ODF Alliance Warns Governments About Office 2007 ODF Support 312
omz writes "The ODF Alliance has prepared a Fact Sheet for governments and others interested in how Microsoft's SP2 for Office 2007 handles ODF. The report revealed 'serious shortcomings that, left unaddressed, would break the open standards based interoperability that the marketplace, especially governments, is demanding.'"
first (Score:0, Insightful)
post?
So, which is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Malice, or simple incompetence? Given Microsoft's track record, I can believe either one.
I know there are a lot of smart people working for Microsoft. But somehow it's as if there's a reverse gestalt phenomenon going on in their company - the whole is less than the sum of the parts.
PDF fact sheet? (Score:1, Insightful)
Shouldn't the file be an ODF format?
The Best Microsoft Patch: +1 (Score:0, Insightful)
is Ctl-Alt-Del.
Yours In Socialism,
K. Trout, C.I.O.
It's already been stated... (Score:3, Insightful)
In fact, the ODF specification for spreadsheets doesn't state where formulas should go in a document. Something OpenOffice and Microsoft handle very differently. Because of these loopholes it's possible for software deveopers (Not just Microsoft) to do what they think is best instead of follow the standard.
What the OpenOffice and Open Source communities should be doing is working to resolve these loopholes so Microsoft and other developers can follow.
Re:So, which is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
Why no certification program? (Score:5, Insightful)
Focus on new software/patches (Score:3, Insightful)
No sympathy (Score:5, Insightful)
If you write a standard and clamor to get it adopted by law, don't leave Redmond-sized holes in it. Someone might just try to drive a Microsoft through it.
Re:It's already been stated... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let the market work it out (Score:5, Insightful)
Although nobody is really surprised that Microsoft has made their software comply with the letter of the law and not the spirit, is this really a big issue? If, as the summary says, the marketplace is demanding a grand interoperability between software products, then we might see the rapid uptake of OOO in the near future. Failing that, if nobody switches, then the market has spoken loud and clear, Nobody cares.
Honestly, the single most productive thing you could do to ensure the rapid uptake of open standards would be to make openoffice.org an amazing product. Put all of your time and effort into making it clearly superior, and at that point everyone will use an ODF by default.
No. PDF is right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Shouldn't the file be an ODF format?
You're not trying to let them edit it. You're trying to influence them with a fixed document. So a display-only format is fine.
Further: You're trying to influence people who are NOT YET onboard with ODF. So you want a format that is viewable by as wide an audience as possible while displaying conveniently in an easy-on-the-eyes form. Right now that's PDF.
Putting it out in ODF means it's only viewable by people who already have ODF installed. That's mainly the people who are already onboard and don't need to be convinced. So it would be a case of "preaching to the choir" rather than "converting the heathen". Useful for giving your evangelists more talking points perhaps. But not all that useful for the purpose intended.
Re:Microsoft, in turn, should warn governments (Score:5, Insightful)
ODF on the other hand has an open implementation, free source code, open specs, royalty free, etc.
ODF alliance warning about sub-par ODF support on Office 2007 which ODF is totally open, is different than MS warning about not supporting their closed, undocumented format.
Re:Why no certification program? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have been saying, "I support Open Source, but since I am not a coder, I cant do much", this is your chance to contribute positively and advance the cause for open standards.
Re:what's good for the goose... (Score:3, Insightful)
kinda like "They're violating our patents but we won't tell you which ones" right?
Re:It's already been stated... (Score:2, Insightful)
ODF 1.1 was to vague and to somehow blame Microsoft because they followed a poorly written spec and had to make judgement calls to fill in the blanks just seems sad.
The blame still rests on the ODF standards. If people want to have interopability between applications then set strict standards otherwise this will continue happen.
Re:Let the market work it out (Score:5, Insightful)
Although nobody is really surprised that Microsoft has made their software comply with the letter of the law and not the spirit, is this really a big issue?
First, they didn't comply with the letter of the law. This is clearly a violation of antitrust law. Second, they didn't comply with the letter of the spec, both failing to implement it properly and going out of their way to not implement features they already had working code for and ignoring both reference implementations.
If, as the summary says, the marketplace is demanding a grand interoperability between software products, then we might see the rapid uptake of OOO in the near future.
We might or we might not because monopoly influence on several markets allows Microsoft to undermine and break the normal operation of the free market system by violating antitrust law. In doing so they hurt competitors, consumers, and slow innovation.
Failing that, if nobody switches, then the market has spoken loud and clear, Nobody cares.
Yeah and the market spoke and nobody wanted answering machines, speed dial, or to own instead of rent a telephone while AT&T had a monopoly on phone service. The free market cannot operate and determine the best products at the best price when undermined by abuse. That's why it is illegal.
Honestly, the single most productive thing you could do to ensure the rapid uptake of open standards would be to make openoffice.org an amazing product. Put all of your time and effort into making it clearly superior, and at that point everyone will use an ODF by default.
When faced with a monopoly, having the better product does not mean you win in the market. Clearly superior products can and do lose because of artificial problems introduced to them; artificial problems like being unable to open most ODF files which were made intentionally incompatible by a company with monopoly influence on the market.
Re:Wahwahwah (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft followed the ODF specification to the letter
Are you paid to astroturf? Thy did not follow it to the letter and they ignored the reference implementations and if they tested for compatibility like everyone else they did so to make sure things would not work. Given their market share, that's criminal.
Re:It's already been stated... (Score:4, Insightful)
MS would probably claim that OpenOffice is GPL-licensed and therefore is legal "poison" to their copyright to Office for their developers to look at the source code.
Where as, all they had to do is look at a *document* that OO created and mimic it.
Re:It's already been stated... (Score:2, Insightful)
To me, this is all whining by the anti-Microsoft folks. When Microsoft supports ODF 1.2, and if they goof up, then complain.
At which point you'll still be apologizing for them and say we should wait till 1.3 to complain?
ODF 1.1 was to[sic] vague and to somehow blame Microsoft because they followed a poorly written spec...
Yeah it was so vague every other company managed to implement it just fine, including Microsoft in the plug-in they hired someone to write and whose code is BSD licensed so they could have just copied and pasted, since it was already working with MSOffice as a plug in. I have this bridge you might be interested in Brooklyn.
The blame still rests on the ODF standards.
Bullshit! There are multiple reference implementations and free code available and even small hobbyist projects had no problem. Even MS is not that incompetent. Their failure to insure their product worked with all the other products out there that work fine is inexcusable and any judge who buys your crap is an idiot. This is clearly an antitrust violation. Hopefully MS won't be able to settle their way out of a conviction this time.
No, not at all (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a couple reasons why they'd do it differently:
1) The whole reason they are doing the ODF thing is pressure from the EU with regards to anti-trust. Part of that pressure is that "You have to do it according to the standard." They don't want MS to go and say "Well we implemented some of the standard, but changed it in ways we like." So MS has been sticking strictly to the standard. Not all the other implementations do. So, you get a difference in results. Now you can argue that the right way of doing things is everyone else doing the same thing, even if it isn't the standard, but that really isn't an option for MS. They need the CYA ability to say "We implemented the standard 100% to spec, no deviation."
2) All the other ODF stuff I've seen is open source. As with most open source, they borrow heavily form other open source projects. In the case of ODF, the modus operandi seems to be "Do what Open Office does." Ok that's great, but again not an option for MS. They can't take OOs code, of course, or they'd have to open up their software which they don't want to do. In theory they could look at it and then "reverse engineer" it so to speak and reimplement but that's dangerous. They won't want to fight claims of violating the GPL. So best to just have your dev team pretend it doesn't exist and do their own thing.
Basically the ODF spec isn't clear and precise. So there are areas where you kinda have to decide how you want to do shit. MS isn't going to look at how it was done in OO's code, so their own design culture, which is different, will dictate how things are done. So you get differences right there. Then there are cases where the popular ODF implementations aren't compliant with the spec. They work because they are all not compliant in the same way, but then that won't work with MS's compliant implementation.
More or less it looks like the ODF alliance needs to shut up, and write a better standard. For something like this, a good standard will be very complex and extremely specific. There's just no avoiding that. If you want to be able to have all of this different, rich functionality, and you want it to work the same way and display the same way everywhere, the standard has to be very very detailed. Everything has to be specified precisely. You can't leave it up to the developer on how to do anything, or you are going to get differences.
Re:It's already been stated... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or they could ask the proper author (I don't know who owns the copyright on that particular portion of OOo) for a license to do so. I betcha that someone interested enough in OOo's future to write a save/load algorithm for it would let Microsoft use it (in part or in whole) for Office. Complete compatibility between the two program suites would work heavily in OOo's favor, for reasons that seem obvious (to me) and that I won't go into to avoid creating a tl;dr situation.
Maybe if someone out there knows anyone (or is on) the OOo team drops the idea of a public offer to give Microsoft a special license to their already working code, some traction could be gained, or at least some light could be shed on the willingness of Microsoft to rectify the situation. I hope they are honestly willing to achieve cross-compatibility, but my guess is that that is likely too optimistic.
Re:It's already been stated... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the standard is strict like other open standards, and they still fail to be compatiable[sic], I wouldn't "apologize" for them.
Please. The standard is just fine for any honest company trying to make a product that works. It just wasn't written as an ironclad legal contract to keep MS from playing dumb and intentionally breaking compatibility.
Actually, if you read another comment on this article, you'd see that other applications actually didn't handle the standard all that well like you claim.
Other comments? I don't have to because I actually bothered to read about the topic before discussing it. There is one other compatibility problem among the programs tested and it is because one of the programs is using the newer version of the spec. Saving from OO as ODF 1.1 is compatible. Thats completely different from being incompatible with every other program implementing the same version of the spec.
"Free code". You do realize that many of those "free" code samples are licensed that would require Microsoft to open source Office or portions of Office.
Please educate yourself before trying to argue. There is a working plug-in for MSOffice licensed under the BSD license so MS can simply copy and paste if they want. They've done it before with BSD code.
This is about a standard that was weak and failed to state everything clearly.
Bullcrap. This is about a standard that is fine for any honest company and about one company intentionally trying to break things to harm competition.
Asking any company to follow it is insane.
Yeah, except nobody else had any real problems including small hobbyist groups. Believing your crap is insane. In fact, your position is so unbelievable, I strongly suspect you're an astroturfer. You have a history of all of 13 comments, almost all of which are defending Microsoft. You're either a paid shill or you really drank to kool-aid.
Re:Let the market work it out (Score:5, Insightful)
(a) You're making the common mistake of conflating ODF with OOo. The two are completely separate entities. People who advocate the use of ODF are not necessarily OOo fans; they may prefer Abiword, KOffice, or even Microsoft Office. The whole point of open standards is that it shouldn't matter what software you use.
(b) Even if you take your goal to be the promotion of OOo (a particular software product) rather than ODF (a document standard), then it's naive to think that all you have to do is make a product that's better than MS Office. The sad truth is that no matter how good your product is, most people will be reluctant to switch to it. People hate change. The product would need not only to be better, but to be about 10 times better. And then you would need to communicate that fact, in the face of the best marketing that one of the world's richest companies can buy. Not an easy task.
But if you can get open standards adopted, then there's no longer any reason to care about increasing OOo market share, because it won't matter what software people use: you'll still be able to read their documents and they'll still be able to read yours.
Re:So, which is it? (Score:2, Insightful)
There is a lengthy discussion about the microsoft appointed staf to ODF. They even requested current lead of ODF to stand down cause hes "biased".
And well... having non-biased-against-microsoft people in a non profit organization, id say, would be contrary to their keeping their good money.
Only people in their wallet could ever support their petty arguments. They say "we comply!", but make no effort to actually be interoperable with ANY other ODF supporting suite (google, koffice and some office plugins).
Re:For a commercial vendor, (Score:4, Insightful)
Plenty of info here:
You seem to have fallen for marketing nonsense. There exists a spec, which no one including MS has implemented. Then there exists the docx files MS office creates which are not compliant with the standards you link to and which are not fully documented anywhere.
From the first link you posted, a quote about when MS will be compliant with the published version of the spec:
On March 13, 2008 Doug Mahugh, a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft specializing in Office client interoperability and the Open XML file formats confirmed that version 1.0 of the Open XML Format SDK "will definitely be 100% compliant with the final ISO/IEC 29500 spec, including the changes accepted at the BRM"
To date they have not managed to comply fully with their own format specification and no other company has a fully compatible version either, that I know of.
So where is the documentation for the docx format Word creates today? Where is the fully compliant, BSD licensed reference implementation for Linux that OO can copy and paste code from? I think your argument pretty much went down the crapper at this point.
Web standards web standards web standards (Score:2, Insightful)
People are seriously arguing that Microsoft should munge the standard to go along with the most common implementation? Welcome to the web, circa 1996. That's exactly how web standards got to be the mess they are. Browser manufacturers wrote browsers to be compatible with each other and to support new features, instead of following the standards. And thus the standard fell behind and became increasingly useless.
Microsoft is writing an ODF document, *not* an OpenOffice document. And, long-term, that's exactly the correct thing to do.
If you want them to follow the standard, write a decent standard for them to follow and stop whining. And, just like the web failed to do, if you want the standard to be worth the paper it's written on, the resources have to be committed to get them out in a timely fashion.
Happy to comply when it breaks compatibility (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft did what they had to do to break compatibility. They must have been laughing themselves silly when they realised that other users of ODF had left the door open for them to both break compatibility AND claim compliance.
Don't kid yourself, they may have been very happy to claim that they are compliant, but compliance was not the aim. Breaking compatibility was the primary purpose.
Re:It's already been stated... (Score:3, Insightful)
Doesn't seems strange to you that only Microsoft handle it very differently?
It isn't just Microsoft. IBM's Lotus is also incompatible with OpenOffice [msdn.com]. That post explains in detail why MS made the choices they made.
Also see his later post on 1+2 [msdn.com]. Office and Lotus agree it is 3, but OpenOffice thinks it is 1 in some cases.
Here's what is really going on: for the first time, someone is actually using ODF who cares about consistency with existing documents, and making predictable behavior. Since ODF currently is ridiculously underspecified, this is revealing a lot of problems with how prior implements interpreted things.
ODF 1.2 will nail down many of these areas--and significantly increase the size of the ODF spec. When eventually the ODF spec is actually somewhat complete, so that independent implementations can be reasonably interoperable without requiring implementors to look at the OpenOffice code to find the "real" spec, it's going to be in the ballpark of the size of the OOXML spec.
Re:It's already been stated... (Score:4, Insightful)
Standards are created to make sure something, like software, can output a verifiable item that others can use.
Standards are created to HELP people to create interoperable software. Interoperability is the goal, not compliance. If it isn't the goal, MS is breaking the law. They have to be compliant with competitors by law, not follow standards.
If you have a standard that says to do certain things, but makes no mention of others, you don't just copy your competitor.
You don't know what a "reference implementation" is do you?
Microsoft followed a standard and because OpenOffice or anyother program can't actually open it always, you blame the company for following the standard set out?
Yes, I blame them because they went out of their way to play dumb and implement the standard in an incompatible way and they broke the law in so doing.
Please educate yourself before trying to argue. There is a working plug-in for MSOffice licensed under the BSD license so MS can simply copy and paste if they want. They've done it before with BSD code.
Sure they could use that code or inspect the ODF files, but you miss the point everyone here is making: The standard is what Microsoft follows, not the competitor's method of implementation.
First, the BSD code in question was paid for by MS, its not a competitor's Second, MS is not legally obligated to obey the standards, but they are legally obligated to honestly attempt compatibility with competitors. Not even testing against competitors does not seem like an honest attempt to me.
Again, they followed a broken standard, just because OpenOffice and others copied eachother doesn't mean Microsoft or others should.
Yes it does if their goal is compatibility and since the law requires them to attempt to be compatible with competitors lest they be leveraging their monopoly influence, that is exactly what they should have done if they had to choose between the standard and being compatible. That, however, is a false dichotomy. They could have followed the standard and been compatible. They chose not to.
You seem to support Mac/Google/OpenOffice ...
This seems to be your main problem. Technology companies are not sports teams. I'm not in support of any company. I point out when any of them does something good or bad because I don't have emotional investment in any of them.
...and reading comments that always blame Microsoft is sickening.
Why? They're a criminal company that routinely breaks the law and in so doing holds back innovation in numerous technology markets. Is there any surprise that a site made up of geeks who love technology would have a lot of negative things to say about them?
Microsoft and Open Source have their problems...
Yeah, sort of the way GM and aluminum casting have problems. Open source is a method of licensing, not really comparable to a corporation.
...quit pretending that OS is perfect and Microsoft is the anti-christ.
What OS are thinking I'm pretending is perfect? I never said MS was the antichrist. That's two strawman attacks in a row. MS are just a corporation that happens to have a lot of influence in certain markets and a tendency to break the law and undermine free trade. They do a lot of damage and it is wholly appropriate to point out when they break the law yet again.
They are no different than any other corporation (Google? Sun? IBM? Don't be evil, yeah, right).
They are different from those listed above in that MS's criminal violations of antitrust law are ongoing and have not been stopped and THEY'RE THE ONES BREAKING THE LAW IN THE ARTICLE WERE DISCUSSING! When Google or IBM or Apple is breaking the law and hurting competition and an article about it is posted here, I'll complain just as loudly.
Re:Wahwahwah (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting, but isn't Openoffice the generally accepted reference implimentation, even if it is not 100% of the way there yet? I'm pretty sure the other apps in the MS blog list use OpenOffice.org that way too. Really, there is no real excuse.
The generally accepted reference is and should be the OASIS ODF standard itself. Digging through the source code of competing products to see which assumptions they made while implementing a standard does not constitute proper standards behavior. There's no reason to assume OpenOffice is the correct implementation of ODF, since Sun went to great lengths to get governance of the standard outside their organization. The question is whether Microsoft wants to implement the standard itself or write a minor OpenOffice compatibility layer into their software. OpenOffice is not necessarily a juggernaut product, anyway.
Their implementation passes compliance testing as far as ODF 1.1 is concerned. In fact, it's the only implementation that does for spreadsheets (aside from Kspread, apparently). At the same time, it also serves the purpose of both increasing compatibility and exposing the weakness of the standard and format. If Sun wants ODF to be the de facto office standard, they should tie up the many vague loose ends that allow Microsoft to do a perfectly compliant implementation that is incompatible. The examples outlined in the msdn blog demonstrate just how open ended and inconsistent this "standard format" is.
Re:Happy to comply when it breaks compatibility (Score:5, Insightful)
Why was this modded Flamebait? It is actually insightful, given Microsoft's history [vanwensveen.nl]. That moderators rarely award points to ACs is somewhat understandable, but to censor an AC when it is already invisible is puzzling to me. Must have been an unintentional error is the only thing I can imagine.
Re:No, not at all (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolute nonsense and petty attempt to justify malice.
There IS a standard which was NOT completely respected by Microsoft.
However, we arent talking about that part: in this instance, the only claim you can make against the standard is its failing to provide formula specification for spreadsheets.
This is something that MS and all implementors can be asumed to have known BEFORE starting to implement the standard. All other implementations, INCLUDING the BSD licensed one by a microsoft contractor, chose INTEROPERABILITY, Microsoft in their second and internally executed implementation, chose to BREAK IT, and thus it DOES NOT interperate with anything at all.
You can only claim compliance, but you cannot provide evidence that this choices werent taken with WRONGFUL WILL (them being the evil fuckers theyve always been). It was an ill willed decision, that is obvious and the evidence is that, hey, they DONT interoperate at all when they COULD and actually DID interoperate in OTHER implementations.
Damn... how much do they pay for astroturfing?
Re:No, not at all (Score:2, Insightful)
Basically the ODF spec isn't clear and precise. So there are areas where you kinda have to decide how you want to do shit.
Rubbish. Utter rubbish.
The ODF 1.0 specification was lacking in detail about how to represent formulas. However, Microsoft's implementation doesn't even get it right with respect to that version.
Meanwhile, the fully detailed specification for formulas in ODF is in the final stages of approval.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenFormula
This is a detailed specification that is compatible with ODF 1.0, and which is actually more capable than Microsoft's own formula specification for Office (Excel), and it is interoperable with all other implementations of ODF and it can be translated back and forth with Excel formulas.
Microsoft are on the ODF committee. They know all about OpenFormula.
If Microsoft wanted an interoperable, comprehensive and detailed specification for formulas for ODF, why not just put in OpenFormula and be done with it?
Re:No, not at all (Score:3, Insightful)
"Do what Excel does" is not the behavior specified by the latest published standard, and "do it however Open Office does it" is not the behavior specified in the published standard either.
People have been sacrificing standards compliance for years in order to be compatible with someone else's exisitng nonstandard implementation. (In many cases, the nonstandard implementation was Microsoft's.) Now Microsoft is actually following the published standard, and everyone complains because it doesn't ignore the standard in the same way other applications ignore it...
Re:No sympathy (Score:4, Insightful)
Standards are normally written with the assumption that people interpreting them have a desire to interoperate. This was of course a mistake when you have a hostile party like Microsoft.
It is trivial to comply to the letter with lots of standards yet make an implementation that does not interoperate at all. Maybe this should be some new variation on the obfuscated-C style contests. Pick some computer standard and write some software that does not work with it yet technically obeys every part of the standard. More modern ones that are designed for expansion such as ODF make this pretty easy, older communication standards would be more fun I think.
They did it again. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nope (Score:1, Insightful)
28-millionth-and-something post!
There, now it's all right.