Microsoft Believes IBM Masterminded Anti-OOXML Initiative

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."'"

Pity the Poor Masters of Spin...

[davidsyes]

IBM executives have concerns microsoft of leading the campaign against their initiative against microsoft's initiative to have Office Open XML approved by the International Organization for Standardization.

But, 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.

IBM responded with, "They have made this a religious and highly political debate, worse than we did" "Yes, we ARE are doing this because it is advancing our business model. But, over 50 percent of microsoft's revenues come from abusing and INsulting services against their customers needing a way out."

Re:Hmmm...

[cbreaker]

Maybe people think lobbying is illegal or something. It's not. It's how shit gets done.

Re:How is IBM subverting the process?

[man_of_mr_e]

Actually, yes. There is a great deal of controversy around the Kenyan national response.

Two IBM employees are listed in the authors metadata of the PDF files submitted by Kenya. Not so coincidentally, Kenya also had one of the largest number of comments submitted.

http://notes2self.net/archive/2007/06/22/quot-there-is-no-reason-to-be-browbeaten-into-thinking-that-there-should-only-be-one-document-format-quot.aspx [notes2self.net]

Re:How is IBM subverting the process?

[gnasher719]

Two IBM employees are listed in the authors metadata of the PDF files submitted by Kenya. Not so coincidentally, Kenya also had one of the largest number of comments submitted.

The problem that Microsoft has is that their OOXML "Standard" is a big piece of garbage. It should never have been fast-tracked by ECMA: Fast-tracking is for proposals that are already de-facto standards, widely used and known to work, that just need to be signed off, not for a 6,000 page document that has been put together in a hurry, without any checks from the outside, without any discussion of its merits, full and full and full of errors, mistakes and undesirable features.

Microsoft should never have submitted this. ECMA should never have accepted it. If IBM does everything they can to prevent this standard from happening, they are doing the world a huge favour.

Re:It's about the public good as well.

[fritsd]

Everybody who cares to look already knows that ODF is about IBM's business AND the pubic good.

Yeah, but.. " Microsoft executives have accused the rest of the world of leading the campaign against their initiative to have Office Open XML approved by the International Organization for Standardization. " doesn't have the right spin.

I've downloaded and looked at the MSOOXML spec and I thought it was some kind of insult. I seriously invite everyone who has ever read a spec, and who still doubts how bad this one really is, to download the 38 Mb PDF file from .. oh wait.. it's not there anymore.. now probably from ECMA-376 [ecma-international.org] and you probably want the ZIP file "ECMA-376 part 4" (warning, 32 Mb) and also get the 2000+ pages of errata from ECMA which the countries have to read in the next 2 weeks before they get to have a final vote at the ballot resolution meeting.

You want the file titled "Office Open XML Part 4 - Markup Language Reference.pdf".

A copy of the 2200 page PDF file of criticisms can be downloaded from here [itn.liu.se].

Frankly, you can get a good laugh out of all the stuff about 1900 and 1904 date systems (response 43, I quote CH-0007

"Software bugs should be fixed, not exported by ISO standards to the programs of competitors."

) and the mathematically wrong CEILING function (response 30 p. 121),

But I believe this is the one "killer question" that the BRM should consider discussing for those 5 days: Response 31 on p. 122 (211) to questions BE-0001, CH-0013, CL-0001, DE-0119, KR-0001, NZ-0003, PE-0010, ZA-0003

Basically, AFAIK, the comments are "We already have ODF, why do we need OOXML?" and the proposed solutions are of the gist "Develop OOXML starting from ODF". This is ECMA's response:

Proposed Disposition

There are currently several XML-based document formats in use, each designed to address a different set of goals or requirements. These include ISO/IEC IS 26300 (ODF), China's UOF, and ECMA-376 (DIS 29500 Open XML). All these formats have numerous implementations in multiple tools and multiple platforms (Linux, Windows, Mac OS, hand-held devices).

The Ecma Response Document from the Fast Track 30-Day contradiction phase for DIS29500 addressed the question of harmonization by explaining the differences between the ODF and Open XML formats as follows:

"... one must recognize that creating a single "merged" format to address the user requirements of both ODF and OpenXML is a much more difficult goal--one that is hindered by fundamental obstacles comparable to what one might encounter while merging HTML and ODF or HTML and PDF. This is because of sheer difference of scope, feature and architecture. Ecma believes that one format cannot simultaneously meet the requirements that would come from the merge of the two formats and the stringent requirements of backward compatibility that drive the design of OpenXML.

First, while both formats share the high-level goal, to represent documents, presentations, and spreadsheets in XML, their low-level goals differ fundamentally. OpenXML is designed to represent the existing corpus of documents faithfully, even if that means preserving idiosyncrasies that one might not choose given the luxury of starting from a clean slate. In the ODF design, compatibility with and preservation of existing Office documents were not goals. Each set of goals is valuable; sacrificing either at the expense of the other may not be in the best interest of users.

Second, the resulting differences are not merely variances in scope that could be resolved by adding capabilities to one or the other. They are structural and architectural in nature

Re:Microsoft is to blame

[ozmanjusri]

Apparently the spreadsheet spec says nothing about how formulaes are supposed to work for example.

Stop spreading this FUD.

Microsoft introduced it way back in 2006, and it was debunked [openmalaysiablog.com] immediately.

There's only one side fighting dirty. Microsoft keeps trying to spin this as though it's evil competitors trying to hurt poor little MS.

It's not.

It's Microsoft fighting its own customers desire for free formats. Competitors don't pay monopoly rents for locked in products. Customers do, and Microsoft wants to keep it that way.

Re:Very Unprofessional

[ozmanjusri]

Who caught them?

A lot of people.

Finland's EFFI [effi.org] demonstrated the overall level of vote-buying with their analysis of corruption levels in P countries.

Both the FFI [ffii.org] and IBM rep present at the Swedish meeting protested about the vote stacking there.

In Portugal it was the Sun and IBM reps who lodged complaints because they were denied a vote due to a "lack of chairs".

Everywhere you look there have been a litany of complaints about vote stacking and rigging of committees.

Re:IBM Does This! Intelligently, using Open Source

[Bert64]

"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few"...

IBM's actions benefit many, while Microsoft's actions benefit few. You can't expect corporations to behave like charities, IBM's actions are better than most.

Taken to it's ultimate conclusion, consider the end result of IBM's action:

All software people use day to day is free, and some help can be obtained online for free.
For everything you might want to do, there is a choice of applications which all interoperate using standard formats.
For businesses who want accountability and someone they can demand immediate help from, there are still consultancy services but they are now capable of providing more complete support (code fixes etc).

Home users would get software included when they bought a computer, and would get it supported by geeky friends/family, just like they do now... they would get a much larger selection of software included tho, and be able to install newer versions (or have the geeky friends do it) for free. The customer would get a lot more for their money, and have a choice of software just like they currently have a choice of hardware.
Companies selling computers would still provide support to their customers, just like they do now.

Microsoft are the only ones who would lose out. Unless you receive money from Microsoft, it's almost certainly in you're interest to support IBM's actions.

Re:IBM Does This! Intelligently, using Open Source

[ericferris]

I wasn't there, so I have to take the word of other people. But none of the historians I read have ever written about tabulating machines in the equipment that was seized in the extermination camps' offices. Black's book dissolved after the threat of a defamation lawsuit.