We're Open enough, Says Microsoft 660
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft Australia has come under fire from rival vendors and open-source advocates for keeping its Office document standards proprietary.
Greg Stone, Microsoft's national technology officer for Australia and New Zealand, faced criticism during his presentation at the Australian Unix User Group conference in Canberra yesterday. However, he stood firm on the company's policy of making the XML schemas for its Office 2003 document standard publicly available provided interested parties sign an agreement with the software heavyweight. "Why should I have to sign an agreement?" one audience member demanded to know."
How right they are (Score:5, Funny)
Can one piece of software possibly be more open to exploits and viruses?
Why shoud I have to sign... (Score:5, Interesting)
What would the agreement do? The standard is either open or not (specification is published or withheld). Does it mean that any program that reads the file in this "open" format is bound by this agreement? I can see someone writting "Here, I sent you a powerpoint presentation and I also had to attach the 3 page agreement that you have to sign and send to Microsoft along with your name, date of birth, social security # and all your bank information. Then you can open and use my file. If you don't Bill Gates will come in person and take your firsborn child. Have a nice day, -Your dearest friend Jojo"
Re:Why shoud I have to sign... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why shoud I have to sign... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Derivative works (Score:5, Insightful)
Just how would anyone think they could make this claim is beyond me. That would be like, say, Grumbacher claiming that someone's painting is a derived work because they used their paints and/or brushes.
Stop the insanity!
Re:Why shoud I have to sign... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I were the guy on stage, I would be very tempted to reply with "Why should we open this up to you anyway?"
Some people expect a lot- for nothing.
It is amazing who you meet when you do something 'for the public.' I run a totally-free, totally-unsponsored web app. It is a combination calendaring/weight and exercise tracking/reminder/organizer/bulletin board. Think Weight Watchers on-line for free - with a calendar.
It is surprising how often people send me things like - "I won't use your system until you do xxx" or more commonly "I DEMAND that you make the following changes or we will stop using your system."
That is why I went from being an involved host, to being the guy who is seen as a dis-interested developer. The moment you show interest, there will be a bunch of people (about 5% as far as I can tell) who feel that it is their god-given right to demand that everything works exactly the way they want it to. And instead of just going away, they do things like organize a boycott, and post hundreds of messages in the bulletin board complaining about the perceived problems.
What the complainers don't realize, is that they only make up a small percentage of the users, and the other 95% use the system and are fairly happy. Of course there were other people who were un-happy, and they moved on- possibly to Weight Watchers, where they are paying $200/year- of COURSE it is better, I am sure they have more than one developer.
So- I am not saying that Microsoft should, or should not open up their system more. I am just saying that there is always at least ONE jackass out there who feels that the world owes them everything, just for the honor of having the jackass use their software.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Why shoud I have to sign... (Score:3, Insightful)
So- I am not saying that Microsoft should, or should not open up their system more. I am just saying that there is always at least ONE jackass out there who feels that the world owes them everything, just for the honor of having the jackass use their software.
You're extrapolating your experiences and applying them to Microsoft. Unfortunately you are failing to account for the fact that Microsoft does not behave the same way you do. First they are a monopoly convicted of abusing that monopoly position to
Re:Why shoud I have to sign... (Score:4, Informative)
The bottom line is that we (consumers, businesses, government) are all harmed when competition is eliminated in the marketplace. MS no longer charges $100 - it's $400 for the pro bundle now (now that the competition is gone) which is just a little less than non-bundled price. Lotus and WordPerfect could not compete with a $100 office suite. They Could compete with a $400 office suite, *if* the market were still competitive.
Re:Open source is Evil! (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do you spread it ? (Score:4, Informative)
You should not spread it more. Most of us don't RTFA. Some will get the wrong idea.
Re:Why do you spread it ? (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So... (Score:4, Funny)
So Microsoft can own your soul, your offsprings' souls, their retroactive grandparents' souls, and the souls of everyone they come in contact with.
In the form of a nice law suit.
Re:So... (Score:5, Funny)
Feed me! (Score:3, Interesting)
With Open Office, I can read and export every major Microsoft file in and out of OO.
How much more open do you want?
If you want to make applications which use MS file formats, Open Office code is freely available (open source no?) so whats stopping people from developing ?
-SJ53
Re:Feed me! (Score:5, Insightful)
So I don't really see your point. Just because people make great efforts to accomplish something that would be trivial if MS released the specs or adhered to an open standard, doesn't mean that MS is in the right, does it?
Re:Complete Rubbish. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why should Microsoft have the right to lock up my documents and not tell me how to get my document complete with formatting from their program?
What gives them the right to treat my work in that way after I have already paid them?
I believe that companies should be allowed to take whatever measures they deem neccessary to prevent piracy and reverse-engineering of their software as long as it doesn't hurt customers.
I'm happ
Monopoly "competition" (Score:5, Insightful)
The marketplace success of MS Office had little to do with the performance of the product. It had everything to do with:
1. Withholding the Win32 programming interface from competitors as long as possible prior to the launch of Windows 95 (i.e until Office95 was nearly completed) so that they could advertise that only Office had 32-bit apps. This is a classic example of using a monopoly in one field (Windows) to obtain a monopoly in another field (office productivity software). This is unequivocally illegal under U.S. antitrust law.
2. Bundling agreements to get as many PCs as possible pre-loaded with Office, particularly for business use. These agreements contained strong financial incentives (in the form of discounts on Windows licensing) for offering consumers only Microsoft products and not any competing software (believe me, I know, sayeth the AC
3. Obfuscated and changing file formats that ensured that competing products would not be able to read the latest versions of Office files. Once MS killed off all of the competition, this tactic lost momentum, because MS was largely competing against older versions of their own software, and people became worried that upgrading to newer versions would make their older PCs (running Office 97, for example) unable to interchange files with newer computers. This tactic is not inherently illegal, as far as I know, but it could have been legitimately prohibited as part of a remedy after Microsoft's antitrust conviction, and (to get back on topic) is clearly something that could legitimately be prohibited in government specifications for acceptable software.
So, yes, my idea of "free and fair competition" allows one company to attempt to "outperform/outmarket" another, but only if they obey the law. Microsoft did not obey the law.
Re:Feed me! (Score:4, Insightful)
How much more open do you want?
I want to be confident when I read and export Microsoft files from Open Office, when they reach their intended destination they'll actually still look the way they looked when I exported them.
I want to be confident about this without having to keep a copy of Word around to check to make sure I didn't somehow accidentally trigger some minor incompatibility with the spec that OO committed because they don't have the spec itself.
Re:Feed me! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Feed me! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Feed me! (Score:4, Insightful)
For now... wait until the next version of Office comes out... it isn't like formats can be reverse engineered overnight
Re:Feed me! (Score:5, Informative)
So I thought, time to switch to an open alternative. Bad idea. I couldn't pass edits to the engineer I was working with because every time I'd get back a file with corrupted layout and images about the size of Jupiter.
As far as I can tell, this is because they have to build their
Re:Feed me! (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, support is always improving, but that's because the
Of course, the real problem, IMO, has little to do with the format itself, but with how often people send
A bit off topic, but also, why the heck won't MS Office import OO.org
Re:Feed me! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Feed me! (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, MS Word has a macro language -- a bastardised dialect of BASIC -- and a document object model {though not quite like the W3C ECMAscript one} that allows the canny programmer access to every feature of a document. And the code to synthesise and analyse SXW files is open source. It ought to be very possible for some third party to write a Microsoft Word plugin to do absolutely seamless import and export of OO.o
If I had a copy of Windows and a copy of Office, I'd be having a go myself. As it is, I got clean three years ago and don't intend to relapse anytime soon. Someone else can have the glory.
.DOC is NOT a standard (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish a mainstream reporter would investigate this so that businesses can understand that
OpenOffice.org is not GPL (Score:3, Informative)
"The libraries and component functionality of the OpenOffice.org source code" are LGPL, which allows them to be linked in to proprietary works.
It is also possible to license OO.org under the Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL). This allows you to make proprietary, binary only distributions, if you maintain compatibility with with the APIs and XML formats. Microsoft could download the entire source, add an MS-Office GUI a
Re:Feed me! (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it just me, or didn't Word have great import filters once upon a time? You know, back before Word was defacto standard?
Yes, it did, back when Word had to compete tooth and nail with other products that were already established in the marketplace.
Yes, MS can make good products with compelling features - if they are in a competitive marketplace.
Once they dominate the market, though, there is no need to create what the user wants, just the need to lock-in users tighter to what they are already using.
E
Re:Feed me! (Score:3, Informative)
> in and out of OO.
You can. In same kind of way that you can build a car with sellotape and cerial packets. You get something that's vaguely what you were after, but it doesn't look right and it's kind of messy.
If you've ever tried it on anything other than a very simple letter, you'll know that it doesn't really work AT ALL. The formatting gets completely messed up, things get resized, the layout goes haywire, some text gets lots e
A better response to this (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A better response to this (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A better response to this (Score:5, Informative)
AFAIK there are talks about Abiword joining in, too.
Anyway, KOffice doing OASIS is great because it's much less bloated than OO.
Re:A better response to this (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A better response to this (Score:3, Interesting)
Not right now, no, but when Trolltech release Qt4 (later this year I think) it will be available under the GPL for Windows too. So we should have KDE4 (including KOffice) for Windows soon afterwards.
Could be interesting. :)
Re:A better response to this (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not? The other way is to distribute a bunch of files and have references in the document like "play video 1 now". If you want to distribute a document that describes a series of video clips, embedding those videos in the document itself is seamless.
Just because the OSS community doesn't consider it necessary doesn't mean it's a daft idea. Geeks are completely at home with receiving a bunch of files and playing them as prompted within a document, but the average PHB who can't tell one end of a mouse from the other isn't going to want to mess around like that or to spend more than a microsecond trying to figure out why one of the distributed videos won't play on his system. Geeks will spend hours messing with GSpot and downloading codecs, but PHBs aren't going to fanny around with all that geeky crap.
Plus any boss who fiddles with Linux for a bit isn't going to take long before concluding Linux is retarded because you can't embed video in docs like you can in Word. Sorry, but you have to address "what the users want" and not just "what the geeks want" if Linux is to take over from Microsoft. Windows may be the biggest pile of bugs since a very big pile of bugs but apart from keeling over once in a while it does do what most people want.
Re:A better response to this (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A better response to this (Score:3, Insightful)
However, as Word is still primarily a letter- and other dead-tree-distribution
Re:A better response to this (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, you are also correct, but what you are referring to are not paper documents, but hypertext documents. Hypertext documents should be able to have anything in them, because their sole purpose is to pass information around through computers.
The difference between paper and on-screen documents is what caused your disagreement. Software vendors like Microsoft have either failed to realise this difference, or they deliberately ignored it in order to lock-in their customers.
Re:A better response to this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A better response to this (Score:4, Informative)
Interestingly enough, that requirement was a good chunck of my Organizational Theory/Behavior class last night. You always have to match the presentation of the message to the medium. A large part of the "barriers in formal communication" section of that lecture was about people with attitudes exactly as what you just expressed. Effective communication can mean just a timely text-based email. Or a 30 minute movie. It depends on who, and why, you are communicating. But awareness of the limitations of various media is always necessary. And sometimes, those limitations actually enhance the message by limiting noise.
Re:A better response to this (Score:3, Interesting)
>Word *is* a presentation format.
>As is anything else that isn't plain text.
OK, strictly you're right. By "presentation format" I was thinking of something for making presentations; eg PowerPoint. Word (notice the name "WORD") can be used for lots of things, as you can drive a nail with any heavy object, but I think prinarly for creating printable documents. Movies aren
Re:A better response to this (Score:5, Informative)
Fileextensions:
I think that this standarization might help in persuading governments to choose this new format. Although not an office suite strictly speaking, I wonder about abiword's default file-format... Does/will it use this new standard as the default as well (seems to be a good idea).
Free clue (Score:4, Insightful)
E.g., surprise, I might want to embed a CAD drawing as an illustration in a document. E.g., I might have a map generated out of sattellite data, by a specialized program. E.g., I might have a scientiffic/simulation program which can present its data or results in its own format, and I might want to embed that in a document. Etc.
"Text document" no longer means 80 column, 7 bit ASCII, you know. If an illustration or diagram actually belongs in that text, I'd very much like it to be actually included there, and not just referenced as "oh, and you also need to look at asdfgh666.jpg in the attached pics.zip file." Stopping to do that not only is a waste of my time, it also pointlessly disrupts the reading process.
Yes, one could do the stone-age thing and do a piss-poor export to some graphics format first, and then embed that. And pray to the dark gods that you don't end with some piss-poor conversion and/or scaling artefacts when printing. Just like in the bad old days.
Or you could have a modern design which can spare you that waste of money, brains and time. Microsoft obviously took this route. Kudos to them.
So, no offense, the "why would you need to embed a video in a text document?" is just a straw man, and not even a good one.
Again: The point is to have an architecture which can embed anything whatsoever, from any program. Incidentally something that generic is also usable to embed videos. But it's also able to embed stuff that _is_ perfectly normal and logical to have in a text document. Which is the real point.
Re:Free clue (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the part that really pisses me off about idiots who use computers and just assume that Microsoft == Computer. What if I CAN open your document, maybe I even have a copy of MS Office running in CrossOver, but what if I don't have your particular CAD software or proprietary mapping software or stupid fucking MS DRM CODEC for that video clip? Now I have a document with a bunch of stupid broken data in it!
My mother-in-law is famous for this. She downloads Neto-Keen PhotoGallery Maker (tm), sets up a photo album and sends it to everyone in the family. Everyone goes WTF is a .nkpg document?! She just assumes everyone can read it because she can. She also loves to send out .doc files. Why? 'Cause Pimply Face, the local guru, installed MS Stolen Office on her computer, furrthering the myth that "everyone uses Word"!
Where I work we are required by law to archive most of our official documents for a minimum of 80 years! WTF! I've already got archived documents in Works, ClarisWorks, WordPerfect, MS Word (all flavors), etc. I've tried to stress to management that we MUST choose an open standard (at least for archival copies) or we'll be in deep shit when, 30 years from now, we can't read any of the old formats. I've also stated that we pretty much have to have all of our archive ON LINE. Why? What format should we archive to that will be readable in 80 years (besides microfiche or paper?). We have a whole rack in a storage room of, what, those old 9660 reel-to-reel tapes? Hmmm... I don't have a reader for that. I don't even have a reader for 5.25 or 8-inch floppys any more! At least with all data online we can migrate it to the new drive arrays and have a chance at reading it with some archaic piece of software running in VMWare or something.
The "Information Age" only really kicked in about 10 years ago. We are still really new at all this 'Letrconic Data stuff. Already we are seeing valuable information lost because it's published to the web and then removed to make room for more content. Effectively (except for the way-back machine) it's lost forever. Do you think the person or company that posted that will give it to the local library or make their backup tapes available upon request? Of course not.
Back when people carved their data in stone or baked-clay tables, it lasted damn near forever. Then they moved to papyrus and it rotted easier, but still could be rolled and stored for thousands of years. We moved to paper and celluloid which maybe last a couple hundred years it properly stored. The future will be digital. I've got data at home on ZIP and Jazz discs I know I'll never be able to get off because my reader died and I'm not about to go buy another one just to get it off. Is that data critical? No. If that data was on paper, would I have kept it? Probably not for much longer, but if I had waned to, I could at least be able to save it and read it without having to hunt down a data archeologist with and archaic set of hardware and software to decode it.
DRM will cause even more problems in the future. Even if you were to archive everything on line in a format that is still supported, if it is DRM'd will you be able to read it? Will all future software be 100% backward compatible with all the previous DRM models? We should be thinking about this BEFORE we choose a file format.
I believe, in the long run, we will be doing more harm to the human race in the form of lost history and information by choosing closed standards as the way to store data now, than the burning of the Library in Alexandria ever did. We are turning information in to the tower of babel.
To get back on topi
Re:A better response to this (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A better response to this (Score:5, Funny)
Ok. I'll make a few phone calls and see what I can do.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Too True (Score:4, Insightful)
And opposing every one of them? This is like the US saying that it "protects everybodys interests by sitting on the UN" - and then using its veto for say - The International Criminal Court.
Just too scary.
OpenDocument may render MS Office irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
OpenDocument is being supported and encouraged within the EU [eu.int]. It will also be supported in OpenOffice 2.0 [openoffice.org], which is due out soon. The beta for OOo 2 is out already for testing.
Re:Too True (Score:3, Interesting)
extradited for trial by a court run by the UN? Yes. If the US is so confident that its citizens' actions are justifiable, then let them be judged by international law. Refusal is just cowardice.
Oil for Food scandal? ... was the result of inadequately policed sanctions and corruption (allegedly involving US citizens among others). Sure the UN is responsible, in the same way a CEO is. But it is not an "organisation that broug
Open enough meaning (Score:3, Funny)
But that's open enough to suit Microsoft perfectly fine.
That's their decision (Score:5, Insightful)
Because you want something that they have. They developed the file formats, so they own the intellectual property. If you want them to spell out how they work for you, you'll have to play by their rules. If you don't like that, that's fine too. You don't have to know now their file formats work to use their product, and when it comes down to it you don't even have to use their product.
This seems to me a lot like the BitKeeper debacle. It's all about contracts: the people who have something of value get to dictate the terms of the contract. No matter how much you complain about it and say "but file formats should be free!", that's not going to change.
Re:That's their decision (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, after they developed the file formats they violated United States antitrust law and were found guilty, and in lieu of sentencing agreed to a settlement which (in spirit, even if it contains many loopholes in letter) stipulated they must open up for use by the public the file formats, APIs, etc, which they own.
But, y'know, little niggling details.
Re:That's their decision (Score:5, Insightful)
This is in the context of governments storing data in proprietary formats. The public information would then be available only to those who use MS software or signed such an agrement with them. That's the objection. The "something they have" is the information that you have a right to already, but can't use without MS's permission.
Re:That's their decision (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think that the problem is really about understanding how these file formats work. The old .doc format has been reverse-engineered successfully (including features that were not documented by Microsoft) and most parts of the ne
Agreement (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't this basically the same as me agreeing to the terms of the GPL when I download GPLed source for a library or app that manipulates some open source document format? The only real difference is the terms of the agreement.
Re:Agreement (Score:3, Informative)
A legally binding contractual agreement which you must sign in order to read a document and which restricts both your behavior and what you may do with the information contained in the document is in no way similar to a license attached to a document which says "if you wish to make copies of this document and distribute them to others you must satisfy certain conditions, if you cannot meet these conditions then do not redistribute this document".
Similarly signing an employment contract with the company
Re:Agreement (Score:3, Insightful)
However the Microsoft agreement is not similar to the GPL in any way since you are just licensing the documentation of the format under the terms that you pay Microsoft money, you don't distribute it and you don't use it in any open source projects. You also have to give Microsoft privelages to your software including auditing, cr
Re:Agreement (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Agreement (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
From the GPL:If by "use" you mean "redistribute" then things are more complex, but since at the moment you are trying to compare the GPL to a contract which must be signed in order merely to read a certain document, there does not seem to be any reason to focus on redistribution unless you are trying to change the subject and/or create an aimless flamewar.
Re:Agreement (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Worked before (Score:5, Insightful)
"Open" is next.
They've found that if you don't want to do something, it's totally sufficient to not do it and then repeat to the press over and over that you did it.
Re:Worked before (Score:3, Interesting)
Methinks "Free" will be impervious for obvious reasons. Not even Microsoft could induce such double think.
Oh, wait.
Re:Worked before (Score:3, Funny)
What a day... (Score:4, Funny)
and... (Score:5, Funny)
Madness (Score:5, Interesting)
So before I would sign, I would need to find a lawyer and pay a lot of money to find out what the implications of signing it would be. I would go through enormous hassle and a lot of money, just so I would have the honor and delight to look at MS' file format specification. But wait, I might go through all that hassle and expense and come up with some answers that I don't like, like finding out that the spec does contain trade secrets, or that I am agreeing to give MS injunctive relief, and if I find those thing out, I will have spent all that money and still I won't be able to look at the spec.
Or I could skip all of this nonsense and ignore whatever they are offering and just use one format which I know is truly open: OASIS. I don't need to sign anything, it doesn't contain any trade secrets, I don't need a lawyer, I don't need to spend any money, I am free to write whatever kind of software I want to based on it, I can do whatever I want with it, I don't have to pay, I don't have to worry about someone getting an injunction to shut me down if he thinks I did something wrong. Wow, when you look at it this way, what's there to even think about in making this decision?
What we really need is an OASIS plug-in for MS Office so that MS Office users can use the OASIS format without any hassles. That would be cool.
Re:Madness (Score:3, Interesting)
I am not up on the proper windows terminology but I believe you can write software which hooks into MS Word and basically constructs a document.
So it should be possible to do this with a client for OASIS or Oo and thus import documents into Word. I am not so sure about going the other way, though.
Re:Madness (Score:4, Funny)
That sound you just heard was 10,000 Microsoft lawyers, all getting a boner.
OpenOffice (Score:5, Insightful)
My wife is in College and has a lot of term papers to write and share with other student groups for her projects. She is able to do all of this with Open Office by converting to .doc formats without incidents.
The only problem she ran into was PDF. She was using it for her last semester and loved it's simplicity of use with OpenOffice. But then she ran into someone in her class who "couldn't open it in notepad". Avoiding my Nike Burns, Computer Guy, impressions I thought it best to just export to .doc format and leave it at that.
This is the third year that We've been using only OpenOffice on Linux. I've also shown a few others the use of OpenOffice on Windows and they have adopted it as well. As far as I'm concerned, at this point, Microsoft really doesn't have anything useful to add to a word processor. Wait, they might be able to add something, but it's not cost effective.
Re:OpenOffice (Score:3, Insightful)
Who cares about word processors? Excel, Access and Outlook/Exchange are the important bits. Yeah, I suppose PowerPoint too... not that it has any redeeming qualities, but a lot of ppl do use it to put their employees down for their morning nap.
Re:OpenOffice (Score:3, Insightful)
If only this were true.
For all the faults with MS Office (and there are many!) it has at least 3 important benefits over OO 2.0 as it stands today:
1. MS Word has far superior spell checking to OO.
2. MS Word has a (crappy) grammar checker - OO has none.
3. Word has better interactive response - especially on less capable PCs.
All of these could be rectified... but as it stands today Word _does_ offer some important adv
Re:OpenOffice (Score:3, Insightful)
Wish I'd known he was there... (Score:4, Insightful)
Dang. While Mr Microsoft was next door, I was sitting at the OpenOffice miniconf at LCA just 60 metres away. I wonder if he knew that the Forces For Good were gathered so close by.
I'm glad someone mentioned the NAA and the use of OOo. For the purposes of Digital Preservation, openly documented formats are essential. XML is good, but XML that you have to sign up for? C'mon Mr MS, who are you kidding?
At the NAA, we're about keeping records for long after we're all dead. Digital records *must* be stored in publicly documented formats. Your grandkids won't be keen to sign an agreement to use those records.
In a sense, they're right (Score:4, Insightful)
Last time I checked, Microsoft are under no obligation to provide anyone with any details about their XML schema.
Despite the fact that you have to sign an agreement, this is certainly more "open" than a blanket rejection to everyone who requests access.
I can think of plenty of companies who won't let you get details about a file format they use under any circumstances.
Why not just stick with their binary format? (Score:5, Insightful)
Last time I checked, Microsoft are under no obligation to provide anyone with any details about their XML schema.
They're not, but then why not just stick with their binary format? Offering an XML-based file format (cabability) without supplying the schemas is not all that useful? You get the data, sure, but you could always export as plaintext for that.
Furthermore, it's certainly contrary to the basic idea and openess of the XML format, if you're gonna trap people with a patent license, trying to control how they parse the XML?
This is deceptive if you ask me.
zRe:In a sense, they're right (Score:3, Informative)
They have two court orders(atleast) demanding that they open up there formats and APIs so we are all free to use them.
Makes sense... (Score:5, Funny)
mkay, high horse again: (Score:3, Insightful)
There are probably enough people out there who would heartly defend FOSS against such a statement against MS for a simple reason: FOSS was there about one&half decades before MS started to appear.
The other thing that bothers: We had to ask the question of whether to include backwards compatibility for that [OpenOffice.org] specification. Is just this simple to brush away odf as sucking too much to even care [at MS], and, funny thing, nobody objects to this ?
Microsoft promoted common development of standards by sitting on all of the representative bodies working on them
Just one quick example. MS also was in boards creating h.264. And now they have a closed implementation of something like it in wmv10. MS being in all of those boards in absolutely not about helping anyone: it's about being there where these happen, to know about them, to influence it towards they see it best, etc. Is there anyone who honestly believes MS is there to help ?
"why should I have my documents from government in a proprietary format and have to ask a third party for permission to open them?".
Quite true. In the sense, that if e.g. an official body picks a proprietary format to distribute documents, they implicitely force everyone else to use these, which in MS's case means either more pirates or more money.
I, personally, wouldn't like either of those.
yah ... right .... (Score:3, Funny)
Governments must act. (Score:5, Insightful)
Justin.
From the makers of (Score:5, Funny)
Advantage as in same thing later
We are proud to present
Open as in closed
the extremists have it all wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, if you're one of those folks who sees all proprietary software as a tool of Satan (says me, writing this in Opera), you don't want Satans reps on Earth to soften their image. You want them to instead impress people over and over again with their Black-Hatness so even the most clueless will eventually wake up and say "what the fuck?"
You *want* MS to lock people in - and then bend them over and ream them good and hard once the lock-in is established. That creates enormous ill-will, especially to the PHBs who don't like anyone messing with their kingdoms. When the next opportunity comes to jump ship, they'll be that much more inclined to do so (e.g., when the next full-scale upgrade and conversion takes place).
The harder they squeeze, the more star systems, er, customers, that'll slip through their grasp.
So fanatics, crusaders, and all you "information wants to be free" loons (who STILL won't send me your credit card numbers, you hypocrits), reevaluate your game plan here. You're doing your cause a disservice. Every time MS screws over a customer pat them on the back and say "good job!"
Max
Re:the extremists have it all wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
> proprietary and cumbersome as they can possibly get
You're falling into a common trap of assuming that anybody that encourages MS to open their formats and
code is an "extremist". There are plenty of practical (i.e. non-idealogical) reasons why this is a
good idea for MS's customers and arguably for MS themselves. Hell, I'm as much a Linux enthusiast as
you're likely to find, but I don't hate MS nor want them to dry up and b
Perhaps we should turn it around? (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Make a good XML based ISO standard for textprocessors.
2) Try to convince governments/companies to require their sofware to be compliant with this standard.
3) And this is very important: Demand a very high and continued compatibility with this format to receive the "ISO approved" label. Or else we have another "IGES" debacle on our hands.
Managers and administrators just _love_ ISO standards and will at least frown if we can say: "Well M$ is not even ISO compliant, you will be in trouble in the future if you use that! It's not even compatible with the only existing ISO standard!!". This way M$ will have to coorporate to satisfy the very people that decide about buying their software...
Just a thought. Wouldn't know where to start to make this happen. But perhaps someone else here does
Re:Perhaps we should turn it around? (Score:3, Informative)
They're asking for it... (Score:5, Interesting)
More than enough! (Score:3, Funny)
why was he there ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Uh (Score:3, Funny)
Don't use it (Score:3, Interesting)
When OpenOffice.org stand a real menace, then Microsoft will be pressed to open their format, or to support OO.o own.
OpenOffice.org 2.0 is comming, with database support and a REAL laguage to extend it, Java. Let's see how it stands against Microsoft Office.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Thank you, sir. May I have another? (Score:5, Insightful)
And without ignorant guys like you MS wouldn't have so much revenue.
Re:Thank you, sir. May I have another? (Score:5, Informative)
You mean with developers not able to support a 7 year old standard, even though it would make the web a much better place, because IE still won't support all of CSS 1 much less CSS 2?
xml wouldn't get any attention if it wasn't "interwebby"
You mean if the W3C team (who were not MS employees) who developed XML hadn't thought ahead to its potential Internet use?
Or do you mean how IE is the only web browser that doesn't support XHTML, so that web developers still have to write tag-soup HTML 4 or break the standard and send XHTML as HTML in order to reach anyone using IE?
this whole XML thing is a passing phase without MS
You mean like the EU standardizing on an XML file format (OpenDocument), O'Riley and Associates publishing using an XML format (DocBook), the W3C moving EVERYTHING to XML including image formats (SVG) (yes MS is a W3C member, but they are far from the only)...
About the only thing I'll give MS credit for is breaking XSLT off from XSLFO, since the latter was taking way too long to standardize, so that now XSLT can be used independently of XSLFO, both in spec and tools. That's a good thing, I won't deny that. But given everything else they've done to hold back and stiffle the development of the "Interwebby", I'd definitely say that MS has been a net-negative on the XML-based-Internet world.
Re:Open enough... (Score:3, Interesting)
In the current en
Re:The whole microsoft presentation was off topic (Score:3, Insightful)
I would agree with the first part (without the parenthesised inclusion)... open standards can be much more important than source. But the licensing terms for standards... well... the IEEE and ISO have already pushed the limits of what's acceptable there, now and then. If you can't license it on terms that allow completel
Re:Good riddance smoking (Score:3, Funny)
Bullshit. A pub is private property that allows the public to enter.
Microsoft = pub
If a pub owner would like to allow smoking, the customers have the choice to enter or not.
Smoking = access to document standards.
If a pub owner would like to allow smoking, the customers have the choice to enter or not.
I get it now... so all this fight for open standards is actually a cleverly disguised campaign to remove smoking bans! It all makes sense now!!!