Bonum Certa Men Certa

Imposing OOXML and Microsoft Lock-in on Android Users

Closed doors



Summary: Microsoft brings proprietary lock-in with OOXML to Android

TECHRIGHTS has explained Google's bad decision to spread OOXML rather than ODF and some ask: Why Is Google Not Supporting The Open Document Formats?

This is a true story: "Today my wife forwarded me an email from her Nexus S asking if I could open the attachment as she could not. I replied, “where is it not opening – your Android phone or the Chromebook?” She replied, “Either.”

"I looked at the email, it was a presentation from her friend in .odt format. A friend who we recently converted from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice."

“hat this means in practice is that it's going to be really difficult to displace proprietary formats like .doc and .xls, even with the best will in the world.”
      --Glyn Moody
I had a similar experience this month. Now Microsoft makes the Office lock-in worse at the expense of the Windows lock-in.

"It’s clear that Google is aiming at the huge repository of users of M$’s office suite rather than GNU/Linux or FLOSS users," writes Pogson. Later he wrote that Microsoft sacrifices the Windows cash cow to save the Office cash cow.

Glyn Moody, being timely enough, addresses the issue of network effect impeding open formats like ODF. To quote: "As the research notes, this is a indication that networks are very powerful - exactly as we might have surmised given the experience in the open source world. What this means in practice is that it's going to be really difficult to displace proprietary formats like .doc and .xls, even with the best will in the world. It also shows the importance of getting governmental affirmative action that explicitly recommends open formats in order to overcome these network effects - or at least speed things up."

ODF/OOXML remain an important topic here; it doesn't get the amount of coverage it deserves from the press.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 12/10/2024: TikTok Layoffs and Risk of More Wars
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 11, 2024
IRC logs for Friday, October 11, 2024
Gemini Links 11/10/2024: Against Cynicism, on Atheism, and Dropping Off The Internet
Links for the day
IBM Employees Smell Another Wave of Mass Layoffs (and Explain the Signs)
IBM currently has the policy of hiding the layoffs from shareholders and from the press using NDAs
Links 11/10/2024: Lots More Censorship and Growing Concerns About Health Impact of Social Control Media
Links for the day
Going Almost 4.5 Decades Back to Find 'Dirt' on a Person
That incident was 42.5 years ago. Is that how far some people would go in an effort to discredit a person?
XBox is Dead. This is Just the Beginning.
the main reason Microsoft bought Activision/Blizzard was to hide the growing losses and failure of XBox
The Risk to the "Linux" Brand
Brands that are not guarded from misuse/abuse will inevitably lose their original meaning and their value
Gemini Links 11/10/2024: Deploying Common Lisp Programs and Examining FreeBSD
Links for the day
Links 11/10/2024: Discord Still Blocked in Turkey, Google Might be Split
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 10, 2024
IRC logs for Thursday, October 10, 2024
LinuxSecurity (Guardian Digital, Inc) Sloppy With Its 'Linux' Slop
This kind of stuff is killing the World Wide Web and ruins human knowledge
[Meme] Chin-dropping and Jaw-dropping (Considerable Drop in Patent Validity and Quality)
This drop is very much intentional
Gemini Links 10/10/2024: Untruth, SSH, Gopher, and More
Links for the day
Geminispace Beyond 4,100 Capsules
4,000 was less than 8 weeks ago
Links 10/10/2024: TikTok's Legal Problems, WeblogPoMo Challenges
Links for the day
[Meme] European Patent Convention and Vienna Convention Became Only Fictions (Laws and Constitutions Are Now Works of Fiction in Europe)
A political crisis and blunder
Almost a Thousand EPO Staff Protesting to EPO Member States That the Office Illegally Grants Software Patents and Other Invalid European Patents
"The outcome confirms that the concerns about the EPO’s ability to grant legally sound patents remain"
Loss of Technical Merit(ocracy)
"buzzword diplomas"
Junk Science
science is being compromised for business purposes
[Meme] Dismantling .io (Stick a Fork, the Hype is Done)
NVIDIA is an excellent new example of hype driving up fictional "value"
UNIX is 55 This Year, It is 6 Years Older Than Microsoft
It should be noted that the surviving co-creator of UNIX, Ken Thompson, 'moved' to GNU/Linux (Debian) in recent years
This Year, for the First Time Since August 2019 (Bill Gates MIT Scandal, Jeffrey Epstein Bribes), libreplanet-discuss Was Inactive an Entire Month
The MIT injustice remains and recent "libreplanet" events were held in a venue that's not MIT and far less prestigious than MIT (the "Wentworth" imitation)
[Meme] Different Ending for Jurassic Park
UNIX in old movies
Evolution of Hype
Passing fads and rebranding
Groklaw Will Hopefully Come Back
Sites should be able to run for decades with hardly any human role/interaction, but that's not where we are...
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 09, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 09, 2024