Microsoft Lashes out at Massachusetts IT Decision 525
scoop writes "Infoweek is reporting that the plan to eliminate the use of Office by the Massachusetts state government (previously covered on Slashdot) has not gone over well with Microsoft. Microsoft's Yates said the company agrees with the adoption of XML but does not agree that the solution to "public records management is to force a single, less functional document format on all state agencies." Microsoft also states they will not support the OpenDocument format. Looks to me Microsoft is scared their biggest cash cow is in danger from a free alternative. Soon I'm sure we'll see a Microsoft funded comparison between Office and OpenOffice."
Results are in early (Score:1, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
MS will give it away (Score:4, Interesting)
They might do that eventually, but right now they will just give the software away to the state for free.....IT managers like free, and it avoids TCO arguments.
Re:quite stupid decision (Score:5, Interesting)
However, I suspect we may see a reversal soon. Because the traditional MS response to this sort of thing is either to claim support, but embedd MS extensions in it (which is more or less what they did with the last version of Office and it's suposed XML support), or to write support but make it really suck. Watch for the next version of Office to have OpenDocument support, but for the support to be poor and buggy.
Re:Open standards increase competition. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's about ideology not flexibility (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's about ideology not flexibility (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand though, you're right in that the Microsoft marketting department are morons!
Re:MS will give it away (Score:3, Interesting)
I think that if a legislater wants something like this to happen badly enough then Microsoft would need a *lot* of money to stop it.
Re:Strange (Score:5, Interesting)
Instead, it stores the picture in whatever format it was originally (jpeg, png, gif etc). Since opendocument is basically a zipfile, you can simply unzip it and retrieve the pictures in their original format. Part of the design goal of opendocument was to use existing standards wherever possible..
So it seems that here, microsoft is just trying to twist this around to suit their own ends. I`m sure if someone invented a car that ran on air, microsoft would complain that it didn't have a gas tank.
Re:Results are in early (Score:3, Interesting)
Sounds like Ballmer talking (Score:3, Interesting)
The corporate version of a temper tantrum. We're going to take our XML schema and go home!
MSFT employees are, by and large, smart and intelligent. Collectively all that goes out the window. Makes me wonder if Ballmer is taking too much of a hand in day to day operations. That kind of stupidity can only come from the top.
BS Office? (Score:3, Interesting)
I know nobody here needs to be told this, but that is bullshit.
If the xml based standards are too low, M$ with its gazillions of cash reserves could come up with a superior xml office document format, release it under a completely open format, and then use their monopoly, um market share to force it into use.
Re:Open standards increase competition. (Score:2, Interesting)
I also think this problem with software is going to take a lot longer to fix because a company can produce a new application that has a proprietary format with much less time, money, and risk involved than they could if they were producing hardware.
Add to that, the fact that most non-technical consumers are perfectly willing to accept proprietary formats, even after it backfires on them. It makes a push for open standards a hard sell.
At one job, we had all of our data in a specific, non-portable format, and when the company who produced the application went out of business and we were stuck looking for a new system, my boss was still perfectly happy to spend money for the new application with absolute enthusiasm, even though the new application had the same risk of depending on the new company's support for it to function. I suggested switching to just a standard database format, SQL, but the company's marketing gurus had a whole list of reasons why their application and format was better which made my boss giddy like a school boy.
I don't work there anymore so I don't know how the story ends the second time, but I think it's only a matter of time before they'll be looking for a new system again.
Word DOES destroy docs (Score:3, Interesting)
That is NOT Word. That is a user inserting an image as a link on a drive you do not
That said - Word does accumulate large amounts of cruft. We regularly pass docs aorund for review, and because the department is using a multitude of language settings, I invariably have my nice English text come back thinking it is Brazilian Portuguese or French.
It also had a document shredder called the "Master Document" feature. Something writers tell each other to never use.
Open Source Import/Export for Microsoft Office? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Results are in early (Score:3, Interesting)
You're seriously suggesting typing maths as a reason to use OpenOffice.org? <boggle>
Have you ever used a serious maths typing tool like TeX?
Then wouldn't it be a good idea to wait most of those three years to be sure of that before committing to a change?
I can understand moving away from MS Office because of the closed, proprietary document formats. In fact, I think that's one of the two really good reasons to do so right now, the other being cost. But let's not kid ourselves that OpenOffice.org is a technically superior product, OK?
Re:Open standards increase competition. (Score:2, Interesting)
Next time you have to view a
If they decline, follow up the hierachy till you get to your elected member.
Re:Battle of ideology? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:more (Score:1, Interesting)
The vast majority of documents are intended to be printed. So embedding video, audio, and (retch) VIOP are compeltely irrelevant.
MS can not continue to win this on "feature creep", since unused features fail to add value to the customer.
as a resident of MA (Score:3, Interesting)
Elected officials arent really elected, since we dont really have elections here, there is no opposition. We like to call it the peoples republic. My prediction; when more money is allocated or ms gives a bigger discount, they will switch back to office.
what MS will do (Score:2, Interesting)
That will discourage users to choose those formats yet fulfill the requirement to support open formats.
Alternatively they will interpret it in subtly different ways that make the saved document only usable in Word. (Think HTML and IE...)
smarts (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I can't help but wonder... (Score:2, Interesting)
Look at the situation now - it's IE which has to catch up.
Yeah, catch up from 80% to 100% of all users. Poor, poor abandoned IE :-)
Of all people I know, including friends, family and all of my co-workers, only two people use OpenOffice instead of MsOffice. My wife (who doesn't have a choice on our home computer :-) and I. Let me tell you, she is not happy about it. We'll see if the situation changes in our lifetime.
I have written 2 books using OpenOffice.org (Score:5, Interesting)
The OO.org 2.0 beta is especially good.
I have written a few blog entries on the massively huge advantages of open file formats - I won't repeat myself hereexcept to say that took me 5 minutes to write Java code to perfectly handle OO.org and AbiWord file formats. For my GPLed NLP project, I spent huge amounts of time trying to dea with Microsoft Office formats, and did no really do very well.
As a Microsoft stock owner, I wrote a letter to Microsoft compalining about their failure to also support OO.org file formats - I never received a response, which I think is rude behavior. After not receiving an answer since the 3 or 4 months that I wrote the letter, I am thinking of dumping their stock.
*LOCKED IN* ??? Pot. Kettle. Black? (Score:3, Interesting)
Someone needs to explain to MS what 'lock-in' means. (Or at least, ensure that any audience they spout this drivel at understands it - although it does seem like the decision-makers in MA understand)
Using OpenDoc does not in any way shape or form lock-in the choice of software used to manipulate it, unlike in the MS World, where using MS-Word 'DOC' format *does* lock-in one to using MS software only.
Re:Flexibility? (Score:3, Interesting)
Gee whiz, and here I thought Word was for... words. You know. Making documents that you can read. I guess I was totally wrong, because it appears that it also reads my e-mail and makes me toast in the morning. How the hell did this kind of silliness get integrated into the program? Would Microsoft actually attempt to make Word make toast for me in the morning if enough people asked for it? And what's that critical number, anyway?
Re:Wrong Question! (Score:3, Interesting)
Very obvious you have not used OneNote, or any other Meeting Document creation applications that records and timelines the Audio from the meeting with the notes you take.
There are REASONS people would want this information in a Document. I use it everyday.
PERIOD.
(Ignorance leads all at one time or another.)
Re:Wrong Question! (Score:5, Interesting)
No, there are reasons people will want to be able to *synchronize* that data together, but that has nothing to do with the idea that you need one mother-of-all-document-format to store that different data in the same file.
The sane thing to do would be to store the video in a (common, open) video format, and your (textual) notes hold a time index into the video for synchronization, thus the text and video are separate from each other, *and* in standardized formats, *and* held in the same file using a standardized container format like a zip file. So you can still use open standards which keep your own options open, and keep your synchronization too.
Unless of course you're a company who's income depends on keeping your customers locked in to your proprietary formats (forcing them to use your, and ONLY your, apps to access the THEIR OWN data), in which case, "innovating" a brand new (proprietary, redundant) format to store text and video in the same file makes perfect "sense"....
What about the MS Office SDK for Converters (Score:2, Interesting)
Someone had to develop the WordPerfect, Wordstar, RTF, and all the other optional text and graphics converters that Microsoft includes with MS Office.
It seems the SaveAs "OpenDocument" function would be just as simple.
Maybe even the code that's used in OpenOffice reader and writer converters could be plugin-ized so the streams could feed a generic software harness to spoon feed MS Office on the way in.. and out..
I've noticed there seems to be a lot of thinkers but few people willing to suffer through COM programming or lesser methods to add-on to villian-ware.
Perhaps Microsft was just stating "We won't invest money in paying our programmers to do this.." and it was just a general statement.
It might even be seen as defensive in an SEC filing to their stock holders.
We won't spend owner dollars in undermining our current native formats.
I'm really neutral on this.. but it looks rather harmless.
KB Q111716
The files included with this Application Note comprise the software development kit (SDK) for 16-bit and 32-bit external text file converters.
This SDK provides the technical information you need in order to develop external file converters that can import and export formatted text between
Microsoft Word for Windows and foreign binary files.