Bonum Certa Men Certa

How Microsoft Belittles ODF, Using the “Choice”-Themed Lies (and Why Google Should Offer ODF as a Choice)

"If thought can corrupt language, then language can also corrupt thought."

--George Orwell



Summary: Microsoft and its proponents/minions are still pushing an old propaganda line by claiming that Windows and OOXML will bring "choice"

THE NEWS is aflood with reports that IBM comes under scrutiny in the EU. Little is being said about the fact that IBM is being attacked SCO-style by Microsoft and its “satellite proxies” (IBM's words). We care about this because IBM's mainframes run GNU/Linux -- a fact that people like Florian Müller could not care less about (and this matters because "FlorianMueller" is the one who also pushed the news into Slashdot with his own convictions and bias). See the conversation in the previous post where Müller admits using Vista 7 (he seems like a permanent Windows user) and does not care so much if his stance is helping Microsoft. He's apathetic to it. He also spins/subverts the word "choice" in the same way Microsoft does (same with the word "openness"*). It's done just as Microsoft Malaysia did it to ODF and other branches of the company do under all sorts of situations. It's a language game. Standards are about limiting choice at some level of granularity in order to ensure that different implementations work well with one another. Microsoft's hypnosis strives to confuse people about choice; it's about office suites, not formats.



Rob Weir has just informed his peers and supporters of ODF that Microsoft is restricting choice (abolishing and harming ODF's status) using language games.

Microsoft’s talking points go something like this:
If you adopt ODF instead of OOXML then you “restrict choice”. Why would you want to do that? You’re in favor of openness and competition, right? So naturally, you should favor choice.
You can see a hundreds of variations on this theme, in Microsoft press releases, whitepapers, in press articles and blogged by astroturfers by searching Google for “ODF restrict choice“.

This argument is quite effective, since it is plausible at first glance, and takes more than 15 seconds to refute. But the argument in the end fails by taking a very superficial view of “choice”, relying merely on the positive allure of its name, essentially using it as a talisman. But “choice” is more than just a pretty word. It means something. And if we dig a little deeper, at what the value of choice really is, the Microsoft argument falls apart.

So let’s make an attempt to show how can one be in favor of choice, but also be in favor of eliminating choice. Let’s resolve the paradox. Personally I think this argument is too long, but maybe it will prompt someone to formulate it in a briefer form.


Glyn Moody remarks on this post by calling it a "nice debunking of a sneaky Microsoft trope about choice" and he also shares this word of warning about a new Google Docs "format".

“I'm having trouble searching for just ODF formats, Did Google remove the ability?”
      --Anonymous
I asked Weir about it and he said that he "Can't tell much from the screenshot. Not clear that it is a format. Maybe Punch is an app? Or internal test system?"

As a reminder, Google officially opposed OOXML when Microsoft was corrupting standards bodies all over the world, but Google never showed much active support for ODF, either. Google has been mostly passive and there are recent examples where Google exlcuded ODF support and was criticised for it (although not in a major way).

One person has just mailed us to say: "I'm having trouble searching for just ODF formats, Did Google remove the ability?"

"In general I'm losing it for Google," said this person to us, "they support OS [open source] only when it suits them. They [are] really not our friends."

Google Docs is of course proprietary. _____ * When Microsoft says "openness" it never means "Open Source". In cases where Microsoft is excluded or chooses to be excluded it advocates "choice" as means/route to depart from standards and embrace proprietary offerings instead.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

[Meme] Plagiarism Does Not Eliminate Jobs by Replacing Humans, It Replaces Human Knowledge With False Cruft
We need to boycott sites that fake their output
[Meme] Doing Dog's Job (Not God's Job)
The FSF did not advertise the talk by RMS (its founder), who spoke in France almost exactly 23 hours ago
[Meme] Free Software and Socially-Engineered Groupthink (to Serve Big Sponsors Like Google and Microsoft)
They do this to RMS all the time
 
Gemini Links 21/01/2025: Media Provocations and Nazis Not Tolerated
Links for the day
Slopwatch: BetaNews Plagiarism and LLM Slop by UNIXMen
"state-of-the-art" plagiarism
What Fedora, OpenSUSE, and Debian Elections Teach Us About the State of Weak (or Fake) Communities
They show a total lack of trust in these communities
Links 21/01/2025: Mass Layoffs in "Security" at Microsoft (Despite Microsoft Promising It Would Improve After Many Megabreaches), Skype is Dead (Quietly)
Links for the day
Alternate Version of Daniel Pocock's 2024 Talk, "Technology in European Parliament Election Campaign"
There's loud ovation at the end of the talk
Gemini Links 21/01/2025: London Library, Kobo Sage, and Beyerdynamic DT 48 E
Links for the day
The January 20 Public Talk by Richard Stallman (Around Midday ET), Livestream 'Assassinated' by Google's YouTube
our guess is that the 'cancel mob' sabotaged it, possibly by making a lot of false reports to YouTube
[Video] Daniel Pocock's Public Talk About Free Software Politics, Social Engineering, Debian Deaths and Suicides, Coercion and Exploitation of Women
took many months to get
BetaNews Cannot Survive If Its Fake Articles Are Just SPAM for Companies Like AOHi and Aren't Even Composed by Humans
This is what domains or former "news" sites do when they die and look very desperately for "another way"
Pocock shot in the face, shot in the back, shot on Hitler's birthday saving France, Belgium and FOSDEM
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Dr Richard Stallman in Montpellier, Robert Edward Ernest Pocock in France
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, January 20, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, January 20, 2025
Links 20/01/2025: Conflict, Climate, and More
Links for the day
Gemini Links 20/01/2025: Conflicted Feelings and Politics
Links for the day
Daniel Pocock's ClueCon 2024 Presentation Was Also Streamed Live in YouTube and Later Removed by Google, Citing "Copyrights". Now It's Back.
The talk covers social control media, Debian, politics, and more
Google 'Cancels' RMS
Is the talk happening?
Microsoft Revisionism Debunked by Microsoft's Own Words About “the Failure of OS/2”
The Register on “the failure of OS/2”
Improving Daily Links by Culling Spam, Chaff, and LLM Slop
the Web is getting worse
Links 20/01/2025: Indonesia to Prevents Kids' Access to Social Control Media (Addiction and Worse), Climate News Catchuo
Links for the day
[Meme] EPO Targets
Targets mean nothing if or when you measure the wrong thing
EPO Union Says Monopoly-Granting Targets at EPO "Difficult to Achieve Without Compromising [Staff] Health, Personal Time or the Quality of the Final Products" (Products as in Monopolies, Not Real Products)
To those of us (over 99.999% of people impacted by this) who do not work at the EPO the misuse of words like "products" (monopolies are not products) should be disturbing
The EPO is Nowadays Trying to Trick Staff Into Settling Instead of Solving the Underlying Problems of Corruption and Injustice
This seems like a classic case of "divide-and-rule" or using misled/weak people to harm the whole group (or "the village")
Links 20/01/2025: More PR Stunts by ByteDance and MLK’s Legacy Disrespected
Links for the day
Gemini Links 20/01/2025: Magnetic Fields, NixOS, and Pleroma
Links for the day
BetaNews Spreads Donald Trump Propaganda, Promotes Scams, and Publishes Fake 'Articles' About "Linux"
This is typical BetaNews
Richard Stallman 'Unveils' His January 20 Talk in Montpellier, France
It's free (gratis)
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, January 19, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, January 19, 2025
Links 19/01/2025: Gaza Ceasefire and PR Stunt by Fentanylware (TikTok), Faking It by "Going Dark" to Incite American Addicts (Users)
Links for the day
[Meme] Hardware RAID and Hardware Raid
We're expecting attacks on the press in Trump's second term (no need to impress anyone for another election cycle) to be far worse than the first
What's Running on the Laptops
12 months have passed
They Won't Buy Vista 11 PCs or "Hey Hi" Copilot+++++++ PCs of Microsoft (With TPM)
Windows at 8%
No Time Left for President Biden to Pardon Julian Assange
At least they tried
[Meme] 404, Not Found
Kuhn: I'd like to interject for a moment, we made an alliance with the Microsoft-dominated LF to outsource projects to Microsoft GitHub and rich people gave us money to do this
Total Lock-down Ambitions - Part IV - The Latest Examples and the Perils (in Summary)
For further reading take a look at Musial's nice outline
FOSDEM is Called "FOSDEM" Because of Richard Stallman (RMS)
The overlap there seems timely; yesterday RMS spoke in French-speaking (in part) Switzerland where questions in French were accepted
Links 19/01/2025: TikTok (Fentanylware) Now Banned in the US, Convicted Felon Talks to Fentanylware CEO and Pooh-Tin About Undoing the Ban Despite the Supreme Court Unanimously Upholding It
Links for the day
FTC Realises Microsoft Buying Fake 'Clients' to Fake "Revenue" (Microsoft 'Buying' Services and Products From Itself!)
Ponzi scheme
Total Lock-down Ambitions - Part III - The Web Browser as DRM Pusher
A lot of "streaming" stuff is DRM
Video: University in Peru Honours Richard Stallman
Tomorrow, January 20, Richard Stallman speaks in France
IBM Termination Story and Information From Microsoft About Mass Layoffs
In 2 weeks of 2025 Microsoft already had 2 waves of layoffs
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, January 18, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, January 18, 2025