Microsoft's Open XML Project A Short-Term Fix

TechPro writes "In an interview with eWeek the managing director of the ODF Alliance (Marino Marcich) was pretty dismissive of Microsoft's Open XML Translator project. While the move was a recognition of the ODF Format's acceptance by government's around the world, the installable software plug-ins that would be created under the project were really 'only a bridge, a stopgap measure that will probably not be acceptable to government's around the world over the long term. Plug-ins simply don't give the benefits of open file formats and standards,' he said."

No Technical Support For The Plugin

[aymanh]

[...] a stopgap measure that will probably not be acceptable to government's around the world over the long term.

According to this blog entry at ZDNet [zdnet.com], the author did an interview with MS representatives, and seems like MS doesn't plan to offer technical support for the plugin, and it will forward bug reports to the original authors. This plugin doesn't look different from a 3rd party plugin, so no, I seriously doubt any government will accept it as ODF support in MS Office.

Quoting the blog entry:

Microsoft is on the record as saying it will not be offering technical support to end-users for this translator. In fact, as far as I know, no one will officially be offering support (perhaps one of the three companies involved will, for a fee). As said earlier, Microsoft will accept bug reports and forward them on to the project's developers.

Re:wHAAAAA?

[aymanh]

Huh? Many Open Source projects or 3rd party companies offer paid technical support for the project. For example, both Sun [sun.com] and a variety of consultants [openoffice.org] provide paid support for OpenOffice, including its support for ODF.

In short, OO.o natively supports ODF and has technical support, MS Office has an ODF plugin in development, but MS won't offer tech support for it.

Re:Java Redux

[Tim C]

MS produced and distributed a JVM under licence from Sun. One of the conditions of the licence is that you are not permitted to add classes to the java.* package hierarchy; any classes you want to add must go in your own package hierarchy (eg com.microsoft). That stipulation is to prevent people from introducing new classes to the core API that no-one else implements, thus removing any chance of code being "write once, run anywhere".

However, MS did exactly this, introducing Windows-specific classes into the core API packages. Sun sued for breach of licence and won. MS were prohibited from distributing the infringing JVM and, rather than simply removing the classes and carrying on, devoted their efforts to producing .NET instead.

This actually shows a lack of understanding

[Jaqui]

of what XML is by Microsoft.

eXtensible Markup Language is meant for a base specification to ensure portability. Anyone can add to an xml based specfication for their product / needs. that is the idea.

if Microsoft's openxml format for office 2007 is an xml format, then they will have a dtd and reference url for the dtd that will enable any xml based application to use the format. If this is not possible, then it is another case of Microsoft lying to their customers about Microsoft products.


The above is the comment I made on Techrepublic in response to the article at the url below.
Since the Article I'm referencing is about the plugin for office 2007, it's a related story.

http://techrepublic.com.com/2100-3513-6090912.html / [com.com]