buy the new Kings Of Leon album, and play it very loudly…..and try to chill out a little
Chris
What I was actually trying to say that as a developer if I knew of two ways to create a document, one with a dozen or so lines in an IDE, or having to manually create a dozen or so XML files and handle the inter-relationships between them all whilst constantly referring back to the specification and then opening them up in the app to make sure it works.. I know what I would do (and that is use VB/.NET in case you were wondering :P)
However after watching the debate, I have realised there is a great similarity between Adopting OOXML as an ISO standard and the Prostitution Reform Act.
1) There are two camps are firmly divided by their own views and consider the other camp to be misguided individuals.
2) Some of us use it, some of us don’t.
3) The pro-camp know the importance of maintaining the customer base and will lobby hard to keep them.
4) The anti-camp believe that it is just wrong and it is time for a change so will lobby just as hard to attempt to change peoples minds.
5) But at the end of the day it’s about legitimising a “product” that has been around for some time now, and not about helping out the customer :P
Brings “pimping yourself for bill” into a whole new light
We all hold our own opinions, and I doubt very much that either side would be able to change the minds of members in the opposing side…. so lets just move on and see who will be buying the beers as of next week.
“What I was actually trying to say that as a developer if I knew of two ways to create a document, one with a dozen or so lines in an IDE, or having to manually create a dozen or so XML files and handle the inter-relationships between them all whilst constantly referring back to the specification and then opening them up in the app to make sure it works.. I know what I would do (and that is use VB/.NET in case you were wondering :”
Oh I despair!
As a developer who actually does this stuff let me explain a few things for you.
1. There are very valid reasons to manipulate OOXML directly. In particular it means that you are in no way bound to Office. Thus no office licenses to buy and it is suitable to run on a server.
2. So I am of course using APIs to asist with things like writing the XML (XmlWrite) and with packaging the XML into OOXML packages. But of course this is no different to working in any other environment- if I was doing it with Java I could use the similar Java API - http://openxmldeveloper.org/articles/OpenXMLandJava.aspx.
3. I do not need to open them up in the application, rather I can validate them against the appropriate schema.
4. I’m pleased that you use VB, I prefer the C derived syntax of C# myself… but that’s OK. All of the packaging APIs I’ve spoken about work just fine with VB.
I’ll leave any analogies between this discussion and the realms of prostitution to you.
I think this article on Computerworld Australia is relevant regarding this debate.
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1794468192;fp;16;fpid;1
Two standards not one; now that should please everyone I would have thought. Like using diesel or petrol.
I prefer this computerworld article,
http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/08A7B165747139B1CC25734700070796
But about the .com.au interview… “Is Microsoft “stacking” standards bodies in order to get OOXML approved as an ISO standard? No.”
Here’s the facts about that,
“Vote Yes to Open XML and we’ll make sure that you get extra marketing money for you campaigns; this is Microsoft’s Sweden’s own words when they rounded up their Gold Partners in Sweden. Klas Hammar, Microsoft Sweden now regrets the formulation and regrets that the e-mail was sent out.”
– http://www.os2world.com/content/view/14871/2/
End good, all good.
I hope Microsoft retries, this time with a standard I or others can actually implement.
I think Microsoft’s initiative is heading in the right direction, especially after years of criticism about their practices. The fact that there’s another open documents standard (ODF) should not be reason enough to discard Microsoft’s OOXML. From a Gold Partner perspective we understand how useful and powerful this standard is by having implemented solutions that easily create office documents by manipulating XML. Something that years ago would have been unthinkable.
It is true, however, there are political forces against/in favour OOXML and that it would be really hard for anybody in the industry to take an impartial stance. New Zealand should endorse the standard to further enable future collaboration between Microsoft and the open source community.
Hi Pablo,
Yes a ZIP of XML is a big step forward from the binary formats of yesteryear, but we can do so much better than the current OOXML. Presumably you’ve seen the internal inconsistency in naming, how it’s got undocumented and non-crossplatform OLE references, how it’s bug-emulation flags don’t have the detail yet, providing HTML output to browsers from ten years ago like IE3, IE4 and Netscape3 and Netscape4.
We can do better than that. Personally I like New Zealand’s and France’s proposals to harmonize the formats, I’ve written a little about this in my meeting notes on nzoss.org.nz about how feasible this is.
[...] Zealand was one of the countries that voted against the fast-track approval, and there was intense lobbying from both sides leading up to the votes. This also included accusations that Microsoft were paying [...]
Interesting post, very informative. As for me, what has been the existing standard should be the International Standard. It will be just a waste of time to change it, but instead better to improve the existing one.