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Massachusetts Explains Legal Concerns for Open Documents
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Tue Sep 06, 2005 05:01 AM
from the battle-lines-are-being-drawn-and-quartered dept.
from the battle-lines-are-being-drawn-and-quartered dept.
Tontoman writes "ZDNet is running a story that sheds new light on the decision by Massachusetts to switch to
open formats for the commonwealth's official documents. This issue has previously been discussed on Slashdot, first The Massachusetts Office Party and then
Microsoft Lashes out at Massachusetts IT Decision . From the
article: 'Eric Kriss, Secretary of Administration & Finance for
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, told CRN on Friday that
Massachusetts had concerns about the openness of Microsoft XML schemas
as well as with potential patent issues that could arise in the
future.' The article also quotes a Microsoft executive
on further reason that Microsoft's upcoming Office 12 will not support
OpenDocument."
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ms (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:ms (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Correction: (Score:5, Insightful)
It behooves those who desire unrestricted interchange of information to help make proper support of OpenDocument become of interest to MS.
This move by MA is a step in the right direction, away from proprietary formats.
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Re:Correction: (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:ms (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:ms (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:ms (Score:5, Insightful)
ms office must support openoffice documents... it's just more reason not to use it
Just like there's "no reason" for MS not to support webstandards. But we all know how that story...
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Re:ms (Score:5, Insightful)
And compared to the firefox story, which just hurts freely given away IE, and people still use MS windows as platform, so not costing any profits, and uptake of 10% in OpenOffice would really hurt the bottomline of MS. Not that they will lose money because of it, but the profitability goes down, maybe even pricing pressure to keep people away from this free OpenOffice.
Hey, how about a page size add in a newspaper for www.downloadOpenOffice.org (already exists, and is someones attempt to earn some cash, to bad)
Parent
OO vs. Firefox platform lock-in (Score:5, Insightful)
Moderators, parent clearly deserves some 'insightful' points here, since known cash cows for MS are Windows, and Office. But:
If users ditch Office for a free alternative, clearly MS's bottomline gets hurt. Not so with Firefox? I disagree: IE is a way to lock users into the Windows platform. If you need IE, you need Windows (in general). If you need Firefox, you need Windows OR (enter you favorite Firefox-capable OS here). So ditching IE in favor of Firefox, is one way to reduce your dependence on the Windows platform. And a good reason for MS to give away IE for free, I think.
So increased use of OO may eat directly into MS's bottomline, but increased use of Firefox makes it easier for MS's bottomline to get eaten into.
My view is that MS not supporting open standards is simply to make it harder to switch platforms, to increase the cost & effort of a switch. Another example: why doesn't MS itself provide support for Linux ext2 or BSD filesystems? It's technically feasible (others have done it), many dual-booting folks would like it, and there aren't any licensing problems that I can see (as long as MS would write their own, or build on BSD-licensed code). So why? Simple: without it, dual-booting folks have to look themselves for ext2/BSD filesystem drivers for Windows. More hassle, higher cost of moving to Linux/*BSD.
MS says it cares about interoperability, but it's actions often say otherwise. Not supporting OO document format in Office is just another example of that. Anyway, I think managers that decide between MS Office or OO, Firefox or IE, Windows, Linux or Mac OSX on company desktops, matter more here than home users.Parent
Format converter (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, if people can program an import filter, why not an export filter?
There certainly people who know how to do it.
Even if somebody has to sign an NDA agreement -- would it disallow to make such a filter?
I'm sure this would be more productive than waiting for MS to do it.
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Re:Format converter (Score:5, Interesting)
You're right, and this could be a fatal error in Microsoft's strategy. If there is a freely available converter which allows Word to import and export OOo files, any attempt on their part to make their own format incompatible could backfire and make OOo the default file exchange format.
I've been looking at both OOo and MS XML formats, and it doesn't look like it would be too hard to impliment converters as add-ins for Office formats.
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Re:Format converter (Score:5, Insightful)
Now the only thing keeping Office popular is the lack of interoperability with anything else. Lack of interoperability is usually considered to be a bad thing -- name me one electricity company that sells 48 volts DC. We have already seen protectionism fail when countries did things like adopting different TV standards from their neighbours effectively to prevent imports of cheap tellies {setmakers just went multi-standard, and SCART connectors with RGB input eventually became the norm}.
These realities do not appear to have hit the computer market yet
But I don't think I represent most of the population. I think most people don't expect things to be connected together and just work like that; they're still so taken in by the fact that they just press the keys and the letters come up on the screen, and later pop out of the printer, that they don't think past that. That ought to change in the future; but it will depend more on the fact of clue filtering slowly through to the population than anything any major player does {unless that something is to cause sudden and large-scale data loss}.
If the conversion suite was released as quasi-Open Source software {as open as anything running on a closed platform can be}, then the only thing Microsoft could do about that is try and prove they own a patent on converting documents between Office and OpenDocument standards; but then they would expose themselves to the patent being struck down on the grounds that the invention had not been worked {which is still valid in some jurisdictions IMMSMC}. Not to mention that it would constitute an admission that Microsoft already had the technology to perform the conversion {otherwise the patent would be a mere work of science fiction, therefore null and void by default}. This would have the effect of casting doubt on other things Microsoft are fond of saying.
Once a mechanism was in place for converting documents between OpenDocument and Office formats, a business would then need only one PC running Office -- and then only for as long as they have any Office files to convert to OpenDocument. Under well-established doctrines, they would even be within their rights to sell that machine to another business when it was finished with.
At the moment, I have good reasons not to be having a go at this. When those reasons change, if there is not already a functioning translator, I will definitely set up a Windows machine of my own and give it a crack.
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MS reply (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:MS reply (Score:4, Interesting)
And that binary data can have whatever data format they want, including a closed and obscure and undocummented format (say, a "new feature" in future office versions which happens to embbed binary data with a closed format). Which is against the whole point of having an open format.
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Re:MS reply (Score:3, Funny)
Re:MS reply (Score:5, Insightful)
Naturally the OLE object's content is encoded, but the document format copes with it just fine.
Parent
Re:That's not the proposed format (Score:5, Informative)
The tag will be represented as something like this:
<draw:object-ole xlink:href="./Object 1" xlink:type="simple" xlink:show="embed" xlink:actuate="onLoad"/>
The OLE object's content would be in that "Object 1". This is obviously not XML, doesn't have to be. When OO starts, it instantiates the CLSID specified in the Object 1 file and streams its data into it via IStream or IStorage. Thus any OLE object is supported by the spec and by OO.
The object-ole tag is documented on page 300 of the OpenDocument 1.0 spec. Other mechanisms for embedding objects are also documented.
So it is supported by the Open Document spec.
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Re:MS reply (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:MS reply (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:MS reply (Score:4, Informative)
Go and have a butcher's at some OpenOffice documents.
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Re:It could be useful (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument [wikipedia.org]
"OpenDocument is designed to reuse existing open XML standards whenever they are available, and it creates new tags only where no existing standard can provide the needed functionality. So, OpenDocument uses DublinCore for metadata, MathML for formulae, SVG for vector graphics, SMIL for multimedia, etc."
Note the bit about multimedia, Microsoft?
Parent
Or you could just... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, they're still not gonna do it because that would provide people with an easy migration path away from cash-cow Office...
Re:It could be useful (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry but how is this insightful? Microsoft's stated reason for not supporting an open document standard is very transparently not the actual reason.
The last time I checked it was entirely possible to read and write ascii text and Microsoft Works documents from within Word, neither of which allow you to embed Audio or Video (ok, I'm just guessing this is the case with Works. With ascii I'm pretty damm sure though).
Providing support for a format does not tie you to that format's limitations, it just means you can read and write it. If your users choose not to use that format all the features are still available to them.
Microsoft isn't going to support it for political reasons, not technical ones. They have a monopoly and a widely adopted open format would threaten that monopoly.
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Re:It could be useful (Score:3, Funny)
What the hell kind of word is that?
Do you mean "created by consensus?" "Consensual?" Those are words.
Gack. Verbing weirds language.
Re:OO does support much more (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't just think embedding of video/audio in documents isn't necessary, I think it's very stupid. A document should be able to be printed out!!! Clearly, these things cannot be printed out and held on paper; ergo they do not belong in documents. The same goes for anything else that cannot be printed out and held on paper.
If you want those things, put them in some other computer format, but don't warp the meaning of 'document' to mean 'anything you can hold and represent on a computer, mushed into one file', because that's just silly.
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Re:OO.o format is NOT OpenDoc (Score:4, Informative)
Guess what? I'm getting slightly bored of people making verifiably false claims, and even more bored of clueless moderators modding them up for it.
If I may quote directly from the horse's mouth [openoffice.org]:So do pray enlighten me: exactly how is OpenDocument not the OpenOffice.org format?
Oh, the other guy who replied to you suggested that there's another format (called OpenDoc not OpenDocument), which may well be what you have in mind. In that case, you are completely off-topic, because the format Massachusetts are thinking of using is OpenDocument. Which is to say, the format which is used by new versions of OpenOffice.org.
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Possible reason to not support "save as" OO (Score:4, Insightful)
Surely, having create a document, you can save it out as an Open-Office document? Why are they talking about backwards compatibility - this is like save as text.
Just like save as text it does not support embedded video and Multimedia, and just like text, it's available to be read by anybody who has access to the standards.
Re:Possible reason to not support "save as" OO (Score:5, Insightful)
I can.
Think about Joe Sixpack who sees this on his "Save as" menu for the first time & maybe then does a search on Google for "Open Office" only to find out it's a free office suite he can download... Then Joe Sixpack tells his friends about it...
Yes, it would be nice to see it supported in MS Office but it won't happen because MS will lose market share by doing it.
The best we can hope for are more governmental departments and service organisations applying pressure for open document formats to make MS change its mind.
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Re:Possible reason to not support "save as" OO (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Possible reason to not support "save as" OO (Score:3)
cynical reason: file format incompatibility is what keeps customers on the upgrade treadmill.
Re:Possible reason to not support "save as" OO (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine you're a typical corporation: You have thousands of documents, they're all in .doc format. So everybody has MS Office installed.
You hear about a free alternative, but it doesn't support the .doc format reliably enough to switch - your thousands of documents would have to be manually edited, one at a time. This is a big expense that stops OO being free. Or you'd have to keep MS Office available, in which case you might just as well not switch.
In other words: Nobody with more than a few .doc documents can switch from Ms Office to OpenOffice. Result: $$$ for MS
Now imagine MS Word could save reliably in OO's format. And it can obviously open .doc files reliably.
A company could now run a batch job that opens .doc files and saves them in OO format. MS Word converts all the company documents into OO format. Company then throws away MS Word, and happily uses OO.
Result: MS looses customers.
MS will fight to the last to stop people being able to do this. If this function were implemented, most people would not need MS Office any more. And if you don't need Office, you don't really need Windows. And if you don't need either of those, why do you need MS?
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Re:Possible reason to not support "save as" OO (Score:4, Informative)
There's one problem with your theory: you've got it backwards. OpenOffice is the program that can open
If a company wants to convert their Word documents to OpenDocument format, then the easiest way to do it is actually to use OpenOffice!
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Re:Possible reason to not support "save as" OO (Score:5, Informative)
Now imagine MS Word could save reliably in OO's format. And it can obviously open
A company could now run a batch job that opens
Batch Converting MS Word Documents in OpenOffice.org
1. Open File / AutoPilot / Document Convertor
2. Select Microsoft Office
3. Choose any combination of
[X] Word
[X] Excel
[X] PowerPoint formats.
4. Click Next
5. Enter the proper locations for where to read files in and where to dump them out...
6. Click Convert!
Watch (and wait) as hundreds of MS Office Documents are quickly and easily converted to OO formats.
You will lose some formating and I think all macro information, but those can be cleaned up later.
Result: MS looses customers.
When you have 90+% of the market that can't really be avoided.
Parent
It wasn't a problem before (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, sort of. From the article:
Yates reiterated the Microsoft does not intend to natively support the OpenDocument format, which he said was very specific to the OpenOffice.org 2.0 open source productivity suite.
I don't recall Microsoft having any problems supporting say, WordPerfect documents, which after all were "very specific to the [WordPerfect] productivity suite." Of course, that was back when Microsoft were chasing WP down. It just wouldn't do to support a format that might help people not to use Office now would it?
Re:It wasn't a problem before (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, microsoft claims that compatibility with older office applications are important, and yet their xml format is not compatible with versions prior to 2003 and their binary format has many incompatibilities between versions both forwards and backwards.
Re:It wasn't a problem before (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.redmonk.com/sogrady/archives/000743.ht
gary edwards, member of oasis opendocuemnt tc, comments on ms xml, od and related stuff. you really should read the whole comment, but i'll cite a couple of excerpts that imho are relevant to your comment
"Since MS XML looks to be a clone of OpenDoc XML, i think it's disingenuous to imply that Microsoft put so much time and effort into creating a duplicate XML file format to meet their "legacy" needs. This is a knockoff clear and simple. The work was done by OpenOffice.org, Sun Microsystems, and the OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee."
"The first 18 months of work at the OASIS OpenDoc TC (...), was focused near entirely on legacy systems. Especially legacy systems
wedded to Microsoft binary file formats.
The OpenDoc TC was very fortunate to have a wealth of expertise in reverse engineering the legacy maze of incompatible MS binary file formats. Experts from Corel Office, StarOffice, Boeing, Stellent, ArborText, and SpeedLegal among others had long made their living reverse engineering MS file formats. Phil Boutros, the legendary binary cracking wizard representing Stellent, near single handedly represented what would have otherwise been thought to be the full cooperation of Microsoft in solving these legacy issues."
"At any time Microsoft was and is able to jump into the TC discussion's about their legacy file formats and the transformation issues that were eventually resolved in the OpenDoc XML specification. They did after all have an official membership on the OpenDoc TC."
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No OO support in MS Office (Score:5, Insightful)
People also tend to use one office set. So Mas. switching to OO, could end up people downloading OO to be able to use the documents (Ok, there are PDF versions). MS will most likely counter that by releasing an update or a plugin to be able to read OO documents in some twisted destructive, or correct later on way, and not being able to save OO documents.
I just think that MS will support OO formats soon enough, because they would really not like to lose customers over such a simple thing as a document format, hey, they even might be able to sell the OO upgrade for MS office to these people!
Inferior format (Score:5, Insightful)
"Microsoft will not support OpenDocument in its next version of Office 12 as it believed the format to be inferior"
If the format is 'inferior', then extend it! The X in XML (which is used by OpenDocument) stands for 'eXtensible'. XML is designed to allow document formats to be extended in a way which still allows portability and does not break compatibility.
Microsoft have make extensive use of XML for years, so they know this. This comment is simply pure FUD.
Re:Inferior format (Score:5, Insightful)
What you're asking Microsoft to do here would in fact be exactly what they normall do; embrace and extend. And it would be bad for all the reasons it is normally bad: it would make files that claim to be OpenDocument files no longer work with OpenDocument-compliant UAs. Thus fragmenting the marketplace.
You know, like they did with HTML and the DOM.
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Lame excuses from MS (Score:5, Insightful)
What??? MS Word can already load and save a large variety of formats, many of which have nothing whatsoever to do with any past version of Word. For example it loads and saves WordPerfect files. Presumably they did that so government and law could use their word processor. So what was the reason for not supporting OpenDocument format again? It certainly has nothing to writing another import / export filter since the APIs for that must be OLD HAT.
Why not just be honest and say the real reason. You don't want to support it since your own formats represent lock-in. But sooner or later they will have to though I reckon they'll do their utmost to sabotage it becoming the defacto standard.
Slightly OT: The quote reminds of the absurdities MS put out when saying why they wouldn't port MS Office to OS/2. At the time one of them said they wouldn't port it since it didn't support OLE2. Yes, and who wrote OLE2? Such ludicrous excuses emanate from MS when the real reason they don't want to do something would leave them open to accusations of monopoly.
They have a valid reason for concern.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I also don't buy Microsoft's stance on the OpenDoc format. They can, and should, implement this format as an export/import at the least. Backwards compatability is a sorry excuse for not implementing open standards. They just don't want to give up the gold they find when they have locked their customers into a certain format.
Dang, not again (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, working on my EE degree while in the Army, I am doing distance learning with a school that requires MS Office formats on papers. So far, it has been working out well but what if they 'upgrade' to a new office version that somehow corrupts or otherwise does not display a file created in OO well? There goes my GPA!
Same goes for my job in that Army. As an NCO I often times complete work at home and bring it to my work terminal (all MS, after the recent Solaris genocide) on a USB stick. Will all my work be for nothing? Will I be spending hours at the office instead of at home where I can at least be with my wife and kids? I guess the same can go for those that tele-commute and use Linux.
Man, I REALLY don't want to have to install Windows or use an emulator just to use Office.
The last paragraph made me laugh (Score:5, Interesting)
ROTFL. Anyone that has had to distribute anything via Word knows this is beyond FUD. My best example is my CV. I wrote it in Mac Office 2004, and made sure it was compatible (using compatibility checker) all the way back to Word 97. It wasn't even close. In the end I was sending my CV out as Word 97, 2000, RTF and PDF just to make sure.
Backwards compatibility my arse. It nearly cost me a job, as when your in IT, and people think you can't even use word, it starts to look bad. I understand that its a word processor, not a desktop publisher, but is consistant handling of tables and pictures that much to ask?
I've had documents that would open in Word 2004 fine, but all the pictures would be rotated through 90 degrees on Word 2000. And thats before you start looking at the way it handles the difference between A4 and Letter.
The only way I can send a file and be certain that it looks the way it should is via PDF. But thats at the expense of other parties being able to edit it.
PDF isn't the solution, its a hack. I want/need the consistant typesetting of PDF, with the editting features of Word. Now I know there are other applications that let me do this (latex et al), I just wish other people did too so I could start using that instead of frigin office.
Its worse (Score:4, Informative)
Case in point: I have several 1000's word 200o doc's with tables and indexes. Nothing spectacular. Yet, Office 2003 majorly screws with tabel alignment, and indexes are corrupt, and need to be set again.
Do I need to continue on MS Visio and MS Project? Same stuff. Most works, but often it also does not.
I have people saving thing with Project 2000 in Project 97 format, otherwise resources would dissapear and be un-editable in Project 2003.
MS is doing one, and only one thing: They are holding all our doc's hostage, and most of there profit is due to it, so they will stick to it no matter what.
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MS True Colors (Score:4, Interesting)
Forcing your standards on customers is dangerous - after all it's their data and their business, not yours.
Watch MicroSquirm! (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be a nice change for MS to simply tell the plain truth -- there's not enough profit motive for them to cut their own throats by giving their customers the means to migrate away from their most profitable product and I doubt there ever will be.
When I was watching the MS antitrust stuff happening, I really thought that was the beginning of the end for Microsoft. I was both gleeful and a little scared. Taking a lesson from countless other businesses under government investigation, they bought their way out of it through donations to politicians who, in turn, would support MS's interests.
But now there is this... the gradual chipping away at Microsoft's hold on government data by not only Massachusetts, but other governmental bodies as well. (Other nations, local governments, etc.) Some suggest that these chips are merely attempts to get Microsoft to cut them a nicer deal. While the results of some of those deals show this effect, can you really claim that the result was the intent? It would be like throwing a dart and claiming that whatever it hit was the intended target. We can see were Microsoft's attempts to dissuade have failed. Without inside knowledge, no one can really know the intent. But even in those cases, these activities show that Microsoft is being weakened in some small way each and every time they have to deal with these situations. They either need to lower their prices or face becoming irrelevant... and that's the best case scenario! The worst is that there is nothing they can do to save their sinking ship.
Legal or Technology issues (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, common sense appears to mean something (Score:5, Interesting)
It is nice to see goverment institutions which start to get it, that your IT infrastructure isn't video game - there should be REAL rules to follow. And there are no written in favor of some kind big business who wants it's format be main in goverment documentation.
For some reason, I'm really not surprised about reaction of Microsoft. What I am surprised about that they insist to their stubborness and stupidness in this topic. They just make their own grave in this situation.
Archive Search (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Just be carefull. (Score:5, Insightful)
By specifying an open free for all standard they give equal opportunity to all software houses. Nothing prevented Microsoft from supplying such solution, but Microsoft didn't. So, surprice, they don't get to sell their product.
From the governments point of wiew a open format is a good thing as their vender will have no protection sheild of vender lock in. This means that venders will have to offer other things to compete, e.g. low price, or better service. This makes good capitalistic sense in the long run from the buyers i.e. the tax payers perspective.
Your car example doesn't fit in. A more accurate car analogy would be that the govenment refuses to buy cars from GM that only can run on roads that are built by GM instead of cars tha can run on all roads. If that was the case I would strongly suspect tax payers to object very much and urge the government to buy the all road car.
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