Summary: OOXML helps Microsoft derail Free software adoption in the German public sector while Portugal’s goes ODF-only

So the news says that Freiburg will return to Office after failure to properly communicate with those who understand lock-in. IDG covered this almost exclusively and wrote: “According to the organisations, no open source experts were consulted in the process. Therefore they hoped the council would still consider a migration to a current version of LibreOffice or OpenOffice.”

Calling the Free Software Foundation Europe an “open source group” is bad, but we saw that in previous reports on the subject. The matter of fact is, a lot of issues have already been addressed:

Open source developers have already fixed three of the five major problems that are limiting support by open source office suites for Microsoft’s proprietary document format OOXML, reports Matthias Stürmer. The Swiss Ernst & Young IT consultant is one of those improving the open source office tools. He hopes better support for OOXML this will “help to successfully complete and maintain migrations towards open source office suites.”

Notice how OOXML always stands in the way, as Microsoft intended. Here is the call for Freiburg to stay with ODF:

Five civil groups advocating the use of free and open source by public administrations urge the German city of Freiburg to continue to use the Open Document Format as its default format for electronic documents. “Free office suites are making progress. LibreOffice today has over 60 million users worldwide.”

This week’s Tuesday evening, Freiburg’s city council is voting over a proposal to end its floundering migration of OpenOffice and to stop using the Open Document Format. Instead of ODF, the city board wants to default on Microsoft’s alternative, OOXML.

Some people who oversee Microsoft OOXML start following me in Twitter, so I guess Microsoft watches us ODF proponents very closely. Andy Updegrove has great news from Portugal:

According to a press release issued today by the Portuguese Open Source Business Association (reproduced in full at the end of this blog entry), the government of Portugal has decided to approve a single editable, XML-based document format for use by government, and in public procurement. And that format is not OOXML.

Here is a news report in English. After those Portugal OOXML scandals we sure expect some corruption from Microsoft. Here are some observers who should keep an eye on Microsoft's thugs. A timely reminder from Portugal:

• The Confessions of a Microsoft Lobbyist in ECMA
• A Look Back at OOXML BRM, Stacking, ISO’s Admission of Failure
• The OSP Lie, the OOXML Bribe and Other Interesting Moves in Portugal
• Geneva BRM: Microsoft Puppet Show, Invite-only
• The ISO is Replaced by Microsoft, Long Live ISO
• Microsoft ‘Pulls a Portugal’ in Ireland (Microsoft to Decide on… Microsoft)
• Quick Mention: The Programmer’s Advantage in ODF, OOXML Coverage from Hungary
• Microsoft is Still Buying Portugal in Its Fight Against OpenDocument Format
• ISO Reform Demanded, OpenISO Formed by Norbert Bollow (Updated)
• This Just in: Sweden’s Vote on OOXML Nullified Due to That So-called ”Bribery” Incident (Updatedx3)
• Has OOXML ‘Funny Business’ Already Reached Australia and India?
• Microsoft OOXML Corruption Watch — Jason Matusow Goes Batting with FUD and Deception (Updated)
• Microsoft Continues to Cheat in the ISO
• The Microsoft OOXML ‘Corruption Train’ Reaches Denmark (Updatedx2)
• Microsoft is Outmuscling OOXML Opposition in Spain (Updatedx3)
• India to Weigh in on Real Standards and ‘Monopoly Enablers’
• Microsoft Already Plans to ‘Extend’ Its ‘Standard’; ECMA and ISO Named and Shamed
• European Commission Might Finally Intervene and Investigate Abuse
• Voters on OOXML Up for ‘Hire’ in Italy (Updated)
• Open Standards and the GPL in the United Kingdom
• The OOXML Translator is a Hoax (and so is the ISO)

Other Microsoft irregularities in Portugal can be found in:

• FullSIX and Mr. Youth LLC May Be Ruining the Web (AstroTurfing) on Microsoft’s Behalf
• Microsoft’s Dumping Strategy Versus GNU/Linux (EDGI Continued)
• Is Microsoft ‘Pulling an EDGI’ on Kerala? (Updated)
• Microsoft Imprisons the Ukraine and a South African University

ESOP says: “We must stress the importance of the whole open standards adoption process and declare our explicit support for the way the interoperability regulation was designed. On one hand, there is some pragmatism to be noticed: the list of open standards is relatively short with priority given to functions where interoperability problems are a large concern. On the other hand, pragmatism didn’t mean lost of insight: there is no more than one open standard per functional category. This is something ESOP has always defended, as a measure to prevent incompatibilities that could bring the adoption process to a failure.”

Related to this, also see:

• Silverlight/Microsoft Required for Public Procurement in Portugal
• Open Letter to the Portuguese Ministry of Education
• Microsoft’s Magalhães Laptops Scam and OOXML Scandals in Portugal Associated with Fraud?
• Microsoft is Exploiting Portuguese Taxpayers to Build Nation of ‘Addicts’
• Microsoft CEO Might Try to Shoot Down Portugal’s Open Standards Bill
• The Games Microsoft Plays in Portugal to Fight Free Software
• Eye on Microsoft: Portugal Visit, Regrets, and Vista Lies

Keep on open eye on Microsoft Portugal. █

Summary: Microsoft is the one struggling to catch up in an age of Linux expansion, but LibreOffice continues to chase Microsoft’s proprietary formats

ONE of our readers, Marti, alleges that Microsoft is copying Android. As he puts it, “[o]n Android ICS they are simply widgets, which show the latest updates of your email and social media, or whatever widget you place on one of the preferred multiple “virtual desktops”. You simply have the ability to “browse” trough the history, by tipping the widgets and scrolling down (like in a web-browser).

“Marti provides some more examples where Microsoft is copying Android, just like it copies KDE.”“Windows® 8 Live Tiles® on the other had are showing a “history” of the most recent updates in a “interactive” manner. Meaning text is scrolled continually on multiple Tiles®. At first this seems quite funny and sexy, but trust me, it gets on your nerves within 15 minutes.”

Marti provides some more examples where Microsoft is copying Android, just like it copies KDE. A Gartner analyst’s negative remarks on this copycat act of Microsoft are spreading further to say that Vista 8 is not suitable for enterprises, just as OOXML causes nothing but headaches in businesses. On the face of it, attempts are being made to bridge some gaps:

If in past, you had trouble importing Microsoft Publisher documents in LibreOffice, you may get relief soon. Bernnan Vincent, a GSoC student, has created libmspub library capable of reading Microsoft Publisher files and converting it to SVG and open document format.

OOXML support in LibreOffice is a case of following Microsoft rather than leading with ODF. In a future episode of TechBytes we will talk to someone from the LibreOffice team (Charles-H. Schulz and explore the rationale of the strategy, e.g. whether SUSE's relationship with Microsoft played a role in this. Before we get to that we are going to release an episode where Stallman tells me about phone surveillance. With Skype, Microsoft is now tracking people’s phonecalls too. See our Skype wiki page for more information and some background. As one new report puts it: “The question was: “Is Skype snooping on your conversations?” The answer is yes.

“According to a Microsoft Skype spokesperson, “As was true before the Microsoft acquisition, Skype co-operates with law enforcement agencies as is legally required and technically feasible.” So what the heck does that mean?” It probably just means that Microsoft continues to be an enemy of the population, and furthermore toppling Microsoft is a good thing. █

Summary: Exciting news from Latvia, confirming that the country is indeed committed to decisions which were made regarding free access

MANY congratulations go to the Latvian people, some of whom regularly send us mail with valuable input and an appeal for help in the form of coverage that sheds light on what goes on there. Techrights covered Latvia in posts such as:

• Latvia’s Digital Independence Under Attack by Microsoft
• ODF Alliance Newsletter: Latvia and UK Join the ODF Bandwagon
• Ballmer and Co Meet Officials in Kyrgyzstan, Latvia; Microsoft Ukraine Curses FOSS
• Chinese and Latvian Governments Promote Free(dom) Software and GNU/Linux
• Austria and Switzerland Complain About Microsoft Lock-in, Latvia and Assam Escape Lock-in

Now we have some more good news from Latvia:

• Apple and Google and ODF

  I’m in Latvia today speaking at the Latvian Open Technology Association annual conference – my slides are online. The speaker before me was from the government and made an important announcement; that from now on, all government departments in Latvia must accept documents in ODF.

• ODF Interoperability: Maidenhead ODF Plugfest

  The fifth ODF Plugfest will take place in Maidenhead (UK) in the Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, on February 24/25th 2011.

In addition to these important updates from Phipps and Galoppini, recently we mentioned that the Document Foundation had joined OpenDoc Society. The future looks bright for ODF. █

Summary: Microsoft describes its proprietary, binary-only formats in the context of a “plugfest” — a term implicitly reserved for ODF events

THE TERM “plugfest” — at least when it comes to document formats — has a connotation to do with ODF. Last year we showed how those plugfests got ‘infiltrated’ (Microsoft’s term [PDF]) by Microsoft employees and partners, who sought to change the agenda there [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13].

One of the vicious campaigners against ODF, Microsoft’s Mahugh, is now co-opting the term “plugfest” by using it to describe discussion about Microsoft’s proprietary document formats.

Former Open XML evangelist Doug Mahugh announces a “Binary Format Plugfest” for October 18/19

We have given many similar examples where Microsoft hijacks words to paint OOXML, for example, as something “open”, which also sounds a little like “Open Office”. These are not coincidences; these are merciless marketing tricks. █

–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?”
      –AnonymousI 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.

Summary: The access to data in high traffic sites such as Facebook and Twitter enables Microsoft to suppress opposition and inject its points of view, products, formats, etc.

MICROSOFT is an unpopular company. Its bad reputation is well deserved and earned. About a week ago, people complained in Twitter that Microsoft was harassing them even in their own houses. It was causing a lot of noise and there are other recent incidents we could cite (like trashing/polluting the streets with promotional “MSN” butterflies — a case in which the local authorities were also called to intervene).

Office drones around Soho’s Golden Square have complained to the council about the racket caused by Microsoft’s ongoing attempt to attract more users to Hotmail through the medium of dance.

Hotmail is dying, but that’s not today’s subject.

Back in the old days, controlling the press was easy because the number of channels/newspapers was limited and there was an editorial hierarchy for each publisher. Then came the Internet and blogs. Microsoft has realised that taking down other people's blog posts is something it can manage to do in order to guard a reputation, but keeping track of billions of short messages is nearly impossible. That would be microblogging. So Microsoft signed some deals with Twitter and Twitter’s CEO came over to Microsoft a couple of weeks ago. As part of Microsoft’s AstroTurfing efforts, its PR department had developed some tools with which to spy on people and observe trends in Twitter. That was a year ago. Microsoft uses Twitter for its AstroTurfing, as we demonstrated in some of the following posts:

• Microsoft Twitter Bots, FTC Blowback, and Paid-for Vista 7 Glorification
• Are Microsoft Employees (Technical Evangelists) Using Spammers in Twitter?
• More Microsoft AstroTurfing (aka ‘Technical Evangelism’) in Twitter
• User “Microsoft Incentives” Wants to be Your Friend, Too
• Microsoft’s Twitter AstroTurf Continues
• Who is Pumping MSFT and Pimping Microsoft in Twitter?
• Does Microsoft Still Create Twitter Accounts for Guerilla Marketing?
• Microsoft’s AstroTurfing, Twitter, Waggener Edstrom, and Jonathan Zuck
• Microsoft Offers Gentle Bribes to People Who Mention Vista 7 in Twitter
• Microsoft Was “Twitter’s First-ever Association with a Marketer”
• GE, Microsoft, Comcast and (Microsoft AstroTurf at) Twitter: Pact of Lies
• Microsoft Announces More SPAM and Bribery Tactics
• Microsoft Hires Federated Media for Twitter AstroTurfing

Microsoft Nick says that Microsoft has gone further. It developed more tools for use in Twitter:

Microsoft announced the alpha preview of a social-networking initiative, Project Emporia, being developed through its FUSE Labs. The application gives users the ability to browse information on Twitter most relevant to their needs, and refine their experience through a “like/dislike” recommender system. Since its inception in October 2009, FUSE Labs has pursued the development of social connectivity, real-time experiences and rich media software and services.

Another area where Microsoft wants and needs to control minds would be Facebook.

“Facebook Obliterates Rivals in Google List of Top Sites,” says one headline from IDG and there are other signs that there is still “mindshare” in that site. To quote Microsoft on “mindshare”:

“Mind Control: To control mental output you have to control mental input. Take control of the channels by which developers receive information, then they can only think about the things you tell them. Thus, you control mindshare!”

–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]

Microsoft has already attempted to acquire Facebook. At the moment, Facebook and Microsoft seem to be allies and it’s possible that Microsoft will borrow more money and attempt to buy Facebook again.

Zuckerberg already helps Microsoft in many ways (giving them data, Office market share, spreading Silver Lie, etc.) and some days ago we found this new article:

Ballmer on Facebook privacy: Zuckerberg one of ‘good guys’

Google and Facebook are the ones grappling with high-profile security and privacy problems these days, but Microsoft has been there before, many times, and the issues were clearly on Steve Ballmer’s mind during a talk this past week on the company’s Redmond campus.

Of course Microsoft takes Facebook’s side. Microsoft too is in the business of profiling people [1, 2, 3]. Facebook has not really changed anything or even apologised since the controversy began. Microsoft supports Facebook’s position probably because it continues to receive copies of Facebook’s data (the more the merrier — the same data which made people furious). To quote an article from last week, with emphasis added: “CEO Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook fixing privacy tools”

The latest flap came last month, when Facebook announced new features that send user profile information in bulk to companies such as Microsoft, Yelp and Pandora. That prompted four U.S. senators – led by Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. – to demand Facebook pass along data only if users agree to it.

The original article had the title “Facebook simplifies its privacy controls” (but does not actually resolve the issue).

In the case of Twitter, there is a Bing deal that gives Microsoft the company’s whole data feed. These companies share their databases. See this recently-leaked Microsoft handbook to find out how it facilitates compliance with government requests for personal data (snoops). █

Summary: The latest publicity stunt around Microsoft Outlook and how Microsoft dodges its promises of OOXML compliance

MICROSOFT is a funny company. It’s not so good at hiding its intention and the result is quite embarrassing sometimes.

Last week Google announced that it had produced an Outlook migration tool (and more than that [1, 2]), which isn’t too surprising because Free software has been able to achieve this for a long, long time (Microsoft’s file formats were reverse-engineered).

“Adobe did the same thing with Flash after gnash had already reverse-engineered much of Flash with ActionScript.”Watch Microsoft as it emits spin in its press release about an Apache-licensed tool for Outlook data access (which was already possible anyway). Might this be Microsoft’s attempt to spin a defeat as generous gifting? Now that Microsoft’s lock-in is cracked Microsoft would love to pretend that it was all just planned and the result of Microsoft’s goodwill. That’s quite probable. The de facto PR agents of Microsoft sure make it seem that way. After it had already been reverse-engineered, Microsoft pretends to have given it away, eh?

Microsoft did exactly the same thing with .DOC and its relatives. After years of these formats being interpretable by other office suites (thanks to hard work on reverse engineering) Microsoft just dumped documentation which explained how to reproduce the results of hacking. Too late, no? Adobe did the same thing with Flash after gnash had already reverse-engineered much of Flash with ActionScript. Adobe gets the upper hand (PR) while offering nothing of value. They all pretend to be opening up for PR purposes and it’s fooling even Free-software friendly Web sites. Why not explain what Microsoft is really doing here and why? In response to some of this spin, Pamela Jones wrote in Groklaw: “Hey, I have a great idea. Why doesn’t Microsoft do this for OOXML, so ODF can be fully and seamlessly compatible, being standards and all, supposedly? Oh, and Google Docs, too? What? You say Microsoft only gives access to things that benefit their business? Oh. OK.”

If Microsoft’s weird variant of OOXML was ever replicated, Microsoft would then claim credit for it, right? But let’s not hold our breath. The goalposts have already moved; Microsoft is still not complying (in the compatibility sense) with its very own OOXML, and it’s already moving away from OOXML into a new lock-in: Fog Computing. “Microsoft prefers cloud over OpenXML,” says the headline of this new article which starts as follows:

Microsoft will base support for the final OpenXML standard on customer demand. The market leader at this point prefers to move its clients to cloud computing, said Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft’s Business Division. He considers cloud offerings a good extension of the desktop software that Microsoft currently sells.

“OpenXML can be implemented for a range of applications,” Elop told Webwereld in an interview. “Some are characterized as strict and some are more broad in scope. We do our best to expand the standard in collaboration with the standards bodies and implement it ourselves. We have taken major steps, but in some areas more work needs to be done.”

Microsoft recently faced criticism because the new Office 2010 productivity suite didn’t implement the strict ISO-approved version of OpenXML but a version that had been rejected.

Forget about implementing OOXML (which is not possible anyway). Microsoft’s implementations of it are mutually incompatible and Microsoft itself is ignoring OOXML. The plan remains to just make Microsoft Office compatible with Microsoft Office (which it isn’t, unless it’s the same version at all ends), which makes OOXML just a red herring. █

Summary: Office Web Apps and different versions of Office are failing to work together

WE PREVIOUSLY showed that a corresponding version of Microsoft Office for Mac is not compatible with Microsoft Office for Windows [1, 2] and different versions are also mutually incompatible. Microsoft never implemented OOXML, either. In short, it is a mess and Microsoft wants everyone to buy the latest version of Office all the time, merely to be able to communicate with other people and exchange information. The following new article from the ‘Microsoft press’ says: ‘McLeish noted that the free consumer version of Office Web Apps will have some limitations. “You can’t create a table of contents, use mail merge, and many other advanced features,” she wrote. “And there would still be compatibility issues of using Office 2003 in conjunction with a newer version, such as the loss of Smart Art or other newer features only available in Office 2007 or Office 2010.”‘

“So Microsoft software isn’t compatible with itself.”
      –Pamela Jones, GroklawGroklaw remarks on it by saying: “So Microsoft software isn’t compatible with itself. It’s been bragging that Google Docs isn’t seamlessly compatible. But neither is its own Office 2003, I gather.”

For what it’s worth, Google wants to sell its own proprietary software [1, 2] at the expense of Microsoft Office (Google no longer provides funding to OpenOffice.org, only to its fork, Go-OO).

In response to the problems Office is having, Microsoft has resorted to more viral marketing and aggressive tactics. The Washington Post writes about the Office EULA, reminding readers of the unnecessary pains imposed by proprietary software.

Reader Jean has a problem: she installed Office 2003 on her brand new Windows 7 system, and every single time she runs it, a pop-up forces her to accept Microsoft’s End User License Agreement (EULA).

Dang it, Microsoft, she accepts already! She accepts!

This EULA may no longer hold water in the UK, not as far as liability is concerned [1, 2, 3]. So anyway, why would people actually choose Office? Because “everyone else is using it”? █

“In one piece of mail people were suggesting that Office had to work equally well with all browsers and that we shouldn’t force Office users to use our browser. This Is wrong and I wanted to correct this.”

–Bill Gates [PDF]

–Benjamin Henrion, FFII

Summary: This past week of Document Freedom brings even more abysmal news for Microsoft’s corruption-riddled response to ODF (OpenDocument Format)

LAST NIGHT we wrote about attempts being made by Alex Brown to pass the blame to Microsoft, having actually helped Microsoft be where they are. What a fox. Does he really believe that people will forget what he did to promote OOXML while serving as a supposedly-independent participant [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21]? Tim Anderson, a longtime Microsoft booster, has mentioned Brown’s mea culpa and so did Andy Updegrove, who apparently foresees failure for OOXML.

In reviewing my RSS feed this morning, I found this interesting blog entry by Alex Brown, titled Microsoft Fails the Standards Test. In it, Alex makes a number of statements, and reaches a number of conclusions, that are likely to startle those that followed the ODF-OOXML saga. The bottom line? Alex thinks that Microsoft has failed to fulfill crucial promises upon which the approval of OOXML was based. He concludes that unless Microsoft reverses course promptly, “the entire OOXML project is now surely heading for failure.”

Wow.

Andy Oram points out in the comments: “The OOXML battle is no joke; it had serious repercussions throughout the public setting. Microsoft launched its OOXML campaign in the mid-2000s at a time when several countries and US states (notably the state Andrew and I live in, Massachusetts) made real efforts to move to ODF for the public good. The fake standardization of OOXML helped Microsoft’s propaganda campaign to keep MS Office in government use, although I’m sure it wasn’t the critical factor. The movement failed and history has moved on. Microsoft avoided the loss of customers and the PR boost open source could have achieved had ODF gotten into government agencies. Now the question is whether desktop office tools will be replaced by Software as a Service, so there’s little point in refighting the old battle. But open formats are more important than ever, and the new power of the movement for transparent government can correct the historical grievance.”

“The fake standardization of OOXML helped Microsoft’s propaganda campaign to keep MS Office in government use, although I’m sure it wasn’t the critical factor.”
      –Andy Oram, O’ReillyAs we pointed out before, fragmentation issues already plague OOXML (there have always been too many Microsoft implementations, none of which complied with the specifications). These are further exacerbated by the i4i case [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12], which revealed that Microsoft had hidden software patents affecting OOXML.

Some sources have spoken about a potential appeal in the i4i case (or a settlement), but OOXML seems to be dead in the water at least as a ‘standard’ because the i4i ruling is final, based on Reuters.

A federal appeals court denied on Thursday Microsoft Corp’s request that a full panel of judges rehear arguments in its long-running patent dispute with a small Canadian technology company.

One of the more troubling patent rulings in the past year involved a Canadian company, i4i, that held a patent (5,787,449) that appears to broadly (very broadly) cover editing a custom XML document, separate from the presentation layer of a document.

The 5^th anniversary of ODF is less than a month away. From Rob Weir’s Web log:

We’ll be hitting a significant date next month. It was on May 1st, 2005 that Open Document Format (ODF) 1.0 was approved by OASIS.

I hope we can all take time to reflect on far we’ve gone, with the specification itself, with the quality and diversity of implementations and with world-wide adoption.

A lot of coverage about “Document Freedom” has appeared over the past week (included in our daily links), which is evidence of continued momentum for a real standard that everyone can use and many vendors have already implemented. According to this new gem from Glyn Moody, Tim Berners-Lee refuses to accept Microsoft Office files.

We all knew that Sir Tim was a total star, choosing to give away the Web rather than try to make oodles of billions from it. Some of us even knew that he contemplated using the GNU GPL for its licence, before being persuaded that placing it in the public domain would help it spread faster.

Tim Berners-Lee is also against software patents. █

MICROSOFT’S “Insider Friend, ‘the Fox’” Alex Brown [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21] is “Looking at the pubic review text of #ODF 1.2 pt 1″ and saying that “some bits still very ropey”

What an unsurprising statement coming from the man who essentially conspired to help Microsoft corrupt ISO’s integrity while he marketed OOXML around the UK.

“ISO is dead for software standards. Do you need an official funeral?”

–Benjamin Henrion, FFII

Moreover, just very recently Alex Brown was seen defending Microsoft’s deviation from ODF [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] — a deviation which is only fragmenting and complicating everything.

Brown is joined by Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza. They are acting like Microsoft reps, to whom Simon Phipps (Oracle) replies with: “My view is that ODF should now just transclude the OOXML formula spec, but that’s probably controversial”

“To an outsider, it would probably seem clear that de Icaza is a Microsoft employee or partner who wishes that ODF just went away.”De Icaza seems very eager to keep smearing ODF, which is a threat to the top cash cow of the company whose board he serves (CodePlex Foundation board). A little conflict of interests there, no? Anyway, he is linking to his colleague Morten Welinder, who is dissing ODF and closing comments, possibly in order to prevent rebuttals from being posted. Rob Weir responded to de Icaza by saying: “The spec that vendors are implementing is linked to from the ODF TC’s homepage. Novell is on the TC. You know this.”

Maybe he’s playing dumb. After all, he also has loyalties to Microsoft, not just Novell. And guess who else is linking to de Icaza and his colleague (the ODF smear)? That’s right, it’s more noise which feeds those at Microsoft who participated in the corruption of ISO and various standards bodies around the world. They quote de Icaza as though he’s their special buddy (which he is, as he even helped bug resolution in OOXML). To an outsider, it would probably seem clear that de Icaza is a Microsoft employee or partner who wishes that ODF just went away. Why are other Microsoft agents like Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza linking to that same post, which is damaging to ODF and not even factual? It’s stuff like this, which makes the question rhetorical.

Miguel de Icaza writes in response to the call-out: “Another Rob Weir swing from Bombastic troll when discussing OOXML to nuanced and apologetic when it comes to ODF”

He’s starting to sound just like another one of those Microsoft employees who are smearing Weir (sometimes by creating smear blogs or calling for resignation).

Weir responds with: “ISO approval is not my success metric for ODF, but rather adopters, users and implementors. By those measure I’m pleased.”

“[I]t seems that Morten isn’t following the ODF development at all.”
      –Jomar SilvaAddressing the actual source of the FUD, Morten Welinder criticises formula handling in ODF even though a lot of office suites (excluding Microsoft Office) successfully implemented ODF support for formulas that are also interoperable. Weir showed this using a table and several sample files about a year ago.

It is worth adding that the ODF smear comes from the same group (Gnumeric) that was helping OOXML get past ISO. We wrote about this at the time [1, 2], specifically when there were complaints about GNOME engaging or in general terms helping Microsoft in that regard (Jody Goldberg from Novell got actively involved for example).

Jomar Silva, who is a key person in ODF, says that “it seems that Morten isn’t following the ODF development at all. Simply pathetic !”

Let’s remember what these people are pushing for at ODF’s expense. OOXML is utterly flawed and it annoys so many users of Microsoft Office, based on this new analysis at INC.com: [via Bob Sutor]

For those using older versions of Microsoft Word, or other non-Microsoft word processing software, the new .docx format can be a real pain. It has caused dissension in some workplaces. How to cope with conflicting Microsoft Office formats.

It’s a funny article to read. Microsoft’s own customers loathe OOXML.

ODF is also important because it offers “equal opportunities”, as advogato.org put it:

It is possible to get people to listen if you want to instil Free Software principles, but they have to have a “handle” against which they are forced to act, within the organisation that they work. Or, if they agree with you in principle, but are otherwise hog-tied, they need that “handle” with which to justify their actions to their superiors.

Using the words “Discrimination” and “Equal Opportunities” in the same sentence seems to do the trick.

Jan Wildeboer says that “The ODF TC peeps should really read this gem,” which accurately dissects some of the deception from Microsoft and its promoters. Here is Miguel de Icaza hugging Jeff Atwood from Microsoft. The photo below (from Marcus Griep) is a very recent one and the description of de Icaza’s talk at this event (filled with Microsoft employees and content) goes as follows:

Miguel also showcased MonoTouch, building a simple program in MonoDevelop on Mac OSX, and demonstrating it in the iPhone simulator. Including lots of pro-Linux banter and some pokes at Richard Stallman, Miguel kept the audience interested and amused, which is exactly what the last presentation in an 8-hour day needs.

Yes, it’s the same guy we have come to know ever since he compared Stallman to George Bush. What does that make it his darling Microsoft? Either way, it’s nice of him to ridicule Stallman in front of an apparently Microsoft-dominated audience. It must be a new and entertaining pastime for them. █

From Marcus Griep

Summary: Updates on ODF progress around the world, among developers, and in committees

THE NEWS about Slovakia choosing ODF (OpenDocument Format) was last mentioned in September and now we have Jan Husar stating that “OOXML didn’t made it into national standards and ODF can be used in any version!”

This message was passed on by Rob Weir and many other people who support ODF. Another person says that “In conference with the Dominican Republic document archieve from the ministry of culture about implementing ODF…”

There are few tiny reports about the ODF TC, including this from Dennis Hamilton. Jomar Silva is formally joining the discussion.

Over in Denmark, the anger and confusion are not over. We wrote about this last month and reports continue to pour, albeit they’re mostly/only in Danish:

• Europa hælder mod parløb mellem OOXML og ODF
• ODF eller OOXML, oppositionen vil gennemtvinge valg
• Flertal uden om regeringen vil gennemtrumfe ODF + OOXML-strict
• Se Helge Sanders svar i ODF/OOXML-sagen
• SF giver Sander kniven for struben i ODF/OOXML-sag

There is also this report in Dutch and an accompanying photo.

A new version of lpOD has been announced, which is good news to ODF. [via vim expert Bart Hanssens]

lpOD 0.8 has just been released, together with its documentation. You can download lpOD 0.8 here.

lpOD — languages & platforms OpenDocument.
Definition of a Free Software API implementing the ISO/IEC 26300 standard.

This is also mentioned here and there are other new projects that advance ODF.

There is growing pressure on Quickoffice to support ODF on iPhone and Symbian.

I use some open office files in my thumbdrive, so that i can easily transition between my home pc (windows) and linux netbook (Asus Eee PC). I hope Quickoffice can support these files, so that I can also use them on my S60 phone (Nokia E71)

Androffice already supports ODF [1, 2, 3] and so does Officeshots, which has this new article on the subject. █

Summary: As HTML5 is approaching, vendors continue in their attempts to gain ownership and exclusivity over content using formats and protocols

MICROSOFT’S control of the media is an important subject because it leads to “perception management” [1, 2], as exemplified in the previous post. Glyn Moody reveals that “the Editor of The Next Web Italy, @Contz, is “Junior PR at Microsoft Italy”; tiny conflict of interest there, perhaps…?“

It’s not just publications as such which are affected by Microsoft marketing people. O’Reilly and Microsoft decided to work together some months ago and now we find that O’Reilly is abandoning web standards and requiring that Web users install proprietary software to read books.

Safaribooks online were availabe in HTML-View for a long time and were accessible with free software.

Now the O’Reilly Safari team has decided to stop this and deliver online books in Adobe flash format only for online reading. As expected gnash does not work.

This means reading and browsing O’Reilly books online is no more possible with free software.

This is not about Microsoft, but it shows that O’Reilly lost its way. From a UNIX/Linux-oriented (and thus standards-friendly) origin it found its way into “Web 2.0″ and other such abstract nonsense.

Speaking of standards, Microsoft starts talking about Internet Explorer 9, which is another departure further away from web standards (DirectX in addition to XAML and ActiveX). Microsoft just cannot permit the World Wide Web to be interoperable.

Glyn Moody shares this new article about HTML5 and also looks with concern at the Open Web Foundation, where “open” is a deceiving term (Orwell must love this!).

The great promise of HTML5 is that it will turn the web into a full-fledged computing platform awash with video, animation and real-time interactions, yet free of the hacks and plug-ins common today.

While the language itself is almost fully baked, HTML5 won’t fully arrive for at least another two years, according to one of the men charged with its design.

In the mean time, Moody shows why the Open Web Foundation is not on the good side.

But independently of these details, there’s another big problem with the Open Web Foundation. The Mozilla Foundation has been pushing the idea of the Open Web for some time now; the appearance of this new foundation, with its agreement, is likely to muddy the waters around the concept of the open Web considerably. But then, that’s maybe what some companies involved in the OWF want…

Heise has some more coverage of the OWF. █

“Another suggestion In this mail was that we can’t make our own unilateral extensions to HTML I was going to say this was wrong and correct this also.”

–Bill Gates [PDF]

Summary: More OpenDocument Format (ODF) wins and an important reminder of people who try to harm it, sometimes while pretending to be “helping”

THE OTHER day we wrote about what Alex Brown had been doing in Wikipedia. For those who do not know Brown’s role in Microsoft’s OOXML fiasco, read [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21]. Regarding Brown’s edits (as we showed them a few days ago), one reader wrote privately to say, “I just wanted to let you know what Alex Brown appears to have done from those wiki edits (as far as I can go on the first page). All the criticism is magically gone. “whoops”.”

Right now he makes minor edits to ODF’s article, which is not as bad as the malicious edits from hAl, who got banned for his obvious warping of the ODF article, making it an ODF-hostile article.

But let’s concentrate on the positives, not the negatives from Microsoft and its known cronies.

The OpenDocument Web site introduces readers to two tools, Office-O-Tron and ODFPy, which Bart Hanssens describes as follows:

Office-o-tron is an online validator for office documents. It understands ODF (1.0, 1.1 and draft 1.2) and OOXML (“Transitional”).

Odfpy aims to be a complete API for OpenDocument in Python, essentially an abstraction layer just above the XML format. The main focus is to prevent the programmer from creating invalid documents.

Here is another one about Open Search Server:

Open Search Server is an open source search engine and comes with a suite of full text search algorithms. ODF is one of the supported formats.

There is a new article about this in Linux Magazine (also in German):

Open Search Server 1.1 with Synonym and ODF Support

[...]

The first stable release of the Open Search Server Java software now includes a Web and file crawler and uploaded documents can be searched. The server can handle MS Word and Powerpoint, Open Document Format (ODF), HTML, XML and PDF files.

From one of the European Union’s Web sites we gather that Norway is indeed very serious about ODF.

On 25 September 2009 the Norwegian Government adopted a new regulation on mandatory IT standards applicable to the entire public sector. As of 1 January 2010 open document standards will become mandatory for all public websites.

As the Minister of Government Administration and Reform, Heidi Grande Røys, stated, the new regulation ensures equal accessibility to the content of all public and communal websites. Users of any municipality or state will be able to visit the websites and read the documents regardless the type of software and computer equipment they use. It is a democratic right for all citizens to have equal access to public information and online services.

Some parts of the United States may be equally interested in ODF. Here is a reminder about the state of New York.

IBM’s Rob Weir gathers questions for the “State of ODF” panel, which he will moderate. Some people lend their voices to Weir and Dennis Hamilton continues his good work in this area. Bart Hanssens is also a major contributor, as opposed to those who are only pretending. They know who they are.

Weir and OASIS take ODF a step further into 1.2 while Weir and Hanssens are highlighting this new tool for verification of ODF signatures.

Via this page you can test the eID Applet Signature functionality. This test will demo the creation and verification of ODF signatures. ODF signatures are also supported by OpenOffice.org version 3.1.

KOffice 2 adds a mission statement placeholder to its Wiki while in Wikipedia someone removes the sentence: “The OpenDocument Foundation is not related to any entity doing standardisation work for the Open Document Format.” This is later readded and removed again. Test of patience?

“Ask Google Translate team to support ODF,” says OpenOffice.org and Weir speaks of the OASIS ODF Interoperability and Conformance TC again. Microsoft and its cronies still try to ruin ODF from the inside or grab control of it. Clear evidence shows this repeatedly. █

Summary: Just like a filmography-style mafia, Microsoft and its allies proceed from corrupting ISO to bashing ODF from the inside and trying to control it too

MICROSOFT MAY hope that people will forget what it did for OOXML, but the past returns to haunt as more abusive behaviour gets seen. In light of the i4i case for instance [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10], Jomar Silva raises the point that Microsoft lied about patents in OOXML, with the assistance of its special friend Alex Brown [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21].

Here is what Silva wrote a few days ago:

They also defined the coordinator of the BRM, Alex Brown (who also played a crucial role in the outcome of OpenXML, but that’s subject for another post, because I didn’t revealed yet all I saw in Geneva), and he publishes on his blog a FAQ with the rules of the BRM. This FAQ also circulated as an official ISO document, and can be found here.

Look what is written in this document:

4.1 Will IPR issues be discussed at the BRM?

No. IPR issues in this process are the exclusive preserve of the ITTF. IPR decisions have previously been delegated by all the ISO and IEC members (NBs) to the CEOs of IEC and ISO, and they in turn have examined them and found no outstanding problems. NBs seeking reassurance in such matters must pursue them through other avenues than the BRM.

In other words, the CEOs of ISO and IEC (the highest authorities of the two entities) had assessed the intellectual property issues on OpenXML and found nothing, so no committee around the world have to worry about the issue… I remember that I’ve asked about it few times, and the answer was always the same: “Kid, you are doubting the CEOs of ISO and IEC ?”… but what about the i4i litigation ?

[...]

Most of the ECMA delegates I know are Microsoft employees or business partners of the company. This staff can be anything but “uninformed” and therefore I can’t believe that ECMA didn’t know the litigation too.

So, I change the question asked by Groklaw almost two months ago for a more direct one: Who fooled who?

We all know that all NBs was fooled, that the countries have seen their names used in an unscrupulous way and that all delegates and competent technicians has been fooled too.

I really hope to hear something from the cited parties cited, and I believe that all International Society expect the same. We no longer live in a world where a nonsense fact like this can be accepted, and I’ll not stop until I find an answer (and I know I’m not alone in this quest).

I also would like to know from the ISO/IEC what they have to say about all this. They knew the i4i litigation ?

To finalize, I appeal again to CEOs of ISO and IEC: The G-20 is a reality, and it’s never too late to correct an injustice !

In the comments, the president of the FFII writes:

ISO should pull down the ISO29500 immediately.

No one can implement this specification safely.

ISO29500 should be withdrawn “Now”.

Georg C. F. Greve, the founder of the FSFE, writes about the above: “The first rule of the #OOXML club? Don’t talk about the legal problems!”

Rob Weir has more to say about the role of Alex Brown:

Curiously, NBs were asked to make their final decision without actually seeing the text of the standard they were being asked to approve. ISO leadership denied requests from several NBs, a formal SC34 resolution requesting this text, as well as NB appeals, all which asked to have access to the “final DIS” text that would eventually be published. The ISO chief, in his response to the NB appeals, called the final text of OOXML “irrelevant” (prophetic words, indeed!) and would only permit NBs to have access to a list of over 1,000 resolutions from the BRM, many of which gave great editing discretion to the Microsoft consultant who would eventually produce the final text of the specification.

I discussed why the lack of a final DIS text was a problem back in May 2008:

We are currently approaching a two month period where NB’s can lodge an appeal against OOXML. Ordinarily, one of the grounds for appeal would be if the Project Editor did not faithfully carry out the editing instructions approved at the BRM. For example, if he failed to make approved changes, made changes that were not authorized, or introduced new errors when applying the approved changes. But with no final DIS text, the NB’s are unable to make any appeals on those grounds. By delaying the release of the final DIS text, JTC1 is preventing NB’s from exercising their rights.

Would you make thousands of changes to code and then not allow anyone to test it, and then release it internationally? Of course not. Doing so would amount to professional malpractice. But that is essentially what ISO did with OOXML.

Weir is very careful not to mention names (personalising issues), but it’s obvious who’s who, not to mention the current role these people play in derailing ODF. We shall come to this in a moment. To say that ISO was “gamed” is an understatement. ISO was hijacked and a lot of people corrupted and bribed. There is extensive evidence to show this.

On a more positive note, Bob Sutor (IBM) writes about new success stories for ODF, followed by feedback from Roberto Galoppini and also his colleague Rob Weir.

Roberto Galoppini also writes about the ODF plugfest and spreads the word now that the event is approaching.

The second in a series of events that will bring together implementors of OASIS OpenDocument Format/ISO 26300 to unilaterally test and discuss implementation issues of ODF with each other. All ODF implementors and/or those looking into the matter are invited to participate in this event on behalf of the Netherlands government and OpenDoc Society.

We wrote about those plugfests before, e.g. in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 9 10, 11, 12]. Microsoft (and its ecosystem) attended plugfests to throw some criticism at this standard, which it hates but at the same time must watch over. Alex Brown’s friend, who has always been hostile towards ODF, drops Microsoft’s talking points to be used against ODF while Microsoft’s Doug Mahugh makes fun of ODF as well. Those who are not employees of Microsoft often feed the company by insulting ODF “by proxy”, so to speak.

“Those who are not employees of Microsoft often feed the company by insulting ODF “by proxy”, so to speak.”In the latest example seen above, we are witnessing a familiar old pattern of deception. As our reader puts it, “Microsoft is able to spin it as Microsoft vs 1 company (either IBM or Sun depending on the circumstances) with amnesia about the rest. Via OASIS, 600 companies, universities and government agencies were behind the initial development of the first try at a universal office format. About two dozen were taking the lead in development.” This politicisation of the issue (courtesy of Microsoft) has gone on for years.

Anyway, those who are speaking about the ODF plugfest now include Glyn Moody, Gwynne Monahan, Jomar Silva, Thomas Zander (Nokia), Rob Weir, and the “elephant in the room” Doug Mahugh. The Microsoft crowd is still trying to 'tame' or dethrone Rob Weir, so Jomar Silva sarcastically writes: “Oh my God ! Mr. Vadar is the chair of the ODF TC ! We must be the bad guys ! (M$ fan boys are impressive)”

Microsoft is still striving to control ODF like it controls ISO and Weir must be polite. That’s probably why he also omits names and does not write about the OOXML scandals as much as he used to.

Microsoft’s hijack attempts affect not only the ODF TC. Watch who is involved in the Document Interoperability Initiative: Microsoft, Microsoft allies, and Microsoft-funded groups.

* I’ll be covering the Office 2010 extensions (as was covered by the Office program managers in last month’s DII workshop in Redmond). I will also present the latest news on how we’re working to improve ODF interoperability between Office and other popular applications, and talk about our plans for the future.
* Alex Brown will be covering present and future plans for the Office-o-tron validator project.
* Klaus-Peter Eckert of Fraunhofer FOKUS will present the latest status of the document test library project and other work Fraunhofer is doing to improve interoperability.

Microsoft attempts to control the whole thing, including so-called interoperability. We showed a lot of evidence before [1, 2, 3].

Even in Wikipedia, ODF-hostile content gets injected into the article about ODF by the Microsoft folks, as last shown some days ago. Some references to Microsoft blogs are now being removed, as well as the poison that they have injected.

A more detailed account of how Microsoft subverts Wikipedia (on ODF) can be found in, e.g.:

• Is Microsoft’s AstroTurf Against ODF Still On?
• Microsoft Starts Attacking the ODF Alliance, Sends Paid Wikipedia Editors to ODF Article (Updated)
• OOXML BRM Convenor (Alex Brown) Joins the Pro-Microsoft Wikipedia Spinners
• Microsoft Folks Rewrite ODF’s History and Build Anti-ODF Social Network
• Fraunhofer Again Lobbies for Microsoft Lock-in
• Microsoft Accused of Anti-ODF Whisper Campaign

Microsoft leads people to confusion, fear, and absorption of disinformation using those people who only pretend to be friends of ODF. Here for instance is a person who was unfortunately led to making a false claim given new software like Androffice. ODF does a lot better than Microsoft would have people believe. █

Summary: The Linux Foundation has officially begun embracing Free video; The BBC dumps Real

ABOUT A day ago, the Linux Foundation took its big step forward and uploaded videos from LPC, not before Ogg versions were made available. We linked to the news a few hours ago, but given the value of what the Linux Foundation has done this time around, it’s worth praising in a separate post. Here for example is the talk from Linus Torvalds — a first among many that we shall post daily.

In other important news, last year we shared this video which shows why BBC media is so Windows oriented. Well, the BBC is now getting rid of RealPlayer options, so it is time to pressure for Ogg or Dirac support from the Beeb.

When streaming services are evaluated against these measures, we take into account where different formats might need to be implemented, evolved or deprecated.

Well, now is the time to adopt the freest format of all. It is neither Windows nor Real, that’s for sure. █

–Steve Ballmer, 2001

Summary: Google creates more funnels to lead away from Microsoft software and formats/protocols; Microsoft takes aim at GNU/Linux

MANY migrations without permission seem to involve SharePoint, which is the most total Microsoft piece of lock-in, allegedly. There are some ways out however and another new one has just received coverage from Glyn Moody, who writes about a new Google Sites API.

Cracking Open the SharePoint Fortress

[...]

Assuming that I’ve not missed something here, this new Google Sites API seems pretty big to me: it offers a Get Out of Jail Free card to businesses that would otherwise find some of their content locked away in SharePoint. And once that data is liberated, there are plenty of open enterprise content management solutions out there that would be glad to accommodate it – without the lock-in, of course.

Here is some more new stuff from Google, which enables people to escape the Microsoft Office lock-in. [via Glyn Moody]

As interns on the Google Docs team this past summer, we were excited to be able to work on making Google Docs that much more useful for students like us. We’ve now added a bunch of back to school features which should help our fellow students make the transition from summer to school that much easier — and we hope they’ll be useful to you non-students as well!

There is support for equations now. Since Docs adheres to OpenDocument format (ODF), it will interact nicely with other ODF-compliant software, maybe with the exception of Microsoft Office that does mathematics its own way, thus breaking interoperability [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].

Without Free software, there would probably be no Google. Microsoft realises what’s going on here, so its obsession with blocking GNU/Linux, the "most potent operating system competitor," promptly kicks in again.

Microsoft’s server and tools business in the coming year will focus on gaining ground in the high-end database and server market, helping users transition to the cloud and extending its dominance over Linux, according to the division president.

What about UNIX? And if Steve Ballmer says that 60 percent of servers run GNU/Linux, why use the expression “extending its dominance over Linux”?

Is IDG trying to imply that GNU/Linux is behind, that Microsoft is dominant in servers, and that Microsoft is the one with the momentum? Based on the latest results from Red Hat, the most dominant player in the GNU/Linux servers area, their profit is up 37% despite a tough economy, whereas Microsoft’s is down by over 30% for two consecutive quarters. It is very clear who has the momentum. Matt Asay has just published this post with the dramatic headline “Red Hat to collide with Microsoft,” wherein he claims that:

For years, Red Hat has happily sold Linux to Unix shops anxious to save money at equivalent or better performance. During this time, the company largely avoided Microsoft, which has tended to compete much higher up the stack. No longer. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer argues that one of Microsoft’s biggest opportunities lies in enterprise infrastructure and associated application development.

Red Hat, meet Redmond.

More recently, Red Hat told Microsoft to end the racketeering practices and also accused Microsoft of having patent trolls attack Red Hat [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. As a nice new essay recently stated in its headline, we should not blame Microsoft; “It’s their nature,” indeed. They just can’t help acting like thugs. █

“We should whack them [Dell over Red Hat GNU/Linux dealings], we should make sure they understand our value.”

–Paul Flessner, Microsoft

Summary: OpenDocument Format (ODF) falls further into the hands of the already-corrupted ISO after a meeting that Microsoft was hosting

THE previous post showed that ODF is gaining (there is a Japanese translation in progress, which looks like this), but there is one company standing in the way, as always. Lacking desire to inter-operate with ODF [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] (Office 2010 will still lack proper ODF support), Microsoft tries to bring this debate closer to home, as we last mentioned here. The plenary meeting of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34 is taking place in Bellevue or Seattle, as planned all along. It’s almost as if Microsoft is to be the centre of ODF this time around and those in attendance include Microsoft folks like Alex Brown [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21], who is delighted to “create a new working group (WG 6) dedicated to servicing its responsibilities for #ODF maintenance.” Jomar Silva might become a member, but who else?

It sure sounds like that dreaded attempt of ISO/Microsoft to take control of ODF, at the expense of OASIS. SC34 is already stuffed with Microsoft people [1, 2], most of whom have their interests disguised. It’s worth remembering that this is an SC34 meeting near Microsoft which is responsible for everything and it’s Microsoft employees who seem most pleased. Henrion from FFII is rightly angry, arguing that one should “Scrap ISO. They have a stupid system of physical meetings around the planet. I don´t have the money to travel to such meetings.”

This SC34 meeting at Microsoft sure seems to have served as a stepping stone in the hijack of ODF, which Groklaw warned about one year ago. Simon Phipps from Sun is seemingly unhappy. He asks Brown (Microsoft mole and OOXML convenor): “What responsibility does SC34 have for ODF beyond forwarding mail to OASIS?” Later he tells a Microsoft employee: “SC34′s role in ODF maintenance probably matches the Linux Foundation’s role in Windows maintenance following your kernel code drop”

Phipps is referring to this incident, which we last mentioned here. Rob Weir just posts this Q&A, leaving no clear indication of how he feels about this development, into which he could as well be pressured. “Rob Weir tells more than we probably want to know,” argues Glyn Moody.

Question: So who owns ODF maintenance?

Rob: The OASIS ODF TC owns the maintenance of the OASIS ODF standard, and WG6 will own this activity for the equivalent ISO/IEC text. However, neither committee has absolute freedom of action, both being governed by applicable procedural rules of their parent organizations, as well as various joint agreements between OASIS and JTC1.

Given the corruption at ISO [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], is this a safe bet? How did it come about and whose proposal was it?

NZOSS has also just reminded the world of XML and OOXML patents from Microsoft. This is a subject that we wrote about in:

• Microsoft ‘Patents’ ODF Whilst Also Harming It
• Patents Roundup: OASIS Takes Stance Against Software Patents, Microsoft Loses Again
• XML Patents, Microsoft Aggression, and ODF Hostility
• Microsoft’s ‘ODF Patent’ as Vacuous as Its Promise of Interoperability
• Reader’s Article: The Microsoft Patent Threat to ODF
• On Microsoft’s Software Patents and ODF Fragmentation

Here is a new video from NZOSS (as Ogg Theora or Flash):

Direct link

Charles from the OpenOffice.org community had this to say:

I remember that a while ago, as I was attending a heated debate on the (in)famous standardization of OOXML. As we were arguing with Microsoft on some specification details, I happened to state all aloud that when it came to this level of security (the topic at hand was security), I had my concerns about the encryption algorithms used by the specification but that in a general sense, security relied much more on the application using the format and the underlying operating system’s level of security. I went on to say that for the specific portion of the draft we were studying, it was perhaps not necessary to waste time in fruitless discussion topics including the behavior of OOXML documents in a computer undergoing a nuclear attack and being stored on a computer facing a zero-day exploit at the same time.

The response from one of the Microsoft spokesperson (I’m coining the term spokesperson, because that’s what most of them were) was a mix of surprise and sarcasm: “Everything happens, today you agreed with us!”. And indeed, I agreed that we should continue to parse the 6000 pages-long draft.

[...]

First, one has to realize that what happened with Novell was a serious attack against free and open source software, but although it was serious, it never really had any major impact on the community itself. What I mean by this is not that it did not have any real and damageable impact on IT companies or OEMs that ended up signing phony IPR deals with Microsoft. I mean by this that when you step back, you end up realizing that even the divide it caused inside the community is not that big. There is no one “Novell Community” and one “FSF Community”. That simply never existed except perhaps in the mind of some Mono architects. Even the Ximian bunch is very much on its own; influential because of monthly salaries, and time to devout to their pet projects and an historical ties to Gnome. But aside this, the impact of the Novell agreement with Microsoft did not create the “grand schism” many feared or wished at that time.

[...]

That is, I believe, the essence of the Codeplex foundation that is described here. Forget the code for a moment, and you might come to the conclusion that either Microsoft wants to impose its views on patents and copyrights, or it genuinely wants to have a fruitful conversation with the free and open source software community. The former is only surprising as it shows a different approach, but if that’s what they’re looking to achieve I am afraid that unless this foundation comes out with the most radically innovative ideas in the field of IPR, it will fail, for the first reason I outlined much above: Nobody will follow them, except people and constituencies who have an economic incentive to do that. What is left, then, if not the latter hypothesis? Interesting times are ahead of us in this case.

Microsoft’s CodePlex Foundation is still seen as undesirable by the Free software community. It’s a subject we covered in:

• OIN Receives Thanks from Many, CodePlex Foundation Receives Thumbs-Down from Many
• Miguel de Icaza Joins Microsoft
• Why Microsoft’s CodePlex Foundation is a Promoter of Proprietary Software
• Microsoft Runs Away from the Press After Trying to Have GNU/Linux Sued by Proxy
• CodePlex Foundation Loves Software Patents and What MonoTouch Means to Microsoft
• Microsoft Turncoat Quits

The next few posts will carry on along the same theme. Microsoft’s bear hugs are merely attempts to take control of its very own opposition, thus diffusing it. █

–Microsoft [PDF]

Summary: Bits of analysis of Microsoft’s mistakes on Web and document standards

IT IS no secret that Microsoft dislikes open standards; they are not good for the shareholders. The integrity of the company often comes later than short-term gain, so it is not a wise strategy, either. According to this gem, it has just become apparent that OOXML is nothing more than a reactionary move caused by the advent of ODF. It was known all along but there is new compelling evidence to support such an argument.

James D. Mason says:

I spent 22 years as the chairman of what is now ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34. SC34 is the committee that standardized SGML in the 1980s and now is responsible for both ODF, supported by many open-source products, and OOXML, the XML released by Microsoft in response to ODF. Neither ODF nor OOXML has anything to do with ODA/ODIF, which have been dormant since the turn of the current century but were still under development in the 1990s in a committee that was parallel to the one that became SC34.

Our past analysis: OOXML is a response. Thank you very much for the confirmation. Stronger language from Mason found in this article.

Thanks to Andre for finding this out. In his country, Germany, Microsoft has been using Fraunhofer essentially as a shill for OOXML. In light of the very latest deception form Fraunhofer, Jones wrote at Groklaw (News Picks):

ODF is totally open to the world. So where might the bottleneck be found, class? Did you really, really think that Microsoft intended there to be real interoperability? Some of us recall very well what happened in Germany in the OOXML approval process and the role this institute played. Remember their words, as translated from the German by a Groklaw volunteer? –

“The beginning standardization procedure of Office Open XML as an ISO standard will lead to a technological development of both standards – Office Open XML and ODF 1.0. The constructive comments that have been made alongside the DIN approval from leading experts guide the way in direction of interoperability” says the head of the department e-Government at Fraunhofer FOKUS and head of the DIN work group translation of document formats. “We at Fraunhofer FOKUS e-government-lab will support the procedure effectively and accompany our lab-partner Microsoft as a member of ECMA International with our know-how in implementing our recommendations.”

In relation to the patent assault on Free software, Jones later used the OOXML saga as an example too, remarking that it proves Microsoft never wanted to interoperate. “Like Microsoft will run right out and do that [give up on patent threats]“, she wrote, “because it just spent a fortune building up a patent portfolio, and it doesn’t plan on using them against Linux. Dream on. It’s not about hating any company, but there is enough water under the bridge to be able to predict that Microsoft probably will use those patents aggressively, as they already did in the TomTom case, and as they do in FUDly ways already. And what makes anyone think Microsoft wishes to interoperate, after watching the OOXML saga? Best to be realistic about Microsoft. The Linux Foundation may feel it has to say stuff like that, but I don’t.”

Microsoft has a long history of fighting against standards rather than accepting that they are needed. Eventually, inevitably, Microsoft joined ODF but did so poorly in a way that may only harm ODF [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. And now it may do the same to HTML5. As CNET puts it:

The World Wide Web Consortium’s HTML Working Group had been led by IBM’s Sam Ruby and Microsoft’s Chris Wilson. Wilson has stepped down and is being replaced by two others, Paul Cotton, who manages Microsoft’s Web services standards team, and Maciej Stachowiak, who manages Apple’s WebKit WebApps team, according to an e-mail announcement by W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee.

Why are freedom-hostile companies put in charge of the W3C HTML Working Group? We asked that question a couple of days ago, mystified.

“Jimmy the Geek” from Linux Today writes:

About 4 years ago. I could see that Vista was going to kill any momentum that Microsoft had picked up from XP and I was right. I even called the layoffs happening this year.

Sadly some of my friends are caught up in the whole MS layoff situation, which sucks.

My prediction for the next 5 years? Microsoft is going to do a Novell. They are going to try to keep doing what they have always done, despite losing more and more and more market, until in the end they are forced to adopt open source as their core OS.

Well, until then, Microsoft will suffer financially, quarter after quarter. █

Summary: Assemblage of microblogs showing considerable ODF progress

As we noted before, this week is the week of the ODF Workshop (not the same as the ODF Plugfest [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 9 10, 11]). The FFII writes: “ODF Workshop in Brasilia, today and tomorrow http://www.odfworkshop.org/“

Rob Weir passes on the following message: “Live stream from ODF Workshop: http://bit.ly/HeY8r click on “Salao Nobre Michal Gartenkraut”.”

This links to a page written in Portuguese because the event takes place in Brazil. In addition to seemingly repetitive microblogs, there is Jomar Silva claiming that the “Brazilian Army and Navy just signed the Brasilia Protocol. The Airforce signed last year. Now they’re all using ODF !!! Wow ”

Brazil has been an ODF supporter for quite some time. The additional good news comes from some Twitter users located in Brazil and passed on by Rob Weir, then Yoon Kit. Silva also writes: “Arno Webb now starting his presentation about Open Standards and ODF in South Africa.”

Later messages from Silva, who takes a key role in this event, say the following:

“Estimative from Fabiano is that they have almost a million ODF users on Paraná state. An impressive work on ODF & free software”

Also:

“South Africa has 11 official languages, and they can’t have problems with interoperability when translating & publishing. The solution: ODF.”

“Brazilian Army and Navy just signed the Brasilia Protocol. The Airforce signed last year. Now they’re all using ODF !!!”
      –Jomar SilvaAnd also:

“Paulo Maia told us that the Brasilia Protocol involves almost 600.000 ODF users… We’ll reach a 1M soon ”

About participation he writes:

“40 participants from 13 countries, 1 and a half days of excellent presentations and discussions and the 3rd ODF Workshop is over.”

The following update is wonderful news:

“Just signed the Brasilia protocol, representing ODF Alliance Latin America ”

John Drinkwater concludes with:

“twitter.com/w3cbrasil/status/3578396616 ← that’s impressive, W3C Brazil signing up to support #ODF documents”

South America is apparently more progressive than many other countries. Some Danes, for example, are OK with ignoring Microsoft’s OOXML corruption. One person writes: “The Danish Competition Authority seems to actually LIKE sitting back and watching Microsoft and ODF advocates flame each other. Popcorn?”

Watch how IDG pretends that those OOXML crimes are all behind:

It’s not exactly the thawing of the Cold War, but Microsoft’s inclusion in a new group launched by Oasis is a sign that the bitter war over open document formats has been forgotten.

Says who? OASIS was hardly part of this dispute.

Regarding the i4i case [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15], here is another Web site (goodbyemicrosoft.net) which uses it to rationalise a move to ODF and ODF-anchored software.

Fast forward to today, and we learn that a company called i4i has won a lawsuit against Microsoft because Microsoft’s use of XML — including OOXML — infringes an i4i patent. Microsoft has to pay i4i $290 million, and stop selling Word 2003 and Word 2007. Presumably, any product supporting OOXML will need to pay royalties to i4i.

Meanwhile, ODF does not violate the i4i patent. (i4i has “looked at OpenOffice and found it doesn’t infringe on its patents.” OpenOffice uses ODF.)

If you want your documents to be widely accessible, and remain accessible, you should use Open Document Format.

At IBM, employees are apparently encouraged to use Lotus Symphony as their ODF-compliant office suite. Good news all around. █

Summary: New ODF Alliance member, more vendor support, and another, more positive way to view the i4i ruling

EARLIER in the week we wrote about a Fraunhofer study which seemed rather biased. As Glyn Moody put it, there “seems there’s some kind of Microsoft involvement.”

This study addressed and even defended the existence of multiple standards that achieve more or less the same things; one is based on the proprietary format (and platform) of a company that bribed people and corrupted an international standards body in order to call it a “standard”, whereas the other is created and backed by many organisations, universities, and governments. Needless to say, the former is Microsoft’s OOXML and the latter is ODF.

There is news right now about the ODF Alliance growing even larger thanks to the addition of Spotlight Cameroun. In its formal announcement, Spotlight Cameroun states:

OpenDocument Format (ODF) is the only open standard for office applications, and it is completely vendor neutral.

Malaysia and Brazil are among the prominent supporters of ODF (at a national level) and over in Brazil we now find more evidence of this. In addition, IDG News Service reveals that TextEdit has ODF support, which is wonderful news. It has been the case for quite some time, but we’ve just learned that TextEdit will soon support saving as ODF, which is important progress.

The most recent version of TextEdit, included with OS X Leopard, can open and edit files in rich text format (.rtf), Microsoft’s old and new Word formats (.doc and .docx), and the OpenDocument format (.odt) used by OpenOffice.

TextEdit is quite widely used, so it’s another notable win for ODF.

In previous posts about i4i [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11] we mentioned the fact that ODF FUD had arrived from the Burton and Gartner groups, both of which work with Microsoft. Sadly enough, even after Burton and Gartner were proven wrong, a few people are adding harmful noise via Twitter by linking to Asay’s misinformed post and adding remarks like this: “Of course i4i says ODF doesn’t infringe, they have no money..”

No, it’s because it’s technically not infringing. Such remarks are worth correcting as they only encourage uncertainty and doubt. The real patent danger to ODF is Microsoft, not i4i. See for example:

• Signs That Microsoft Might Prepare for ‘Patent Terror’ Against Rival Office Suites
• Microsoft’s OOXML Patents, Apple’s Endorsement, and the Rise of OpenOffice.org
• Microsoft Keeps Trying to Inject Software Patents Into ODF and Other Standards
• Microsoft ‘Patents’ ODF Whilst Also Harming It
• Microsoft Hostility Towards XML Expands to Hostility Towards HTML
• Patents Roundup: OASIS Takes Stance Against Software Patents, Microsoft Loses Again
• XML Patents, Microsoft Aggression, and ODF Hostility
• Microsoft’s ‘ODF Patent’ as Vacuous as Its Promise of Interoperability
• Reader’s Article: The Microsoft Patent Threat to ODF
• On Microsoft’s Software Patents and ODF Fragmentation

Regarding the i4i case itself, here is another smoking gun:

Microsoft embarrassed by new XML patent email

[...]

“We saw [i4i's products] some time ago, and met its creators,” said Sawicki in the Jan. 23, 2003, e-mail. “Word 11 will make it obsolete. It looks great for XP though.” Word 11 was the in-development code name for what was eventually dubbed Word 2003.

The infringing part is custom XML, as the following article quotes:

Specifically, Microsoft must refrain from “selling, offering to sell, and/or importing in or into the United States any Infringing and Future Word Products that have the capability of opening a .XML, .DOCX or .DOCM file (containing custom XML),” the injunction states.

Contrary to Microsoft’s sensationalist defense, the world will be fine without Word. From FCW:

Imagine a world without Word

[...]

Microsoft Word, though popular, is not the exclusive word-processing software of the federal government. For example, the Joint Forces Command is using OpenOffice for a small experimental project, said Kathleen Jabs, a spokeswoman at the command.

The i4i case is another massive opportunity for ODF (and ODF-compliant software) to gain dominance. It is good news to open standards, not just to Free software, to which ODF is a prerequisite but not the other way around. █

“Microsoft sees what’s coming. Things like Word and Excel sort of like a drug now getting ready to go generic.”

–Market Watch