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IBM Slams Microsoft, Calls OOXML "Inferior"
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Feb 05, 2008 07:59 AM
from the yer-mama's-ugly-too dept.
from the yer-mama's-ugly-too dept.
cristarol sends word that Microsoft's accusation, that IBM has sabotaged Redmond's attempts to have the Office OpenXML format approved by the ISO, has drawn a heated response from IBM. Ars Technica has the story. "'IBM believes that there is a revolution occurring in the IT industry, and that smart people around the world are demanding truly open standards developed in a collaborative, democratic way for the betterment of all,' IBM VP of standards and OSS Bob Sutor told Ars. 'If "business as usual" means trying to foist a rushed, technically inferior and product-specific piece of work like OOXML on the IT industry, we're proud to stand with the tens of countries and thousands of individuals who are willing to fight against such bad behavior.'"
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Microsoft Believes IBM Masterminded Anti-OOXML Initiative 274 comments
mahuyar writes "Microsoft executives have accused IBM of leading the campaign against their initiative to have Office Open XML approved by the International Organization for Standardization. 'Nicos Tsilas, senior director of interoperability and IP policy at Microsoft, said that IBM and the likes of the Free Software Foundation have been lobbying governments to mandate the rival OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard to the exclusion of any other format. "They have made this a religious and highly political debate," Tsilas said. "They are doing this because it is advancing their business model. Over 50 percent of IBM's revenues come from consulting services."'"
Submission: IBM slams Microsoft, says OOXML "inferior" by Anonymous Coward
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Battle of giants (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Battle of giants (Score:5, Funny)
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Godzilla had better manners. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Battle of giants (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Battle of giants (Score:5, Insightful)
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Choice of battlefield (Score:5, Insightful)
That might be the battlefield that Microsoft would like to have chosen but it isn't the one that IBM is playing on. For IBM, the money is in the middleware. For Microsoft, the money is on the desktop.
Before I go on, yes, I work for IBM. What follows is entirely my own opinions and is not a formal statement of IBM policy.
ODF is a huge enabler for middleware document services because it removes barriers at the desktop end and allows significant freedom for customers to choose solutions. IBM already has plenty of XML integration ticking in its products (such as pureXML integrated in DB2 and the Content Manager products) and ODF fits very nicely into that scenario. IBM would like to be able to go to customers and offer a complete end-to-end document/content management system. Why do you think that IBM would produce the Symphony products and integrate Document editing into Lotus Notes 8?
While OOXML also fits into the XML-on-middleware approach, it necessarily ties itself to a set of Microsoft clients because only Microsoft will know what the next version of Office will support with respect to OOXML and even the most assiduous followers of OOXML implementations outside Microsoft will be months (or more likely years) behind the latest OOXML version.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
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Marketing joke (Score:4, Funny)
A: About fifty grand.
I'm here all week, try the Hawaian salad.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
IBM is influential with knowledgeable people. (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but IBM is influential with people who understand Microsoft's abuse. See this quote from the Ars Technica article:
A ZDNet article published late last month quotes Microsoft officials who claim that IBM is solely responsible for ISO's recent decision to deny OOXML fast-track approval. "Let's be very clear," Jean Paoli, Microsoft's senior director of XML technology, told ZDNet. "It has been fostered by a single company--IBM. If it was not for IBM, it would have been business as usual for this standard."
I'm glad we don't have "business as usual", as defined by Microsoft.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's perfectly true that many companies only care about the practical aspects of IT. They have accounting and word processing to do and that's the end of it.
The same applies to fax machines, copiers and telephones.
However, they DO care about the bottom line. They aren't cellphone experts, but they WILL avoid the provider that "everyone knows" drops more calls than it completes and costs twice as much as the others. Likewise, they will avoid the OS that "everyone knows" is annoying, user hostile, and cos
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Most business people know instinctively that the more dirty tricks a vendor pulls, the more likely their own product is to suck. MS's antics are getting large enough and frequent enough that people outside of IT who don't read /. or groklaw are starting to notice.
I do hope you're right.
From where I stand, it doesn't seem that many people are starting to notice anything, and even if they did, somehow I doubt many would be prepared for the cost of migrating to a different platform.
To anticipate the "Linux is free" response by a random AC: yes, it is. The software people use to run their various businesses usually isn't.
Besides, a running business can't easily afford to re-train its employees on a completely new environment.
That's what lock-in really is all about
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not going to trot out the license costs because, as you point out, retraining is the real cost.
Instead, I'll bring up that Vists is DIFFERENT and so are the new office suites. Perhaps they're different enough that retraining will happen even to stay with MS. As long as that cost is going to be there anyway, might as well call it an opportunity to step gracefully off of the MS treadmill and get an environment that is more concerned about doing the user's bidding than the *AA's (should be irrelevant in
Being an all-MS shop is irrelevant (Score:3, Insightful)
And this next generation of applications is going to be OS-agnostic-- you can run WAMP just as easily as LAMP, and you can view an html-based application on any browser on any type of desktop/kiosk/cell phone/... . That
Not much for megacorps, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not much for megacorps, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft mostly gets money from its software, they thus need to make sure they will keep selling it. Then they can make even more money with consulting when customers are locked in.
IBM mostly gets money from consulting services, they thus need "open" environments where they can charge high price for advice vs software.
So what you think is the right side is actually the opportunistic side to them. This is still the right side for us though.
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You forgot hardware and software (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I support the
~Dan
we've come a long way (Score:5, Interesting)
IBM used to make overpriced hardware sold at tremendous profit until that little upstart microsoft came along and elegantly used their own weight against them in a classic game of corporate judo. It may just be that IBM still smarts from that or it may be that they've really 'seen the light'. This is good news, personally I'd like to see the transparency of these committees and their members go up a notch or two, too much potential for procedural trickery still exists.
Re:we've come a long way (Score:5, Interesting)
One wonders if Microsoft officials do not recognize their own organization as a "single company". Although there are claims of MS statehood, I prefer such ideas remain in the "jokingly funny" domain.
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Re:we've come a long way (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:we've come a long way (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:we've come a long way (Score:5, Insightful)
IOW, IBM's 'ulterior' motive is profit, and their profit goals happen to be in alignment with what's best for the IT industry and the greater IT community.
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Re:we've come a long way (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:we've come a long way (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
2007 users who don't know better, send these formats to 2000
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Now, everyone repeat after me: Please re-send the file in a readable format, such as PDF, ODF or even Word 97/2000. Thank you.
Whenever you receive a .docx file, just reply with the above line.
Re:we've come a long way (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:we've come a long way (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:we've come a long way (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, that's very true. But they are OPEN STANDARDS. You don't have to give IBM oodles of money, you can just figure it out for yourself.
IBM will continue to make money as long as there are people (or companies) around who are willing to pay their rates, I'm guessing because they feel they get their money's worth.
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Re:we've come a long way (Score:5, Insightful)
The quote that was most telling for me was this one, from Tsilas:
"[Mandating open standards in government] is a new way to compete. They are using government intervention as a way to compete. It's competing through regulation, because you couldn't compete technically."
That quote is, frankly, hilarious. Finally they have found that they are uncompetitive in something, and boy do they find this difficult. They've been so used to forcing the market to use their product that when the market finally corrects itself they're not sure what to do. Thus they try to fast-track a technically inferior standard.
The end result is that the exact opposite of what Tsilas asserts is happening. The ODF format is technically superior, but because it won't work with old Microsoft "features" (read: bugs), Microsoft cannot compete.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And no, "Space this like Word 95" does not require an extension.
Why should anybody even try to name them when you're just going to cherry pick which features are features and which aren't? Calling BS on that.
If you're going to call BS on my statements I'd like to direct your attention to this page, in particular to the autoSpaceLikeWord95 element (which can be found on pages 1378-1379 of the Draft 4 for OOXML if you really like reading 6,000 page document format specs). http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=2007011720521698 [groklaw.net]
Then you reveal that you actually don't know of features that ODF doesn't support that Microsoft "requires" but
Re:we've come a long way (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:we've come a long way (Score:4, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Some truth in this, but in the 1970s the computer business was described as "IBM and the seven dwarfs". The other truth was "No one ever got fired for buying IBM"
with a little further left to go (Score:3, Informative)
When a company that used to be a monopolist is now one of the staunchest defenders of openness, I really do hope there is no hidden agenda here.
"One of the Staunchest defenders of openness?" Oh, come now. Can you really use such a superlative for a commercial company? I'm sure the raving Richard Stallman would take that title in a heart beat. I submit to you a recent hardship I have endured involving the Rational suite of tools that IBM now owns and produces.
Our management forced us from subversion to clearcase. I am not impressed. Most painful was the loss of the goal stat-scm in subversion that allowed me to (with a few keystrokes) we
IBM Are Right (Score:5, Insightful)
I can see no case at all to support Microsofts point of view that it's better to use a document format which is supported by only one company that can only be guaranteed to work with their products and where this guarantee is not set in stone and could be subject to change at the whim of the company.
From a business point of view anything which maintains the lock in to Microsofts Office products is good for Microsoft and anything which is truly open benefits IBM and as I said above I think what the customer wants in this case is also the same thing IBM want which means IBM are going to be getting a lot of goodwill for pushing their point of view.
It will be interesting to see just how far MS are willing to go to defend their office lock in and whether they will see sense, give in and rely on Office ( which is a good product IMHO ) to compete on a level playing field with it's competitors.
Re:IBM Are Right (Score:5, Insightful)
Anything which maintains the lock-in to MS Office &c. is good for Microsoft and Microsoft alone.
Anything which is truly open benefits IBM as well as the rest of the world.
With two sides such as these, there is really no question as to which side I'm on.
Of course, should IBM become too greedy, nothing would stop me from loathing them as much as I loathe Microsoft nowadays.
Parent
Standard reply.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Misread that (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What doesn't make sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What doesn't make sense (Score:4, Interesting)
I keep "hearing" the statement but I don't experience it. I use oo.org regularly with absolutely no problems. I use MS Office occasionally with no problems so how is it that MS Office blows away oo.org?
BTW - I have no interest in "reasons" such as the following:
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Actually your real problem will be the software. (Score:4, Insightful)
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What doesn't make sense? Let me spell it out. (Score:3, Insightful)
But Microsoft doesn't want to compete with OO. They would much rather have a monopoly based on a de-facto document standard that is incompatible with other software. After all, you make more money with monopoly sales and monopoly markup than you do in a competitive market, even if you're the market leader.
If Microsoft fully supported ODF, then it may happen that a great deal of people
Re:What doesn't make sense (Score:5, Informative)
And the scary thing (for MS) is that it being free changes, well, everything. At my company, we used to have a few people who needed a word processor, so they got Office. When OOo got good enough, we start giving it out to everyone on our standard deployment. Have a PC? You're getting OpenOffice. Now we find ourselves in the position where OOo is our standard suite, and only a couple of people get MS Office (mainly because of legacy documents, like complicated spreadsheets etc.).
In more recent news, my little Eee PC ships with OpenOffice. A few million units later, a lot of people will have OOo who never knew such a thing existed before. Free-of-charge isn't a huge selling point for large corporations where maintenance costs are more important than initial purchase costs, but it's extremely influential everywhere else. The thin end of the wedge is already in, and now it's starting to split the market wide open.
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Help! I'm stuck in the eighties (Score:4, Informative)
"Oh wait, maybe we're not. Not yet. Give us a couple of decades or so..."
IBM has gotten its act together, or at least its rhetoric. When will Microsoft join the rest of us in the 21st century and stop foisting rushed, technically inferior and product-specific work? What will it take, Microsoft's version of the Microchannel?
-mcgrew
The Microsoft Way is what's on trial here (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the problems I have with the whole MS Office file design is that it includes both data and executables in the same file. There is no way to separate the two. Now, I suppose I'm out of step with the rest of the world, but those should be in separate files. As long as the data is fully documented, and has all the appropriate pieces for the purpose (style definitions, mathematical formulae), any program should be able to operate on it. IMHO, we should not be encouraging the mixture of (for example) a spreadsheet document that contains the calculations for a company's PL statement with the code (e.g., VBA) used to control data entry into that document. Simply loading the document should not put someone at risk for malware infection, because it should contain no programs in the first place. I like having powerful macros as much as the next guy, but I believe it has gone too far.If you need that much control, then write a separate program that operates on the data, and keep the data separate.
Here's a wild idea: Replace all the data files (and only data files -- no macros or exe's) on a computer with entries in a SQL database (with appropriate security, of course, to restrict sharing), so any application, from any vendor, can easily read and write it. As Microsoft proved when it tried to put SQL into the OS, this isn't as easy as I made it sound. But this may have more to do with their inability to add the old vulnerabilities into the scheme than making the whole thing work right.
Microsoft wishes to enshrine all of its past mistakes in the new format, and continue its malware-friendly development philosophy. That is wrong, and the Office 2007 file format is too flawed to be seriously considered as a universal standard (intellectual property issues aside). It's good to see a company the size of IBM fight against its acceptance.
Translation: (Score:5, Funny)
Translation: "We would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for that pesky megacorp!"
Re: (Score:3, Funny)