ODF Alliance, Who, What, Where (and Why?) 92
Andy Updegrove writes "On Friday, the new ODF Alliance was launched with much fanfare to 'educate government' about the OpenDocument Format. A flurry of brief news articles appeared the same day, based on pre-launch interviews (as well as an Op/Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal by Sun's Scott McNealy), but they didn't include much information. So what's it all about, why was it formed, and will it be likely to succeed? Given that the 36 members include only one government unit (the ICT department for Vienna), the answer is clearly to establish a beachhead in the government market as a target of opportunity, and then to expand from there to meet the real goals of the members."
Re:More standard formats (Score:5, Insightful)
The real goals of the members (Score:5, Insightful)
For several of the members (like IBM for instance), their basic survival depends on an open file format. If Microsoft controls all the files then nobody else can compete.
Does it matter? Judging by their resistance in Mass., Microsoft thinks so.
Re:More standard formats (Score:4, Insightful)
OpenOffice.org will read them correctly. Wordperfect, if they ever get round to it, will read them correctly. Sun's StarOffice, IBM's workplace will read ODF correctly. Abiword, etc, etc . . .
Let's say that MS offers EITHER broken ODF support, or no ODF support at all. Anyone who is in an environment that uses ODF has no problems; they can simply open the ODF in OpenOffice.org, which is free, and save it as a DOC, which Office will open correctly.
And that's the kicker; once you're using OpenOffice.org as a conversion filter you'll have people stop using MS Office for simple edits.
And then you've got a foothold
Re:Office XML open enough? (Score:5, Insightful)
The ODF is entirely different, since the specification is clear that no such binary data is allowed. As often happens, the MS offering has the appearance of satisfying a need ("open and accessible!") while not actually delivering on the promise.
new Office XML specifications are freely available for anyone to download and Microsoft offers perpetual, royalty-free licenses to use them
Even if that's true, apparently the way it is worded, nothing prevents MS from releasing a derivative of their format with new licensing terms. So people will get locked into an upgrade path that at first has no costs, but eventually does. ODF on the other hand is committed to keeping the standard free.
OASIS is much more independant and impartial than MS will ever be, and I'm much more comfortable trusting them. The OpenDocument format is very clearly open and readable, meaning anyone in the future will be able to read/write the documents easily (and without paying royalties). The same cannot be said for the new Office XML. In that case, you're just trading one locked-down format for another. The question should be: "If we're going to the bother of switching to a new format, why not select the one that offers us the most accessibility and flexibility down the road?" And the answer is: "you should switch to ODF." I have no doubt that MS Word will read/write ODF witin a few years.
Re:More standard formats (Score:5, Insightful)
A) One should use OpenOffice.org as a conversion filter instead of relying upon Microsoft's support, and
B) Microsoft can't program worth shit.
If every company on the planet except MS has good ODF support, and people start installing OpenOffice.org as a conversion filter, expect really bad things to happen to Microsoft's Office marketshare.
Re:The real goals of the members (Score:5, Insightful)
you're joking, right ? msoffice formats are well known for extremly bad interoperability even with other ms products (including the same product on another system...), visio, msproject binary formats are nightmare... these are just the first that come to my mind, there probably are much, much more examples of ms confining interoperabillity/compatibility/openness of file formats.
it's just the way they are used to doing business - they had to fight office file formats battle before, so they are bringin this battle to new competitors. of course, it also is a way for them to keep marketshare and restrict expansion of competing products, so struggling to keep open formats from bwcoming a reality isn't exactly a surprise.
Get a grip. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's silly and just not the reality. Microsoft can program just fine, it's just that they choose not to program for compatibility with non-Microsoft standards.
Re:+flamebait ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:+flamebait ? (Score:5, Insightful)
The article is not about open source but about open standards. The two are not the same. You could use primarily only open standards but use only closed source software. For example IBM's implementation of ODF in Workplace and Sun's Staroffice are both closed source.
MS has been using the tactic with some of its more dubious FUDmongers (particularily with regard to ODF support in Mass.) of trying to deliberately confuse open standards and open source. I am not saying you are necessarily a MS FUDmonger but probably just duped by them.
Simple solution: (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:More standard formats (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Education is definitely the key to success (Score:3, Insightful)
Just to be pedantic ;) open source is one thing, open format is another.
Of course, a file that is created by an open source software is on an open format, but the oposite is not always true for closed source. A file that is written by a closed source software may also be on an open format.
public access (Score:2, Insightful)
MS is the most arrogant and abusive corporation to come around in a long long time. They should have been busted up completely years ago. IMO, worse than Enron. The ONLY reason they are even offering this latest dodge is because they can clearly see the threat to their bottom line that the ODF is.
Screw them turkeys for ripping off businesses and governments and individuals and making the net an insecure and bogus coded wasteland. They should take their billions and be happy with it and retire. The sooner MS is removed from the computing public the better. They make the **AAs look like benevolent philanthropists. They had their chance to be good corporate citizens and blew it. They bring the concept of greed and incompetence to new levels never seen before.
and besides that, yo momma!
Re:Office XML open enough? (Score:5, Insightful)
For the same friggin' reason they put the brain dead Posix inteface in Windows NT - so they could claim to meet the requirements of Posix compatibiliy without intending any serious use of it. Remember the fuss with Kerberos??
Re:The real goals of the members (Score:3, Insightful)
Then again, it's Microsoft, so there must be some sort of underlying goal to squash its competitors, right?
Re:Free Market (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you think this is? This is the market speaking. Notice that most of the consortium members are NOT vendors of office software. Libraries, archives, researchers and others who need to use documents produced by others want them to be in an open format. Nobody is trying to force anybody to use any particular format for their own use - the point here is that consumers of documents want to get them in a format that makes the documents useful to them. What we have here is simply advertising for the purpose of affecting the market, just like Microsoft does for its own purposes.
Re:Get a grip. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Office XML open enough? (Score:4, Insightful)
My opinion is that trying to bring Trident up to snuff would be like taking DR-DOS and trying to turn it into a modrn operating system. Rebuilding or replacing the thing wholesale might just be the better option. And maybe they underestimated the time it takes to bring a product that was obsolete when it went gold five years ago up to date.
NOTE: I called MSHTML "Triton" in my earlier post. The correct name is "Trident".
Re:Get a grip. (Score:3, Insightful)
The point is that I'm not aware of any OSS project that intentionally cripples their product in order to lock in customers or maximize revenues. Microsoft clearly does so over and over.
Re:The real goals of the members (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but what kind of crack are you smoking? "Hardware vendors"? Oracle, Novell, RedHat, Opera, Corel, 2 Massachussets Councils, IIT, Technical University of Denmark? (and so on) I know, many on the list are small fish and not really with much sway - but please point me to whatever hardware products the first 5 I listed do sell. And as to IBM and Sun - I don't see StarOffice restricted to running on Sun Solaris machines, nor Workplace to Power workstations. Would you explain how exactly is this going to promote their hardware sales, if you care to back up your statements instead of simply trolling?
I have yet to see any argument that makes sense on moving from MS Office to OpenDocument other than from some childish good vs evil anti-microsoft crap
How about a format with guaranteed backward-compatibility, that does not force software upgrades on you since it is not tied to a single software solution, with no submarine patents attached, no single vendor control (this part you seem to be missing as well)