The weekend is almost here. The amount of news that is related the monopoly enabler (OOXML) is fairly large. Here is a quick summary.
Pamela wrote a long article which cites others. It also contains some very alarming piece of information. The takeaway: Miirosoft is proprietizing standards and ‘extending’ them. We have seen this before.
….when you proprietize standards, you touch me. And that is precisely what is happening with OOXML. Microsoft’s own expert at the Portugal meeting said so pointblank: Microsoft will add proprietary extensions, he said, to do things ODF can’t do.
I’ve joked about the Ecma process before, but I never thought I’d see it written out officially like this. Standards are made available “on time”? Minimize the “risk” of changes? I thought the whole purpose of technical review was to find the problems and fix them? As always, the man who pays the piper calls the tune.
I mention this because this general issue of stacking committees to force favorable votes is now under examination with respect to OOXML and the ISO/IEC JTC1 Fast Track process.
Mr. Jelliffe seems rather unhappy. He posted “Bribery Watch!”. It seems like a bizarre way of accusing people of inaccuracies or maybe even slander. These arguments needn’t get ugly, but where corruption (yes, it’s a strong word, I know) is identified and where people game the system, something simply must be said. If you say nothing, the consumer will continue to suffer whilst greedy corporation exploit loopholes. Whose side are you on?
It is truly astonishing to find that many government bodies actually have their key positions occupied by Microsoft employees. I am intimately familiar with quite a few examples and I will name only two.
Microsoft’s proposed change to state law would effectively render our current requirements for escrow and the ability for independent review of source code in the event of disputes completely meaningless – and with it the protections the public fought so hard for.
That agreement was nearly imperiled last weekend, though. Gerri Elliott, corporate vice president at Microsoft’s Worldwide Public Sector division, sent an e-mail message to fellow commissioners Friday evening saying that she “vigorously” objected to a paragraph in which the panel embraced and encouraged the development of open source software and open content projects in higher education.
So much for independent assessment for the benefit of the citizens, eh? Welfare and greed are mutually exclusive and even contradictory.
Here comes the latest finding, which is concerned with Microsoft’s OOXML — the very effective venom that Linux ‘partners’ are forced to digest. Another discussion with Mark Kent led to another example where public money is being used to promote Microsoft’s agenda by locking vital data to this monopoly. The BBC is not the only Linux-hostile establishment over here.
Open-source advocates claim that the Microsoft-championed format is not as open as it should be and doesn’t compare well to rival formats such as the community-developed OpenDocument Format (ODF).
“If it were, Microsoft wouldn’t need to make Novell and Xandros and Linspire sign NDAs (nondisclosure agreements) and then write translators for them,” Pamela Jones, an open-source expert and editor of the Groklaw blog, wrote recently.
But the National Archives said that it is not wedded to any particular data format and that all technology options are being considered at this time.
Mark did a little legwork and found out a little bit more about National Archives, which seemingly chose to sidle with Microsoft and even gleefully talked about OOXML in a recent BBC article.
Mark wrote:
Look at this, from the *joint* National Archives and /Microsoft/ press
release:
Adam Farquhar, Head of eArchitecture at the British Library and
co-chair of the Office OpenXML standards committee said:
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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So this guy, paid for by *our* taxes, is working for Microsoft
to promote their proprietary formats. Now look at this:
“Microsoft has shown considerable initiative working with The National
Archives, The British Library and others to increase our ability to
ensure access to today’s digital information tomorrow. This announcement
represents an important step and shows the sort of value that effective
collaboration between public and private organisations can bring to the
challenge of preserving our nation’s heritage.”
Which you can sum up as:
“we’re putting national heritage, at tax-payer’s expense, into
the hands of the world’s greatest monopolist, to ensure access
to data in the future”.
So we, the taxpayer, have to *pay* to have *our* data locked into a
proprietary format which will never be readable on standard platforms,
supplied by a company which cannot even manage to add a proper ODF
format to its office suite, and pushed by a guy, Adam Farquhar, who *we*
pay for, who chairs an OOXML “standards” committee.
This is just beyond anything you could imagine. Can we get this guy
moved to a more suitable job – in Microsoft, say?
We could probably just learn from continental Europe. It understands better than most that open standards are essential. OOXML is not open, even though the acronym contains the word “open” within it. OOXML goes against the existing unified standard. On the other hand:
EU backs standard for mobile TV
[...]
David McQueen, principle analyst with research firm Informa, is not surprised that the EU has come down in favour of DVB-H.
“It is the most open standard and there are more players in the market. Finland has networks already and in France there is a satellite hybrid solution,” he said.
Microsoft Corp., the world’s largest software maker, is facing deeper scrutiny from European regulators on whether it is abusing its dominance in word processing and spreadsheets, three people with direct knowledge of the case said.
Is this how standards are normally approved? If so, can we fix it? If Ecma-376 gets “approved” by shoving it through and not allowing interested parties to speak or vote, that just isn’t an open standard to me. Is it to you? Yoo hoo, Massachusetts. Are you watching?
Andy Updegrove weighed in with a provocative title on an “OOXML End Game”.
The progress of a technical specification from development to adoption has a certain, often-lamented glacial quality to it, due to the consensus process involved. But while that process may be slow, it is not inexorable, and that which starts does not always finish.
Dave Richards is an IT administrator for a city government. The city has been using OpenOffice.org for about six years. Dave’s a Linux guru, and helps run an elegant, efficient Linux network with a nice big server and lots of fairly old dumb terminals running OpenOffice.org at a very acceptable speed.
Actually it is quite impressing seeing how the voting panel [for OOXML] was formed. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that among those favouring the adoption of the standard without reservation a large majority is made of business partners of the proposing entity [Microsoft], a law firm retained by the latter, the official certified business partners association of the proposing entity. “Money can’t buy me love” Beatles used to sing: perhaps neither a standard.
OOXML is not an open standard. It is an XML representation of Microsoft’s proprietary data structures used in their line of office software. It is only designed to match the feature set of MS Office and nothing else. It ignores the pre-existing ISO standards for dates/times, mathematical formula as well as using poor XML design practices.
If Microsoft truly intended to use an open format for their office software they would have joined the committee for the ODF standard and proposed the features they needed to be added to the specification. Instead, they are trying to trick people looking for open standards that their OOXML is an open format. Even if the specification is open for use, and that it would be under the control of an independent organization (required for ISO standardization), you can bet that Microsoft will deviate from the standard as soon as possible once they hold the majority of market share, convincing users that the other software is ‘broken’.
ODF isn’t perfect, but it is much closer to what is needed. It uses common standards that are already supported and provides a vendor neutral specification for generating generic, compatible, documents.
Actually, I’ll quote another comment because it is short and precise:
Per the usual, Microsoft is engaging in shady dealing and collusion in order to forward its own agenda. Not that this sort of corruption is unique to Microsoft by any means, but it is typical of large corporations who have reached the point where they lack the agility to compete on a technical level and therefore must do so on the playing-field of bought influence and barriers to entry.
As an addendum, yesterday we mentioned the latest OOXML slam from Rob Weir. To repeat what was said:
OOXML: The Formula for Failure
[...]
As I’ve shown, in the rush to write a 6,000 page standard in less than a year, Ecma dropped the ball. OOXML’s spreadsheet formula is worse than missing. It has incorrect formulas that, if implemented according to the standard may cause loss of life, property and capital. This standard is seriously messed up. And shame on all those who praised and continue to praise the OOXML formula specification without actually reading it.
Rob talked about some of the mind-blowing problems with the specifications. It is clear that working on a program without specifications for many years leads to non-elegant inelegant [Thanks, John] code, workarounds, inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and some ‘features’ that are intended to make different versions of the same software incompatible (to force upgrades and thereby elevate revenues). Writing (or rather “deriving”) specifications from 20 years of coding is no way to write a specification. It’s just a description of a program, with its bugs and deficiencies included.
An ongoing analysis of OOXML, to be carried out by a technical committee, will lead the way to a working group meeting. They can already see deficiencies. Read their observations carefully:
“OpenXML is designed to represent the existing corpus of documents faithfully, even if that means preserving idiosyncrasies that one might not choose given the luxury of starting from a clean slate. In the ODF design, compatibility with and preservation of existing Office documents were not goals. Each set of goals is valuable; sacrificing either at the expense of the other may not be in the best interest of users.” (p.6 Ecma Response)
So when it comes to comparing MSOOXML and ODF v1.0 on the basis of the inclusion of “Formula Definitions”, it becomes clear that the anti-ODF folk have not much to shout about. In fact MSOOXML’s “Formula Definition” is deficient and inaccurate.
Can Novell (and particularly de Icaza) still praise OOXML? Can they truly recommend it, invest resources in it, and imply it is the way to go (or at least suggest it’s an acceptable specification)? This whole scenario is worrisome. Is this what Novell got paid over $300,000,000 to do (at least in part)? Whose side are they committed to? The Free software community, which supplied all the software? Or is it Microsoft, which has just betrayed Novell? Perhaps the Jim Allchin comment on “slaughtering Novell” should have served as a clue. Microsoft only embraces in order to weaken and destroy (not only ODF, but also Novell).
This debate about document formats continues. Simon Phipps of Sun Microsystems has published his own bits of advocacy in his professional Web log. He distinguishes between standards that serve companies and standards that serve the customer (that’s where preservation and portability, for example, play a significant role).
There are plenty of examples of a choice of “standards” in our lives (usually validated in some way by a vendor body), but I have yet to find one that actually leads to a benefit to the customer.
Yesterday we talked about some unfortunate news. TurboLinux’s involvement in this ‘scandal’ must now be taken into consideration. I have not read the press release at the time. The press release came from Redmond (not TurboLinux). There were hints there which expose Microsoft’s trick of shoving in proprietary formats through the desktop monopoly. TurboLinux has apparently been paying Microsoft for the right to play media files encoded using proprietary code. Novell was indirectly involved in something similar. This leads to Linux ‘taxation’. OOXML achieves exactly the same thing. That’s why it must be rejected. The world has already got a single, unified document standard.
According to the following bit of information, ECMA does not exactly operate like a standards body should. Have a look (emphasis mine):
Global Graphics’ chief technology officer Martin Bailey has been appointed by standards development body Ecma International to chair a new technical committee that will work on producing a formal industry standard for the XML Paper Specification (XPS), the new print and document format introduced by Microsoft with Windows Vista….
Global Graphics has played a prominent role in the development and launch of the XPS specification from the very start. A recognized expert in interpreting, rendering and converting PDLs, Global Graphics’ leading edge expertise and engineering capability were factors in the Company being chosen by Microsoft in 2003 to provide consultation services on the XPS specification as well as develop a prototype and a print reference XPS RIP for Microsoft.
Now, can you see how approval is won at ECMA? There is not much of a chance of a proposal being rejected, is there? As we said yesterday, ISO seems to have lost its way as well. It is becoming a little assimilated to ECMA, which can be referred to as a Coin-in-the-Slot Standards Organization. Once again, Microsoft’s allies are in the committee, so there is little room for independent judgment. ECMA truly looks like a production line that passes on proposal s– however poor they may be — to the ISO, then boasting some ‘pseudo acceptance’ by an industry-for-industry consortium.
Andy Updegrove and Bob Sutor are among those who try to explain to high officials why poor Microsoft-centric standards must be rejected. You can assist resistance to OOXML adoption in MA.
Preparing such comments is time consuming, but it is also important. I took several hours to do so yesterday, and have just sent them to the ITD just now. You can to, and I hope that you will. The ITD’s comment address is standards@state.ma.us, and the deadline is next Friday. If you’re a believer in open standards, please don’t let that deadline pass without making your thoughts known.
More information can be found here. According to Newton (of Alfresco), Microsoft has just taken its battles to the United Kingdom as well. It continues its lobbying campaign with an XML du jour and a twisted definition of “open”.
With OOXML and XPS, Microsoft has chosen to not work with existing standards, but to create new ones, as they have in their recent announcement on Web3S instead of working with the rest of the industry on the Atom Publishing Protocol. In the case of OOXML, this is a logical move on Microsoft’s part, since it is an evolution of Microsoft’s XML strategy started with the Microsoft Office 2003 version and ODF will be a technology diversion from that strategy. With Microsoft controlling 90% of the office productivity tools market and OOXML being the default file format for Microsoft Office 2007, OOXML is likely to be widely-used.
The article suggests that the BBC article on digital preservation may have been nothing but a publicity stunt. There are some prior incidents where Microsoft did questionable things in the United Kingdom. It ‘faked’ support for OOXML and got slammed by the Open Source Consortium, with which I’m sort of affiliated.
The petition is an attempt to make it appear that Open XML has “pseudo-grassroots” support, argues Mark Taylor, the founder of the Open Source Consortium.
This action followed a very suspicious petition, set up by nobody but Microsoft. Keep your eyes open and see how these things develop. There’s little honesty in process.
It appears as though Europe is still ahead of the United States when it comes to honouring standards. The level of influence which Microsoft enjoys overseas is probably more limited. A preliminary look at a policy has revealed that, at least for the time being, the international standard which is OpenDocument format has precedence in Poland.
This basically means that Microsoft’s Office Open XML will not be treated as open standard, thus not preferred in Polish e-Government services, making OpenDocument Format the office standard of choice.
The part which says “for the time being” is motivated by the usual factors that are rarely discussed openly. Among them: the corrupted ways of processes which standards bodies adopt and also the ISO, which appears to be less focused on its goal of establishing unified standards; instead, it is leaning towards serving wealthy companies that lobby heavily. ISO seems to be inheriting ECMA’s poor status. which is becoming poorer each day.
There are very few videos available about the ISO, but here is one we could find. It teaches you about the goals of the ISO, which are clearly not met here.
We continue to see Microsoft fighting against any standard which is not controlled solely by Microsoft. The latest target, as we’ve recently said, is Adobe’s PDF. The company seems to have adopted a clear strategy for combating rival standards. The latest news comes through Bob Sutor, who will soon be taking his summer break. He talks about Microsoft’s path of destruction in the static document/media arena and he warns that non-Windows users can be ‘punished’ as a consequence.
This is a pessimistic view, of course, but I would love to be proven wrong. That [a proper standard] means a fully transparent process where all minutes and group emails are public. This means a full and open plan for the active maintenance of the standard. This means a full description of how the intellectual property will be be handled for everything necessary to implement the specification. This means a complete implementation for every platform, including Linux and the Mac.
That is, the opposite of OOXML.
Discussion of this topic goes further and further, but you should not be surprised if Novell, Xandros, and Lispire decided to support and implement XPS, then embedding and supporting it in their variants of Linux (which are supposedly ‘protected’). They are not obliged to doing this based on their contract (deal), but be aware that Novell, for example, is too financially dependent on Microsoft. As such, it will do anything to please it and everything to avoid upsetting the convicted monopoly abuser.
Be aware of the issues we are facing. For the time being, all we can do is help carry the message that OOXML is simply not wanted. Raise awareness and speak out, but at the same time be aware that money often supersedes the voice of thousands. We have seen this many times before.
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