Microsoft Believes IBM Masterminded Anti-OOXML Initiative 274
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."'"
Wait (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
After all the revelations of Microsoft's attempts to poison the standards process by buying votes, to accuse someone else of some dirty campaign is so hypocritical and immoral that one has to stand in awe of the kind of twisted mind that could produce it.
I thought only SCO's pathetic supporters with their claims that Groklaw was an IBM front were this warped, but Microsoft, congrats, you've produced the same specimen of irony-meter destroying beastling.
You belive about others... (Score:5, Insightful)
Pot calling the kettle black (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, we've seen plenty of stories right here on Slashdot about Microsoft trying to buy the vote. Sweden comes to mind. And frankly, you can't call it lobbying when all you are doing is pointing out that Microsoft's "open" format is not actually open.
Single handedly? (Score:2, Insightful)
how dare they?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft is to blame (Score:4, Insightful)
Love this guy's title (Score:4, Insightful)
If it wasn't for their 'IP policy,' we wouldn't have half the problems we do with 'interoperability.'
Microsoft is crying like a little baby? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is crying about this, this is not fair?
Are they... losing this battle? Is this their last defence?
I sure hope so!
Not incredibly dumb astroturfing? (Score:5, Insightful)
In this post [slashdot.org] and the posts above and below it I have an interesting discussion with someone who says essentially the same thing.
Personally, when it comes down to it, I don't care who is behind the standard as long as the standard meets certain *ahem* standards. Mainly I want inter-operable implementations from more than one vendor, and I would like at least one implementation that's fully Open Source and considered the reference implementation.
ODF meets all of those requirements. OOXML meets none of them. I don't think even Microsoft could make an implementation of OOXML in a clean room without using any of their other source code.
So, I care not one whit for the political machinations behind it all. All I care about is having a standard that's really a standard. Putting the political machinations to the fore is a mistake, and Microsoft is trying to capitalize on that to create a smokescreen that obscures the real issue, which is that their 'standard' is awful and unimplementable.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
If it wasn't for these things, it's quite possible that OOXML, a group of file formats which no one without in-depth knowledge of Microsoft's older proprietary formats could hope to implement on an independent document platform, would have got ISO certification, and the next time some government decided "We must use only open document formats", Microsoft would walk up with Office 2007 or whatever comes next, with a file format which in fact would continue to chain said government to Microsoft software, and probably get away with it.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Wha?
He accuses IBM of voting against OOXML in ECMA and of lobbying national bodies to vote against it in ISO.
Do I think that IBM did that? Of course.
Would I categorize that as unethical behaviour? Not on your life! I think those are perfectly legitimate actions, and I'm glad IBM took them.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Voting for or against something is actually the important part of holding a vote.
Lobbying national bodies is the standard for attempting to have your products considered.
Both Microsoft and IBM did these things, so why is Microsoft whining about them when they stepped over some lines on this subject and IBM didn't.
Rephrased.. (Score:5, Insightful)
This should be a highly political debate - otherwise we encourage our Governments/Schools to continue to waste our taxes. If Microsoft didn't lobby such institutions then it would not be a political debate.
Calling Free Software a religious movement is a dubious and cheap slur against a movement.
Classic FUD.
Re:Microsoft is to blame (Score:5, Insightful)
FTA:
"Let's be very clear," Paoli said. "It has been fostered by a single company -- IBM. If it was not for IBM, it would have been business as usual for this standard."
Business as usual? With all the corruption we've seen on the process, business as usual seems kinda sucky for the people when left in the hands of Microsoft.
Re:Wait (Score:2, Insightful)
Ad Hominem is a logical fallacy.
RTFA. All the way to the bottom. (Score:3, Insightful)
There you have it folks. No more discussion required and everyone who's defending Microsoft is welcome to leave apologies as replies! This is just more of them using money to try to brand their software as some sort of open standard when it isn't.
The Mexican Experience and "The Linux Enemy" (Score:3, Insightful)
I can tell you now that IBM had nothing to do with it. Its just that many smaller foss vendors see in microsoft's initative a way to further their bussiness model in detriment of ours. We are consulting shops, we live on services and providing added value around them and open source software. To have a patent encumbered iso standard that can only be safely and completely supported by one software vendors not only hurts us, it hurts all of our client's choices in the market.
We dont mind integrating MS products in solutions, when it makes sense. Microsoft wants things done their way, weather it makes sense for the client or not. I find this unacceptable as the market is quite capable of providing good alternatives for microsoft software and fileformats and just letting the dominant set their own standard as a public one, with strings attached, hurts customer choice. The customer would be much better if microsoft simply supported ODF in their products. This way they can compete with their (yes, i do mean this) SUPPERB office product on the basis of it being better, not on the basis of them having a monopoly.
Its interesting to see how microsoft has been searching for "the linux enemy". One guy or company that, if they manage to hurt, theyd be hurting the whole movement to the point of crippling it. This year their "linux enemy" is IBM, who is in a great position to benefit themselves from FOSS (being that they are the earlyest of the high end and rich adopters of foss). But they dont get it.
Even if IBM signed in blood tomorrow to use exclusively microsoft software, that would not have changed things on our ISO vote. Microsoft is hurting US, not IBM. US: smaller companies providing consulting without having to give anyone a dime for essentially nothing (which is the current microsoft-owned IT bussiness model). US, who have invested in developing a FOSS expertiese so that we can leverage its cost advantage in front of a microsoft dominated, license driven market.
Perhaps things have gone so far for microsoft, that they dont realize that taking on opensource is not taking on sun or ibm, its taking on US. Thousends and thousends of engineers and entrepreneurs that are opinion leaders when it comes to technology supplies, that are choosing NOT to pay the microsoft tax when it comes to deliverance of IT products and services.
And US thousends have both the numbers and the technicall expertiese to determine where and how their bloated ooxml turns into a useless piece of (insert your own insulting language here) xml , when compared to the ODF standard that has already much more time in development and real world testing. I mean, its THERE its already working, its already dominant in the non-ms industry (meaning all office suites from larger vendors support it). The cost for MS tu support it is really close to nil, while the cost of all the rest of the market to support microsoft's format would be much more. If overall cost for the industry is any kind of meassure, then iso support for OOXML is just plain stupid.
So no, Microsoft, its not "IBM". Its everyone in the world that does not live or want to live on your products and shady bussiness practices.
Competition Knocks (Score:3, Insightful)
But until Microsoft can complain about evidence that IBM is competing with Microsoft illegally, or even actually unethically (as Microsoft has routinely been demonstrated to do), this just shows that Microsoft can't compete on a level playing field. Which of course is exactly why Microsoft needs to get OOXML installed, before it's too late.
MS supports ODF??? (Score:3, Insightful)
The only way that this could be true is if MS's OOXML format somehow locked out competitors in the consulting services industry. Hmmm... Is MS not arguing for the dropping of OOXML? It sure sounds like it.
Ghandi (Score:3, Insightful)
-- Mahatma Ghandi
So, we're definitely in the third phase now...
"Hey, Microsoft. You fight like a girl!"
This is about muddy waters (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not incredibly dumb astroturfing? (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that the OOXML standard originates from a single proprietary vendor with no input from outside sources until it's about to be released to the public as the new version of MSOffice.
If they want to be a standard, they have to use the current implementation until the standards body creates a new version.
Does anyone here think that MSOffice 2009 is going to wait until a standards body comes out with a new revision of OOXML?
Re:Microsoft is to blame (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft is to blame (Score:3, Insightful)
For any government to adopt it as a document standard is clearly corrupt as it is specifically and actively forcing every other company to waste money to achieve compatibility, as well as forcing every citizen who wants full access to exchange information to also pay an additional cost.
It is never corrupt when by far the majority are pursuing an equal and equitable goal and one company, in fact one company amongst millions of companies, is pursuing nothing but greed, control, and a means by which it can profit with each and every exchange of data on the face of the planet.
M$ has proven itself to be nothing but destructive when it has come to implementing any of the digital standards it has been involved in, it would be utter craziness to have a standard that M$ and only M$ has total and utter control of.
Payback (Score:2, Insightful)
How often has MS done it to others. They did it to Borland, WordPerfect Corp, Novell, the Lotus people, the DB can't remember their name people, and yes to IBM.
"DOS is not done 'till 1-2-3 won't run" was the saying it those days.
Re:Microsoft is to blame (Score:4, Insightful)