Microsoft Office Formats Not Really Being Opened

Contradicting this earlier article claiming otherwise, smith_barney writes "Contrary to reports, Microsoft is not opening up its proprietary Office XML schemas. Essentially, the state of Massachusetts is simply repositioning what it considers an 'open format.' According to a report in BetaNews, Microsoft told the state it would ease licensing restrictions, but only for 'end users who merely open and read government documents.' This hasn't stopped Microsoft from tooting its horn, but Jupiter Research senior analyst Joe Wilcox says, 'Buzz about so-called open formats is little more than PR FUD.'"

Open?

Nothing for you to see here. Please move along

That is probablly what your going to get when you try to work with one of these "open" formats from MS.

In other news

Bush not really a Muslim.
Babies not really delivered by storks.
Bears do not actually have modern sanitation.

Re:In other news

phew, at least Santa is still real!

Re:In other news

We can improve the signal to noise ratio on Slashdot and other sites if we all agree that Microsoft keeping things closed/abusing its monopoly position/killing kttens is NOT NEWS and not worthy of mention. Is everybody on board?

Heh...

Looks like an 'open and shut' case to me...

OpenOffice.org

Just tell them that you're going to be installing this on all your computers.

Seriously, how many people need stuff in Office that isn't in OpenOffice.org?

Microsoft Word 2000 is VERY quirky.

The last version of Microsoft Word I used was in Office 2000. I got tired of it because it is so quirky with layout.

Open Office is a bit quirky, too, and they are different quirks. Many times people forget the many, many hours they spent learning to avoid the Office 2000 quirks. They want Open Office to be perfect, and they have forgotten how imperfect Microsoft Word is.

If you test Open Office, be sure you test the latest version, 1.1.4 [openoffice.org]. Version 2.0 will be available in April or May [openoffice.org] of this year.

It's understandable that people who have invested hours in learning Microsoft Word don't want to invest hours again. They just want to get the job done. On the other hand, it would be crazy for the Open Office developers to implement the hundreds of ways Microsoft Office is quirky.

Generally, when you send documents outside your company, you should send PDF files. That guards against accidental changes. To do this in Open Office, just click the PDF icon in the toolbar. To do this in Microsoft Word, install an extra-cost package.

Ms "Open format"

The fun guns, once again.

Effective monopolist tactics.

Almost everyone uses Microsoft Office as opposed to the various flavors of OpenOffice, StarOffice, etc. Not speaking of its fairness, this is a very effective strategy from Microsoft and not at all surprising.

It's a blatant abuse of their virtual monopoly, but there hasn't really been an effective incentive for them to stop taking such actions in the past. Why would they refrain from continuing such behavior?

"open" is a four letter word

"open" is a four letter word, and to Mr. Gates, it is an obscene four letter word.

[tt] Closed format?

If this is their understanding of an open format, then what would a closed format be in Microsoft's book? A write-only one?

There are other "office" based formats

OASIS, the format Apple uses for iWork, the KEY is that it will be illegal for anyone to reverse engineer the file format for cross patform/application use. Is that the gist of it?

I would think that even the NEW Office will still be able to create good ol' .doc files, so wouldn't it burn their biscuits if people just continued to use that instead? (They'll make some minor feature .newdoc only -playing solitaire while working on a doc?- and everyone will use it, anyway, no wishful thinking here...)

For those who haven't read this yet:

The Future Is Open: What OpenDocument Is And Why You Should Care ~ by Daniel Carrera [groklaw.net]

Joke is joke

Microsoft is joking with us again or we are joking with ourself on beliving this?

Open Proprietary!

"..it is our expectation that the next iteration of the Open Format standard will include some Microsoft proprietary formats."

**TILT**

I guess Proprietary is Open and War is Peace?

Massachusetts can still turn them down

Let us all hope that Massachusetts doesn't accept Microsoft's formats if they aren't completely open when it undertakes its review of the decision. If Microsoft are seen to have open office formats in the eye of the public when they are not really open, it can only be a bad thing for OpenDocument and other truly open efforts.

Everyone who lives in MA, go and write to your appropriate representative now!

When asked for comment

Bill said "Suprise! what did you expect fuckers?" :-) *bang goes my karma!*

Really, Microsoft always say they will do some things, to basically spread FUD, to make managers have an excuse for not jumping ship.

Why do they do this?

Hmmm, lets read my crystal ball, aaaah here is a M$ press release:

"Closed format is more secure! Plus it locks you into Office, which we have no bundled with Windows, which is now etched into the core of every processor! *stiffled manic laughter*"

Translation:

"We really don't want to allow people to easily leave Office behind and we want to make it harder for OpenOffice to import etc, because when people realise they don't need office, we will loose money

Also we don't want people to easily crack our DRM and embarrass us as we extort money from publishing companies and spread FUD amongst authors, so people can no longer read stuff without money coming to us

Plus world domination is fun!"

question

Isn't this like saying, "we wrote the English Dictionary so no one is allowed to read English without our approval?" To me, if you want to copyright an idea for a product, go ahead, if you want to protect intelluctual property, that's fine too, but formats for files? Come on! So what if my program can read and write files that your program reads and writes. As long as I didn't take your way of writing those files, I should be fine.

huh?

Office can't open its own formats? Thats insane!
Try like ctrl-o (or File->Open)
Might work ;)

Linguistic integrity police

Could we all endeavor to remember that "FUD" is an acronym for "fear, uncertainty, and doubt" and not simply a synonym for "lying". There is little of the usual Microsoft "end of the world" blather here; it's just deceptive marketing.

In other words, business as usual.

Re:Linguistic integrity police

No, the GP is right. You're wrong in thinking that the idea applies to wholesale language changes such as "'speed' now means 'picture frame'". What the idea does apply to are the gray areas, where the boundaries are not so clear. This is how we got the widespread misuse of words/phrases like "irony", "it begs the question", "same difference", etc.

It's the same idea that has led to the "copyright infringment==theft" farce that the RIAA and MPAA take great pride in.

I'm sorry.

Mr. Wilcox's criteria of openness seem to be unduly strict. His definition of "open" is something like "submitted to a standards body, and is public domain". If there's a license attached, however permissive, then (in his view) it's closed and proprietary. I can understand his position, but it's not the only one possible.

Support OASIS and the OpenOffice format...

There is already a truly open office format developed by OASIS [oasis-open.org].

Microsoft can read the writing on the wall and is trying to combat a truly open standard with their patent encumbered version.

What we need is OASIS support everywhere, including M$ Office. We need to develop plug-ins with easy/friendly install and stick them on a website so that even a novice user will be able to get it on their system and be able to share OASIS docs.

Procedure to OPEN an Office 2k3 document

1) crawl to the File menu
2) click on Open document
3) select a document

Voila... the document is now open. Yes it's THAT simple.

It's open...

It's using open standards! They support open standards and they made a lot of people happy, just by claiming that. So now people can say, 'see, MS supports open standards'! The only problem is, that their file format is closed. It is in fact, if I remember correctly even patented.

Pretty much oxymoronic to me... ... or just moronic.

Office XML Documenation

<xml>
<office>??????????????</office>
</xml>

The MS Office open XML file format consists of an XML branch, followed by an Office branch.
Unfortunately, due to the complexities of parsing this branch, it should be passed directly as a parameter into our improved Office ActiveX object.
We are currently developing an addin for firefox as well.

Thank you for looking at this documentation, that will be all.

Massachusettes isn't a state.

It is a Commonwealth. There are 46 States and 4 Commonwealths.

Boring, I know. But I live here so I get to have at least one pet peeve.

FUD

Whoever submitted that needs to look up what FUD means. It is not a cool leet internet word for dogma. It specifically refers to disinformation about a competing product or competitor intended to damage their business.

Have the children of slashdot learned nothing from their elders?

Hard to reconcile.

Whilst the annoucement in yesterdays /. was a licence that was gpl-incompatible, it was (afaict) within the scope of existing open licences (it didn't read too disimilar to an old-style bsd licence) - I certainly didn't notice any restrictions on writing, and since that is still up on MS's page, i'm guessing that possibly the chap quoted here was speaking unaware of that announcement. either that or MS's site was hacked or maybe I've just misread something.

Joke, looking for an occasion

Essentially, the state of Massachusetts is simply repositioning what it considers an 'open format.'

How does Bill Gates screw in a lightbulb?

He doesn't. He declares darkness the industry standard.

Document Formats

It's clear that too many important people have had their heads up their arses for too long.

We need to have it made law that file formats are not secrets and not patentable, but form as much a part of the specification for interacting with the software as, say, the key bindings. {I personally would like to see it become law that software vendors must supply full annotated source code with their products, but let's take it one step at a time ..... Mandate open data formats first, then guarantees of performance, then source code escrow to back up the performance guarantees and protect against vendor , then slowly tighten the screws on the escrow agencies and software companies till it's no longer economically viable to sell closed-source software.}

It wouldn't surprise me if some software vendor had tried at some stage seriously to claim in an EULA that all the rights in any document created with their software belonged to them. I know that it used to be a breach of EULA to use a certain software company's programming languages to develop applications that competed directly with that company's offerings.

The good news is that EULAs aren't legally enforceable in any sane jurisdiction anyway, so you can go ahead and exercise your inalienable statutory right to reverse-engineer documents -- for the purposes of study, creation of interoperable software or just morbid curiosity -- to your heart's content. In fact, you can even refuse to accept the EULA at all. You can still quite legally use the software under your inalienable statutory right of Fair Dealing -- you just don't get any benefits that were only promised to you in the EULA.

Re:Document Formats

I agree. File formats needs to be open. And one more thing too: protocols.

Software interacts basically one of two different ways.

Either in that one piece of software saves a file, and another piece of software reads that file.

Or in that one piece of software directly talks to another piece of software, using some protocol.

If all file-formats and all protocols where open, a lot would be won.

Anti-MS FUD

I'm no big fan of MS, but this is nothing more than good 'ol jump on the bandwagon MS bashing. This all comes from a letter from MS' XML guru explaining recent clarifications to the license to address concerns from MA. The exact quote is:

"We are acknowledging that end users who merely open and read government documents that are saved as Office XML files within software programs will not violate the license."

Here's the exact line from the license:

"By way of clarification of the foregoing, given the unique role of government institutions, end users will not violate this license by merely reading government documents that constitute files that comply with the Microsoft specifications for the Office Schemas, or by using (solely for the purpose of reading such files) any software that enables them to do so. The term "government documents" includes public records."

Does this statement preclude someone from using the file format for other purpose, such as say import/export from OpenOffice.org? Nope. It just gaurantees that open/reading government files will not violate the license.

Look before you leap...

Brazil Makes Move to Open Source Software

From NPR...

"Morning Edition, January 31, 2005 The government of Brazil says it will switch 300,000 government computers from Microsoft's Windows operating system to open source software like Linux. Microsoft founder Bill Gates wants to meet with Brazil's president to discuss the change. Brazil is dropping all proprietary software."

Listen here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?story Id=4471963 [npr.org]

The Brazilians are just saying no!

Never _under_estimate?

Does Bill Gates really say,"Certainly you can never under estimate the level of malicious people out there." [emphasis mine] I think they can underestimate because they did.

Microsoft Office Formats Not Really Being Opened

whew! OK, my world makes sense again.

Anti-Microsoft FUD

Straight from the horse's mouth:
http://www.microsoft.com/Office/xml/faq.ms px

Looks "open" enough to me..

Massachusetts hasn't yet agreed to this

Eric Kriss, secretary of administration and finance of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:

• They have made representations to us recently they are planning to modify that license, and we believe, if they do so in the way that we understand that they have spoken about (we will leave it obviously to them to describe exactly what they are going to do), it is our expectation that the next iteration of the Open Format standard will include some Microsoft proprietary formats. These formats, like DOC files, will be deemed to be Open Formats because they will no longer have restrictions on their use.

  That would potentially include (again, we need to wait for the final designation of this by Microsoft) Word Processing ML, which is the wrapper around DOC files, Spreadsheet ML, which is the wrapper around XLS files, and the form template schemas.

Massachusetts residents, hold your state to that. Only if the formats "no longer have restrictions on their use" do they qualify as open formats.

Governments used to set standards

In the old days, governments set the standards and the industry followed. Which government would be brave enough to set an office document standard and tell vendors to at least import and export standard documents?

Vendors used to try to subvert standards, for example, EBCDIC, for character encoding, but who uses that these days?

License? What license?

Perhaps I am missing something obvious here, but what right has Microsoft to these formats? Copyrights? Since when can you copyright file formats? A format is not a work. A patent right? Since when is a file format a method or apparatus?

Sure, schemas could theoretically be copyrighted. But I doubt they would pass the originality test, especially in the US. In how many ways can you write a schema?

Just because Microsoft (through publishing "licenses") claims to own something does not make it true. Actually, in civilized countries this should give rise to criminal fraud investigations.

This shows why definitions matter.

The FSF has repeatedly told us that words matter. "Free" versus "open" makes a difference because they don't mean the same thing and they don't have the same implications [gnu.org].

The open source movement's philosophy focuses on technical superiority in their aim to benefit businesses. This is an incredibly weak philosophy which means open source proponents end up sometimes stumping for software that doesn't qualify as "open source"--proprietary software, in particular (because there is proprietary software that does a job better than the "open source" equivalent). Free software proponents argue for software freedom for all computer users, and thus never end up in an ironic position of stumping for non-free software. This means that proprietary software is treated two different ways: for open source proponents, proprietary software is an acceptable, if less technically efficient, means to an end. For free software proponents, proprietary software is anti-social and wrong.

The state of Massachusetts will end up watering down their concepts in a similar way: they'll accept Microsoft's proprietary formats as "open formats", and they'll fall back to quibbling about the "terms of usage". Which means Microsoft has either exploited an extant weakness in "open formats" [groklaw.net] or blown a new one open. Will Massachusetts state government end up placing public documents in a proprietary format? Do they still care about OASIS' OpenDocument? It looks like interoperation for the purpose of helping to keep government documents readable and changeable without losing information is lower on the priority list than it was before.

no big surprise

Microsoft will never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever open any product they make. Everything else will be fud - i.e. this story.

What is this guy talking about?

I read the license from Microsoft.com and it appears to be clearly open. It allows any developer to create programs (even open-source ones) that read and write in the format; and any patent claims are waived insofar as an attribution notice is included.

The only change has been a clarification that "end users will not violate this license...merely by reading files...constituted by Microsoft specifications." This does not overrule the prior (open) license in any way, or state that only end-users could read the files; it just frees end-users of the necessity of offering attribution.

In short, the format appears to be absolutely open, and this recent minor amendment does not alter the fact.

When Wilcox (the author of the parent linked article) read this minor amendment, he remarked "that's a far cry from open standard or really open format." It appears possible that he simply misunderstood the amendment to mean that only end-users were able to read files.

On the other hand, Kriss' comment is disturbing: "it is our expectation that the next iteration of the Open Format standard will include some Microsoft proprietary formats." Even if the current document format is open and remains open, that doesn't prevent Microsoft from replacing it with other formats ("future revisions") which aren't open. OS programs could continue to read and write in the open format, while Office will extend it with closed elements (in future versions) to write things OS programs cannot read. It doesn't seem that an open format guarantees that a vendor will stick with only that format. Unfortunately it appears the format is still "open" by the common definition of that term, even if a vendor does not promise to use only the open format in the future.

there's that acronym again

'Buzz about so-called open formats is little more than PR FUD.'

Show me where Fear, Uncertaintity, and Doubt is being employed as a tactic there? Maybe a bit of uncertaintity, all right ... but chrissakes, could people stop overusing this term? It's just become idiotic, and I've started to get this knee-jerk reaction to knock lots of credence off any argument that uses it.

"FUD" seems to have the same connotation and baggage as "counterrevolutionary" does in a banana republic.

anti trust trial waste of money...

The whole anti trust trial could have been adverted had the government simply told Microsoft it would only buy software that used a open and publically available, standardized file format. But, instead the government used the anti trust case as another opportunity to redistribute wealth.

Told you so!

It simply wasnt believable.

Standards do not preceded Innovation

OpenDocument threatens to add a lot of competition (good) which will nullify standards (bad).

Office software RELIES on the fact that -everyone- is using the same damned software. Remember the browser wars? Just wait until you see spreadsheet wars.

This would all be hunky-dory if Standards preceded Innovation, but unfortunately what inevitably happens is company A releases cool feature Aa, that company B's A-reader cannot read, but Ba does the same thing. The standards do not get revised until ALL parties agree that feature Aa is what they will go with, but of course company B wants nothing to do with it and continues manufacturing Ba features. And yes, this all happened many times within the last decade.

Awful idea. We should have learned with the HTML "standardizations".

new buzz word...

so now the word open can be used to describe things that are not really open but purported to be open... good job ms...

Isn't it funny?

The MS Office Ad in the article?

The reason why Microsoft adopted XML

No methods..

Think about it..

ITs an all data format, it requires libraries to
create and to interpret.. Very easy to leverage a data format..

However and object (which is data with code)
is harder to leverage. Leveraging is a term used to describe the process by which a business corners clients into a monopoly, aka vendor lockin..

Data formats are very easy to leverage, objects are harder to leverage because the data can't be accessed, but through a method interface.. That means the data can change, but it can't become incompatible due to such changes because the data us not being interfaced with directly, the methods are.. So if you standardize the methods, the data can't influence changes in the software that uses the data, unless the method set changes..

If people adopt a object standard for documents instead of a data standard, you will find less and less vendors capable of leveraging formats in their favor.. Its the leveraging of these formats that keep them in business and encourage people to upgrade their software..

ITs the reason I believe Open Source applications should adopt objects as the framework for standards,
primarily for documents and movies and images.. That would make it really tough for vendors to lock people into unfair business relationships..

And is the reason Microsoft will not adopt a object based data format, it will only adopt stuff like XML which is a form of deception, its human readable, but if its encrypted/encoded with magic words and random ids, what does that matter?

Unless there is a basic understood, open source driven method interface to the many kinds of data, there will be no justice..

Re:Why...

Slow news week?

Why don't you RTFAQ

How do you verify the accuracy of Slashdot stories? [slashdot.org]

Re:Umm....

I was actually quite hopefully that Microsoft would open the format. As a developer, a completely open format would have been wonderful. This is sad news. Not surprised, just upset.

Re:Umm....

We probably were all wishing for the same, but that said, "opening" the format is probably harder than it sounds.

My understanding of the Office document formats -- which comes entirely from reading rants by OO.org and other projects to write office suites so take it with a big grain of salt -- is that the format itself is made up of serializations of stuff like activex control states. In other words, non-trivial.

I don't know if you or anybody here ever wrote a BeOS "replicant", but it was sort of like ActiveX in that they were serializable classes which could be instantiated by any program, by dlopening the replicant's source executable and running the exported code with the serialized state as initialization parameters. It was really cool -- an app could send a replicant to another app and whammo, you had stuff like a web-browser embedded on the desktop running in the desktop process, or a tray-item using your app's code, but running in the deskbar's process.

Anyway, given that Office uses this kind of approach, it would be near 100% *impossible* to get the state out without the source activex component. Unless the state itself is described in a 100% abstract manner. Which I doubt. The data is almost certainly just a serialization of the internal state of the activex control which created/modified/rendered it.

Now, I know that this kind of stuff only applies to Office when Word or Excel is embedding charts or whatnot from other parts of the office suite, but the fact is this is a useful ( and good ) way to get interoperability, even if it means that it's completely non-portable. Given MS's history, I doubt they've taken a simple approach.

I'm sure there could be better ways, and I imagine OO.org is taking a maximum-interoperability approach...

Anyway, I'm just saying. I don't think MS *could* open the format -- at least not as regards document embedding.

Rant over.

what's the contrapositive of FUD?

This post is a pedantic quibble about the use of the word/acronym "FUD".

"...Massachusetts is simply repositioning what it considers an 'open format.' [...] This hasn't stopped Microsoft from tooting its horn [...]'Buzz about so-called open formats is little more than PR FUD.'"

Although the borg are doing something bad, this time they are doing it by making something bad of theirs sound good, instead of making something good of someone else's sound bad. Should there be a word which represents the contrapositive of "FUD"? Like LAC, for Lying About Crap, or something? (maybe it's the inverse, not the contrapositive, it's been a while, feel free to correct me)

Re:Umm....

not in the slightest. any chance of ms not acting like the evil monopolistic pile of deceptive slime it is went out the window with the last "settlement" (i.e.: ms got off scott-free).