Some recommended readings and quick notes...
For those who are lost in translation or find themselves fooled by Microsoft's PR pitch, which has already overwhelmed the media, here are some bits of information worth considering. We posted our views some hours ago and none have radically changed since then, having glanced at a lot more articles and perspectives.
The response from Marino Marcich you can find in The Register.
Don't get too excited by this outbreak of peace. SP2 isn’t due until the first half of 2009, meaning you've got a good year before you can save an Office 2007 document using ODF. Ahead of that lies SP1, due at the beginning of June.
There is also no word on if, or when, SPs will be delivered that bring ODF and PDF to the vast install base of customers and developers working with older versions of Office.
Accordingly, the ODF Alliance, the group of vendors and national bodies leading ODF, has warned against premature celebrations saying we should wait and see what Microsoft actually delivers in SP2. ODF Alliance managing director Marino Marcich said the proof of Microsoft’s commitment to openness would be whether ODF support is on a par with Open XML.
He pointed to Microsoft's promise two years ago to support ODF, when it backed an existing BSD project for an Open XML Translator. The project, to deliver an Office add-on to save documents in ODF, is also due in the first half of 2009. That software has not been finished, and it’s not clear whether today’s announcement for support will use the translator.
“Until Microsoft enables Office users to create and save in ODF by default as easily and fully as in Microsoft's own formats, governments will continue to adopt a 'buyer beware' attitude,” Marcich said in a statement.
Significantly, Microsoft is not quite ready to give up on its ODF rival, Open XML, that it's been busy railroading through standards bodies across the globe.
Indeed, while OOXML has garnered enough votes to pass, several major countries including China, India, and Brazil among others, voted against it. It is safe to assume that, in accordance with the opinion the expressed through this vote, those countries will not adopt OOXML as a national standard either. India has already decided so for one. I know the same is true for South Africa. The same will probably be true for others.
Now, think about this for a minute. This is a huge market that Microsoft cannot address with Office as it stands. Can they really disregard a market that size? I don’t think so. If not, what can they do about it?
Well, they can keep trying to fight countries decisions not to adopt OOXML but if they haven’t managed to achieve that already, despite all the efforts they put in, including some rather unethical if not illegal ones, their chances of success on that front are pretty slim.
Ivar Jachwitz, the deputy managing director of Standards Norway, the country's national standards setting body which adopted ODF as a recommended format for government archives, said the final proof of Microsoft's commitment to ODF and interoperability will be seen next year, when the updated version of Office 2007 reaches consumers."We have heard a lot of promises from Microsoft but as of yet, we are hoping for results," Jachwitz said.
Let's consider some possibilities very quickly. Microsoft could 'support' ODF because:
Force Microsoft to Support ODF, Group Asks EC
The British government's agency in charge of plotting IT usage among schools has asked the European Commission to force Microsoft to offer native out-of-the-box support for the Open Document Format (ODF) file standard in Microsoft Office, and not just Microsoft's own OpenXML format. Without an easy way to support ODF in Office, children's education will suffer, according to the complaint from the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency, or Becta.
In the interest of providing a bit more to think about beyond what was evidently said on this, here are a few open questions:
* What are the plans for supporting ODF 1.2, now reaching completion in OASIS? * Will it be extraordinarily easy for users to set ODF as the default save format so that this becomes regular practice for most people? * Will there eventually be backwards native support in versions of Office before 2007, or will people need to upgrade? * Hey, Apple, what about you? Let’s see you do this in iWork!
Comments
Alex H.
2008-05-22 07:15:40
It's a pretty simple reason, I know, but I find it a bit more believable than "EU weighs in" (EU doing anything fast is frankly a bit unbelievable ;) ) or "MS has a change of heart".
Roy Schestowitz
2008-05-22 07:19:30
Alex H.
2008-05-22 07:33:36
I think there is something in Matt Asay's comments about Sharepoint: I disagree with him that Sharepoint is just lock-in at a higher level (he would say that; he's Alfresco :) ) but I think he's along the right lines that the office suite is becoming a commodity. Microsoft's big issue with Office isn't anything to do with file formats; the major problem is that they've run out of features to add. Arguably, we could all be on Office 1997 and there wouldn't be much different.
I have no doubt that some people won't be happy with Microsoft's ODF 1.1 support. I actually don't think the quality of their support matters that much: I will continue to use ODF, Office users will continue to use ECMA 362. What matters is what happens after ODF1.2 and OOXML1.0. Can IBM and Microsoft work together?
Roy Schestowitz
2008-05-22 07:55:34
AlexH
2008-05-22 08:17:32
Welcoming noises being made by the likes of Rob Weir though, so it looks hopeful.
Stephane Rodriguez
2008-05-22 09:43:48
Ball_Mer
2008-05-22 10:23:49
Its all vapourware
iLinux
2008-05-22 11:38:46
He must be laughing his ass off on this...
Roy Schestowitz
2008-05-22 11:41:06
AlexH
2008-05-22 11:49:12
The behaviour you describe isn't actually "classic embrace, extend, extinguish": that has always been associated with treating something as a first-class citizen, not second class.
If you remember back to the Netscape situation, IE4 was clearly the better browser by some distance. It behaved very similarly to Netscape, and sites designed to work with Netscape didn't break often in IE4. It supported HTML better than Netscape did, and CSS was a lot better.
If you're afraid of EEE, then your fear ought not to be that Office's ODF implementation is not very good; the fear ought to be that Office's ODF implementation is excellent. If Office users started saving ODF files as a matter of course, de facto you would get ODF files that (e.g.) OpenOffice.org can't open: ODF files with Office macros, for example.
SubSonica
2008-05-22 12:31:14
AlexH
2008-05-22 12:45:04
Roy Schestowitz
2008-05-22 12:55:12
Yes, I agree 100%. Particularly, I think I neglected to mention the procrastination aspects earlier. When Microsoft says "2009" there's no guarantee and the company says nothing about the quality (fidelity) that's guaranteed in SP2. It's all just an attempt to freeze the market (it's a good phrase because even Microsoft uses it, which shows how it treats 'customers' and secures lock-in).
Alex, thanks for the link. I've been accumulating people's thoughts on this and I'll post some later.
Stephane Rodriguez
2008-05-22 13:10:09
The Netscape/IE issue was not technical. If you haven't watched BillG DOJ anti-trust deposition, a 10-hour video, you owe it to yourself.
"If you’re afraid of EEE, then your fear ought not to be that Office’s ODF implementation is not very good; the fear ought to be that Office’s ODF implementation is excellent. If Office users started saving ODF files as a matter of course, de facto you would get ODF files that (e.g.) OpenOffice.org can’t open: ODF files with Office macros, for example."
I'm not afraid. Keep this for you thanks. I'm explaining that the latest move from Microsoft is just a variation of what they have done for two decades. This is pure business influence, not technical. The intention is to ensure as little as possible corporate customers even think about testing an alternative product.
AlexH
2008-05-22 13:12:01
If we're honest, there aren't many people who are going to be tossing up between OpenOffice.org and Office. If someone's ready to go with (for example) OOo 3, having ODF 1.1 support in Office isn't going to change the balance very much.
On the other hand, being able to give people copies of OOo and not have to switch it out of ODF mode (which, like it or not, is a necessity for some) looks like it could be possible.
Roy Schestowitz
2008-05-22 13:14:43
http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=GatesDepo
We have some smoking guns here:
http://boycottnovell.com/comes-vs-microsoft/text/
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2007/01/24/Mixup
"Those with long memories might suggest a parallel between Rick’s position and mine when in 1997, I was sitting on the XML Working Group and co-editing the spec, on a pro bono basis as an indie consultant. Netscape hired me to represent their interests, and when I announced this, controversy ensued. Which is a nice way of saying that Microsoft went berserk; tried unsuccessfully to get me fired as co-editor, and then launched a vicious, deeply personal extended attack in which they tried to destroy my career and took lethal action against a small struggling company because my wife worked there. It was a sideshow of a sideshow of the great campaign to bury Netscape and I’m sure the executives have forgotten; but I haven’t. Anyhow, I thought I had to point that out first before somebody else dredged it up, but I totally don’t think Rick’s status played in this story and I’m also 100% confident of his integrity."
Roy Schestowitz
2008-05-22 13:17:57
It's a marketing routine and a way to circumvent policies. Forget about practicalities and think about the recent debacle down in SA.
AlexH
2008-05-22 13:26:25
If MS treat ODF as a second-class format, then they're not embracing it, and no-one serious about ODF is going to use it. If no-one serious about ODF uses it, then it's not in a position to wreck the format.
I'm not saying that there couldn't be problems with Microsoft's approach, I'm just saying I don't think you can describe it as EEE based on the premise of a poor initial implementation.
For what it's worth, I basically agree with you: I think Microsoft's motivation is to make Office the "best" suite with regards features and file format support on the market, to the extent that people won't consider other software. I just don't think you can describe that as EEE, that's all.
SubSonica
2008-05-22 15:32:41
Why further is Microsoft is just trying to gain some more time (end of 2009)?, well as written by a groklaw commenter... [the more time passes, the more people are getting locked by the OEM installations of Vista coupled with 30-days-limited versions of Office that are shipped by some OEMS instead of MS Works (HP, to name one)]... [QUOTE] DOCX. This means current users of MS Office 2007 ... Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, May 22 2008 @ 09:33 AM EDT will be building up a collection of docx documents which will potentially lock them into MS Office again.
Currently I'm refusing to accept docx.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ] [/QUOTE]
Stephane Rodriguez
2008-05-22 16:49:26
Really? With their distribution power (500+ million licenses), Microsoft have the opportunity to stall ODF development to whatever implementation that is part of Microsoft Office. It does not matter if OpenOffice moves to 1.2, 2.0, as long as the fate of ODF is out of open source people hands. This would qualify as Embrace and Extinguish.
What would be better is an distribution agreement between OpenOffice and Microsoft. A kind of Windows Update for Office, in which how ODF updates are shipped to users. This is the kind of thing you discuss very early, usually. That Microsoft went their way (the ODF implementation will probably be the work of an intern, as it usually is) only shows their true motive.
Yuhong Bao
2008-05-22 17:51:21
master_chief
2008-05-22 18:28:58
You are forgetting that there is also a quite a significant number of OO.o installations...
Check this..one more defeat.
http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Open_Letter_To_Mammootty#Mammootty.27s_Response
This was regarding to the Open Letter published few weeks back
http://fci.wikia.com/wiki/Open_Letter_To_Mammootty#Open_Letter_to_Mamootty_from_Free_Software_Community
Roy Schestowitz
2008-05-23 00:27:15