Permission granted to use this plot, which has been slightly modified (annotation)
Rob Weir has just published
an excellent new post which describes not only how far ahead of OOXML OpenDocument Format has already gone, but also shows how Microsoft deception (or "spin", or "lies", depending on whose side you're on) is used to hide this fact. The first comment from Stephane Rodriguez is worth reading also.
There are fewer than 2,000 OOXML documents on the entire internet (as indexed by Google at least) and the trend is flat.
What about ODF? Almost 160,000 and growing strongly.
Looking at the comments, Microsoft has not yet found a response or a decent rebuttal. The silence speaks volumes.
Several times in the past we have shown cases where Microsoft uses the tricks such as (selective) statistics to pretend that OOXML is spreading quickly. It's a case where the "numbers game" is called "statistics" or "study", just as "lies" are called "marketing",
"astroturfing" is called "evangelism", and
"bribery" is called "marketing help" (yes, that's how Microsoft sneaked out of the recent fiasco in Nigeria).
The title of this post is intended to contain a bit of a pun. David Berlind reminds us yet again that the entity which goes by the name "Foundation"
has very little to do with the
future and great success of ODF. The "Foundation" has become more of an excuse for Microsoft to push some lies into media streams, which
it virtually controls.
OpenDocument Format community steadfast despite theatrics of now impotent ‘Foundation‘
[...]
...Microsoft, the company whose Office empire is probably more threatened by ODF than most people realize, capitalized on the confusion by spreading its own FUD on the story.
The headline says "theatrics". Dare I say that Sam Hiser
himself has told me that it's all theatre? Yes, his own words.
Other concerns to bear in mind here include journalistic integrity, which has
been put to question. Time after time. After time. After. Time. Peter Galli from eWeek spreads FUD (no, he hasn't stopped yet) which is based on the Foundation's views. He seems to have joined the more Microsoft-dependent 'journalists', such as Mary Jo Foley.
This isn't the first time that we catch Peter Galli spreading some FUD (see this
open letter). Be cautious whose word you take (possible for granted, without doubts). A few weeks ago Peter wrote an article whose headline was not correct (about Obama's policy on formats) and some months ago there was unnecessary outrage because of an incorrect headline in an article that speaks about Microsoft and virtualisation.
I have personally given hope on the mainstream media, which now more than ever is inclined to please its advertisers, sponsors, and benefactors. I'll say more about this in the next post.
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Comments
Sam Hiser
2007-11-30 20:51:40
It's a pure guess how many are there. Quite a few if Office 2007 numbers are true.
Jim Powers
2007-11-30 21:07:08
Roy Schestowitz
2007-11-30 21:08:48
Thanks, Sam, for reminding us that no ODF file has even been served behind a firewall. (sarcasm)
Rob Weir
2007-11-30 23:13:46
The more natural assumption (Occam's Razor, etc)., is to assume that aggregate user behavior is constant over this 12 month period and that X% of documents will appear on the web and 100-X% will be hidden behind firewalls. But if document adoption causes the overall base of users saving to that format to increase, it would raise both counts by the same percentage. So the stark flatness of the OOXML curve is the key indicator here.
You can talk firewalls all you want. But fewer than 2,000 OOXML documents on the web a year after the format was made a standard? That is hard to explain away.
Jim Powers
2007-11-30 23:30:03
I'm guessing that most folks with fill 2007 Office are still forced to save in .doc format because they need to interact with other folks who cannot read OOXML files yet.
Well, about the flat curve, I'm not completely comfortable with the idea that the flat curve is representative of the total number of OOOXML documents. In the exact same way that I don't think that the number of Adobe PhotoShop files indexable by Google are is representative of the total number of PhotoShop files in circulation. There aren't a lot of OOXML files out there because there isn't a critical mass of people running software that can read/edit that format (just like the PhotoShop files above). I'm not trying to be contrary, I'd like nothing more than for OOXML to fail miserably and be forgotten in the annals of history, I'm just not convinced that we should take *that* much comfort in these results.
Roy Schestowitz
2007-12-01 01:26:24
I'm always reminded again and again why I replace the "Oh Oh" in OOXML with a couple of coins. Last reminder came just half an hour ago.
Microsoft uses its moneyflow to protect that same moneyflow. Isn't there some law against such practices? It's the equivalent of "dumping" or "selling at a loss" in the businesses sense (to suppress and eliminate competition). This is related to Intel/Microsoft sabotage of OLPC (covered here just days ago).