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Study Touting OOXML Over ODF Is Debunked
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Jan 15, 2008 05:53 PM
from the where-the-bread-is-buttered dept.
from the where-the-bread-is-buttered dept.
The Burton Group, an IT research company, published a study urging that enterprise organizations adapt OOXML rather than ODF. Their reasons include things like "ODF is controlled indirectly by Sun," "MS Office is cheaper than OpenOffice.org," and "OOXML improved many problems of DOC." The Burton Group also claims that although ODF is well-designed, OOXML is better suited for the specific needs of enterprise organizations. The study claims to be impartial in that Microsoft didn't pay for it. Ars Technica now has up a pretty thorough debunking of the Burton study. Ars wonders how the Burton authors can so blithely overlook Microsoft's vote-buying in Sweden, while wielding unfounded accusations of chicanery in Sun's direction.
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IT: Saving in OOXML Format Now Probably A Bad Idea 150 comments
orlando writes "Much drama is unfolding prior to the OOXML Ballot Resolution Meeting in Geneva, currently schedule for the end of February. After that there's a subsequent 30 day period while countries can still change their vote. As a result, Bob Sutor is recommending that saving your documents in OOXML format right now is probably about the riskiest thing you can do, if you are concerned with long term interoperability. At this point nobody has the vaguest idea what OOXML will look like in February, or even whether it will be in any sort of stable condition by the end of March. 'While we are talking about interoperability, who else do you think is going to provide long term complete support for this already-dead OOXML format that Microsoft Office 2007 uses today? Interoperability means that other applications can process the files fully and not just products from Microsoft. I would even go so far as to go back to those few OOXML files you have already created and create .doc, .ppt, and .xls versions of them for future use, if you want to make sure you can read them and you don't want to commit yourself to Microsoft's products for the rest of their lives.'"
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must not have been a hard job (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:must not have been a hard job (Score:5, Interesting)
monopoly money well spent.
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Re:must not have been a hard job (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think so. Recently with Office 2007 and specially Vista I've seen that companies are really trying to avoid the upgrades as much as possible. Maybe it's the recession, but the thing is that right now companies are really considering not giving Microsoft a load of money for upgrades that bring few worthy features many new problems, and are considering alternatives instead.
Nowadays companies are not blindly eating whatever Gartner et al. feed them anymore.
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Re:must not have been a hard job (Score:4, Informative)
Burton are Microsoft boosters from way back.
They did a hatchet job [infoworld.com]on Google for MS not so long ago, and when they're not slandering Microsoft competitors, they're out flogging [michaelsampson.net] Sharepoint Services.
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Re:must not have been a hard job (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps I've had a very sheltered life, but how in God's name does someone become a corporate high flyer without knowing that there's no such thing as a "reasoned & studied, impartial report"?
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to work for a small financial company, who saved a crapload of money by migrating much of our backend over to FOSS (file servers, mail gateways, internal webapps (Plone = rocks) - the company was only 18 months old when they joined and had invested heavily in an MS setup that was going badly wrong due to ter
Re:must not have been a hard job (Score:5, Informative)
License fees dont begin to cover the real cost of software. You need to have an IT department to support it, you have to train users on it, etc. A $100 dollar license fee seems negligable pretty fast when contrasted with the IT budget for a company and any productivity gains/losses that result from using different software.
This is often referred to as TCO (Total Cost of Operating) and salesmen love it cause they can always put up graphs that indicate that their product is clearly the best from that perspective. A lot of people roll their eyes when they hear this term because they dont think much of the aforementioned salesmen's BS. But it really is foolish to factor licensing fees into your decision about what software to use from a cost perspective unless those fees are truly exorbitant.
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Re:must not have been a hard job (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, using the new file formats (which was the original discussion here) doesnt necessarily entail using the new software. You could continue using Office 2003 and use the newer file formats at the same time.
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Re:must not have been a hard job (Score:5, Insightful)
The same can be said of Office. What I want in an office product is features to be layed out in the same way so when I reach out for the "Make this line a header" tool, I'm grabbing the right tool first time. Now I am not a power user by any stretch, but if I spend more time "Learning" where they hid the (up the font size by 2, make bold and underline) key then I am not spending that time writing the paragraph below which contains job related information.
In short make your interface intuitive or if you can't manage that, make it the same as the last one. Office 2K7 managed to break both these rules. Open Office 2 has a very similar interface to all the office products before it.
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Re:must not have been a hard job (Score:4, Informative)
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yes about that, do you have any examples where the license cost justifies staying with MS?
if you're going to count support and training into the equation you can't just ignore liscense fees now can you? co
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Like I was saying in my original post any salesman can make it sound one that one is better than the other. If you go to MS's website you can find case studies where it was cheaper. If you go to Sun's website you can find case studies where their stuff is cheaper. Both have som basis in fact and both are going to be slanted slightly to favor their respective authors. If you really want examples just look at th
Re:must not have been a hard job (Score:5, Insightful)
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What about training users for new office version? (Score:5, Insightful)
BTW: I've worked in IT for 28 years. I never remember any company, spending any money, to train anybody, to learn any office product. I thought you supposed to pick that up by yourself.
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Re:What about training users for new office versio (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:What about training users for new office versio (Score:3, Interesting)
"Picking it up yourself" has a real cost in lost productivity.
Here's a hypothetical. You upgrade 300 workstations to the latest version of Office. Your employees spend the whole day after the upgrade just figuring out the new software. That's a man-year of productivity lost.
Even though you haven't budgeted anything for formal training, you've just paid your
Durr (Score:5, Funny)
Money, hookers or blow. Probably a combo of all three. Just a guess.
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Re:Durr (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm betting that he's getting paid really, really well for (ahem) "the presentation" that he was, apparently scheduled to give even before he released his "independent" report.
Perhaps he was so excited about getting the Microsoft gig, that he 'forgot to check his facts and logic' before he released his report.
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Why (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why (Score:5, Funny)
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And Craig Burton worked for Novell, right? (Score:2)
Indirectly *could* be a problem... (Score:3, Insightful)
While I can't agree with this being a problem due to Sun's having influence over the development, I could perhaps understand it to be potentially a problem due to the indirect nature, in that there is no central guidance. Whereas with MS software there is, potentially, a focused development path (I'm not trying to be modded funny, honest).
Ummm...no. I...no. The costs involved in OO.o are only, I think, due to the training issues for staff familiarised with MS Office. And I don't think that the cost of training each user, with group seminars, would be more expensive than the per-user license for using MS Office in a corporate environment.
Ah, corporate shills. They're funny guys...
Not aimed at us... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is this not false advertising ? (Score:3, Interesting)
In the UK the Advertising Standards Authority [asa.org.uk] governs advertising and, amongst other things, insists that it not be misleading.
If we can firm up the paid-for-by-M$ link that we can take M$ to task for breaking the rules. Can anyone prove the link ?
Baseless Accusations (Score:3, Interesting)
A shame that you can't access the original PDF report without a particularly invasive registration process. They could be sending that information on to terrorists groups looking for new recruits.
Broad accusations aside, I know Slashdot invented the 'RTFA' acronym, but it'd be nice if we could read the original without having to take Ars' word for it or having to reveal our company's annual revenue range. After badly mangling that Sony wireless USB thing, I'm not inclined to trust Ars without the primary source.
"OOXML improved many problems of DOC." (Score:5, Funny)
The study is informative (Score:5, Insightful)
Wild Claims (Score:2)
Knee-jerk reactions (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, I'd love to see the Burton Group get rid of the registration requirement on this PDF so I can see what they actually say. TFA is mostly paraphrasing, and I'm not certain they are taking every comment in context.
Some folks on here seem to be taking issue with the statement that ODF is "indirectly controlled" by Sun. But, as far as I understand it, that's pretty much the case. Last I heard, the vast majority of work on OpenOffice.org is done by Sun employees. The codebase is just too complex for amateurs to get their heads around. You could argue (and many do) that OOXML is directly controlled by Microsoft
The Burton Group's greater concern seems to be that Sun has a conflict of interest here. What is the purpose of ODF? Is it to empower users? Or is a means for Sun to erode the profitability of core Microsoft products? If the latter, does it make sense for a corporation to support it on that basis? Maybe you'd argue that it does make sense. Me, I'm not so sure.
As far as ODF "only supporting a fraction of what enterprises need," well, that's probably true. I doubt that ODF was ever designed to define a standard for everything that enterprise customers do with their office suites. Be that as it may, if an ODF application suite does not support all of the features that an enterprise might want, does it make sense to conduct a mass migration to a new office suite on the basis that the new suite uses document formats that are "open"? In other words, the Burton Group seems to be making the age-old case for sticking with the status quo, even given the understanding that it represents a capitulation to "vendor lock-in." Many customers may decided that open file formats just aren't worth the trade-off.
You can call it cynical, or self-interested, or just plain lazy, but given the opportunity to participate in a revolution, there will always be some people who will say, "No thanks." Some of them might be deluded. And others may merely be acting in their own self-interest. If they are deluded, however -- and sticking with the status quo really means trading long-term best interests for short-term interests -- then isn't it up to us to convince them of their mistake? Calling them "shills," claiming that they were paid off in "hookers and blow," and all the other stuff I see in this thread, doesn't strike me as a very effective way of making the counter-argument.
Nor, in fact, does the Ars article. It doesn't seem like a "thorough debunking" to me; more like a fairly well-reasoned opinion piece/editorial/blog.
Re:Knee-jerk reactions (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it relevant that Burton never disputed msft's direct control? Does that make msft's direct control of a supposed open standard all right?
> What is the purpose of ODF? Is it to empower users? Or is a means for Sun to erode the profitability of core Microsoft products?
Why not both? Is google trying to erode msft's marketshare by financial supporting mozilla/firefox? Should I reject firefox on that basis?
ODF is open, OOXML is not. By using ODF, I can insure my documents will always be readable, and avoid vender lock-in. If that's helpful to Sun, so what?
Don't forget, ODF can be used with msft products. And if msft chose to do so, msft could support ODF just as much as Sun. Msft is also free to contribute to the ODF standard. Therefore ODF does not give Sun any competitive advantage.
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Re:Knee-jerk reactions (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, a well reasoned comment that for the side I'm not on! :-)
I am not intimately familiar with either ODF or OOXML. I am passingly familiar with both. I also have an understanding of the culture of the communities they come out of.
As for ODF, I know Open Source. And I know the proprietary Unix world before it. And while Open Office is mind numbingly complex, the source is out there and I consider the source the ultimate arbiter of any protocol or file format. Standards documents are merely high quality documentation and not definitive. Additionally there are various other implementations that interoperate with Open Office via ODF to a greater or lesser extent, and I know there will be a lot of pressure to make that support more complete as time goes on.
And while Sun might be the major contributor to Open Office, they don't have the same kind of control that Microsoft has over Microsoft Word. And the existence of other interoperable implementations decreases the effect their influence on Open Office has on the ODF document format.
I also know the culture that OOXML comes out, though not as well. It's clear that Microsoft bought ISO votes, and this behavior is not unusual for them. It's clear from even a casual reading of the standard that it will be impossible to create an interoperable program without access to proprietary Microsoft source code. It's even clear that Microsoft themselves couldn't create an interoperable version without using their own source code. For example I doubt anybody knows how Word 97 formatting works in detail except to know that a particular block of Microsoft proprietary code implements it. Microsoft also has a strong history of having 'standards' they claim are open, but actually require Microsoft proprietary technology in some way to implement.
So this mysterious report by this well-respected group is interesting to me as they seem to be telling me that everything experience has taught me is all wrong. The kind of broad sweeping changes in both cultures required for my experience to be rendered obsolete surely couldn't happen without my notice. My first impulse is to figure out if they were paid to do it. My next impulse is to figure out if they have a strongly self-interested reason to do it. The latter appears to be the case. No matter how respected they might be, their bread and butter is threatened if Microsoft Office significantly diminishes in importance. I would expect the legion of string theory theorists to (initially at least, until the more intellectually honest ones among them really took the time to understand things) call anybody who questioned string theory a crackpot regardless of whether or not they were right, and I would also expect a company who makes the majority of it's money from the existence of the Microsoft Office ecosystem to react similarly, no matter how respected they are.
So until they can produce this mysterious report for public perusal, comment and dissection, I think that believing it to be total hogwash is completely justified by past experience and knowledge of the players involved.
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ODF is _not_ controlled by SUN. (Score:3, Informative)
Last I heard, the vast majority of work on OpenOffice.org is done by Sun employees.
You are obviously confusing ODF with OpenOffice.Org. OOO may be have a lot of SUN influence, but OOXML was developed independently of that process. Although it was based on the original OOO XML-based file format, it underwent extensive editing before it was accepted as a standard, and OO had to be changed to fit those changes. ODF is now controlled by ISO, and the various organizations that produce conforming software are expected and intended to follow that lead.
OOXML, on the other hand, is just a (rat
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If that is what they are saying, they are just plain wrong. Sun has influence over ODF because they participate in the ODF working group. They *participate.* They don't control, though they do have a lot of input, being a highly-skilled bunch of folks.
Microsoft doesn't have a disproportionate amount of control
...controlled indirectly by Sun... (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, and who controls OOXML? Someone you trust more than Sun?
giggle: (Score:5, Informative)
I'm surprised that the authors don't expect to get laughed out of the hall when they present this report -- even if it is on Microsoft soil.
Somebody claiming to be Burton posted on Ars forum (Score:3, Informative)
Debunked? (Score:3, Insightful)
This article IMHO just stated that things are different, but does not provide a better founded truth, nor does it show the flaws in the original reasoning in a methodical way (again it's just stating the opposite).
I would not call this debunking, I would call it disputing.
My 2 cents...
Maybe, maybe not (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that most consulting companies don't like disruptive f/oss stuff. Maybe Burton has a good releationship with msft, and likes the status quo. Maybe Burton hopes to do more business with msft, or msft partners in the future?
Re:Paid by Microsoft (Score:5, Informative)
For instance, if McAfee published a report that said that Linux and MacOSX are highly susceptible to viruses, and that virus infestations of such machines are common, it'd be pretty obvious that they didn't need to be paid off by MS to say these lies. Their entire reason for existence is the poor security and virus susceptibility of the Windows platform, so it's in their best interest to make people believe Windows is the best platform, and that every computer should have anti-virus software installed.
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They are *not* both open standards (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Meh.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely, one of them strives to provide a format useful and usable by any maker of office software, the other strives to provide a format useful and usable by any maker of office software, so long as it's Microsoft.
Almost exactly the same.
Agree 1000%. It's just a schema! I mean who cares what it does or where it comes from. I say the same about books, too. My literature prof wanted to fail me because I read Mein Kampf instead of War and Peace, but I was all like, dude, what's the problem? They're both books!
Word! How come we keep getting our shorts in a knot about who controls our information? Next thing you know, some shirty, smelly little ACLU pinko is going to come along and start complaining about access to information and whining about data interchange and what will our grand-children say about us when they see the mess we made of everything just so we could keep some corporate fat cat in his limo for another few years!
Who needs this Open shit, anyways, huh? Sharing? Highly over-rated.
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Is this specific enough for you? (Score:5, Insightful)
2) ODF is controlled by ISO, OOXML is controlled by msft, and msft *now* claims that msft will never give ISO control. Rather msft wants to give control to the ECMA - a group controlled by msft. This directly contradicts what msft first promised.
3) ODF is used by several different organizations. Anybody is welcome to freely use ODF. OOXML is used by msft, and novell - due to a very sneaky and secretive document.
4) OOXML is only being considered for an ISO standard because of msft bribing and ballot stuffing.
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