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)
Microsoft is to blame (Score:4, Insightful)
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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.
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Re:Microsoft is to blame (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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
Re:Microsoft is to blame (Score:4, Insightful)
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!
Very Unprofessional (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyhow, not that it matters, but the truth seems to be the latter. Several groups and entities were opposed to OOXML, including many FOSS organizations like the FSF. And also IBM. Given IBM's money, perhaps it acted more than the others, I have no idea. If IBM did anything underhanded or unethical, then that would be very wrong, regardless of the worthiness of the goal. But, as it happens, Microsoft was caught buying votes, not IBM, so these accusations of Microsoft's are just ridiculous.
Re:Very Unprofessional (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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I guess Ballmer had paid them a visit.
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.
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Especially if it's coming from apparent worshipers of Mammon.
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Ad Hominem is a logical fallacy.
Godwin's Law (Score:3, Funny)
This is about muddy waters (Score:3, Insightful)
Pity the poor little Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
Anyone else think that this sounds like whining?
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IBM Does This! Intelligently, using Open Source! (Score:5, Interesting)
So how do you destroy a competitor, legally, soaking up goodwill from the programmer community all the while? Commodify your Competition's Product! Sun was pushing Java big-time for awhile. So why would IBM help it by funding Eclipse? Because by doing so, they commodify Java development environments, eliminating a potential revenue stream for Sun. Eclipse is a weapon against Sun! Why do you think they named it "Eclipse!?" What does an Eclipse do?
It's one thing to pull dirty tricks. It's another thing to be able to pull dirty tricks on the dirty tricksters. It's yet again another thing to do all that, and win the goodwill of the community at the same time! So, by opposing OOXML, IBM is hurting Microsoft, opening up a potential market for consulting services (There has been a fair bit of money to be made in automated document processing for government!) and winning kudos from us Open Source community to boot.
Bravo!
Re:IBM Does This! Intelligently, using Open Source (Score:3, Informative)
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 w
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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.
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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.
You've got to give them credit for one thing: they have more nerve than a one-legged guy in an ass-kicking contest. I think my irony meter just exploded.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
I've agreed with many of your posts, but I can't agree here. I'm not saying there is a God, but I could see a God with a sense of humor keeping this guy around to make him laugh. I laughed myself to tears when I read this. With just a few tweaks, this could have been a good onion article.
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No accusations of "dirty" campaigning (Score:5, Funny)
The problem is that another company may be campaigning at all. I mean, how friggin *dare* they! Doesn't IBM know that msft has a sacred right to all PC OSes and office products?
IBM has already shown itself to have the unmitigated gall to donate IBM's own code to Linux. This prompted msft to fund caldera to file a bogus lawsuit against IBM. According to the original lawsuit, caldera owned UNIX, and therefore anything that ever touched UNIX was also owned by caldera.
Yet, it spite of being punished, IBM has still not learned their lesson. To do anything that might obstruct msft is an absolute sacrilege! Msft is understandably appalled. Msft will not accept this horrible injustice silently. Msft wants the world to know just how completely unethically IBM is behaving.
I mean, to try and compete with msft! Of all the bloody nerve
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Frankly, if the only way to stop something bad from occurring is to subvert a flawed process, I don't mind. The fact the M$ was able to buy votes the way it did is flawed enough for me, and I think most people here agree that OOXML passing would have been a Bad Thing. So no, I'm not pissed at IBM over this.
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.
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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.
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is IMB playing dirty? (Score:2)
In reality, we should be pissed at both Microsoft and IBM; they're both subverting a process that is soposed to be for the good of the consumers.
This Microsoft shill didn't provide any evidence, do you have any?
FalconHow is IBM subverting the process? (Score:2)
Care to explain exactly what IBM did to the subvert the process? Was IBM involved in ballot stuffing or bribing? Did IBM try cheat it's way into pushing a proprietary standard through the system, and calling that standard open?
According to msft, all ibm did was oppose the standard. In deverence to what msft shills may think, there is nothing improper about voicin
Re:How is IBM subverting the process? (Score:5, Informative)
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]
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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
That's all right... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:That's all right... (Score:5, Interesting)
IBM wanted a standard that allows them to mix and match their own office software, MS office software, or any other office software together as part of a larger solution based on their clients needs. They wanted it because it supports their business model, which is doing analysis of a specific businesses needs and helping them put together a complete information infrastructure.
The thing is, the reason the International Standards Body exists is to make IBMs business model practical and prevent companies from successfully operating with Microsofts business model. It doesn't do this because it has a business motive though. It does it because the people of the world value their autonomy enough to have united behind this goal.
So, basically, Microsoft are angrily accusing IBM of being good corporate citizens of the world in this particular regard.
You belive about others... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Boo freaking Hoo.... (Score:2)
Pity the Poor Masters of Spin... (Score:4, Informative)
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."
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.
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Single handedly? (Score:2, Insightful)
It's about the public good as well. (Score:2)
Re:It's about the public good as well. (Score:4, Interesting)
Quite frankly I think that the very idea of someone submitting a protocol or file format to an international standards committee without one example of a third-party implementation is ludicrous.
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That's certainly good for the public. Not necessarily so great for IBM, except that it levels the (hopefully, soon to be lower) playing field.
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Re:It's about the public good as well. (Score:5, Informative)
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
) 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:
kudos to MS (Score:3, Funny)
They could be right.. (Score:2)
just maybe..
It was me (Score:2)
Because IBM promotes everything so well... (Score:3, Funny)
Yep, I'm sure the guys who sold us all on "I just totally warped my files" would be capable of blocking a Microsoft initiative... When I think powerful and successful marketing, I know I think IBM.
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Are you serious? All three current generation consoles use chips based on IBM's Power Architecture.
The Xbox 360 [wikipedia.org] uses a PowerPC based processor.
The Wii [wikipedia.org] uses a PowerPC based processor.
The PS3 [wikipedia.org] uses a Cell processor with 1 PPE (Power Processing Element) and 7 SPEs (Synergistic Processing Elements). The Power Processing Element is based on the Power Architecture.
how dare they?? (Score:2, 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.'
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Microsoft does very little to hide that "interoperability" is something they are mostly interested in obstructing as it undermines their business model. Likely, Tsilas job as "senior director of interoperability and IP policy" is to leverage IP policy to prevent interoperability and thereby promote lock-in to MS products.
Interoperability would make MS products replaceable commodities that would have to compe
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Ummm .... (Score:2)
And what percentage of Microsoft's revenue comes from Office? Isn't this advancing the business model of Microsoft?
Does Microsoft really believe that everyone is out to get them, or are they incapable of understanding why any standard which says "do it like Word 95 did it" isn't open or implementable b
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No, they just want other people to believe that's the reason for criticism. Its called "propaganda". (Or, to use the popular euphemism, "public relations".)
What campaign? (Score:2)
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.
*Gasp!* (Score:2)
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They haven't, can't, and won't. Microsoft has never released a product that implements OOXML as it has been proposed. On top of that they've even stated that they have no intention of having their product innovation hampered by tying them to a standard. Even the one they created.
You have no idea how hard it was to type that. I was laughing WAY too hard.
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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 st
OOXML Standard (Score:2)
It is certainly possible that IBM, Sun, Google, and FSF could have played a role in leveraging ODF over OOXML, but Microsoft shot themselves in the foot with OOXML by publishing a faulty standard that was easily demonstrated to be non-standard (i.e. "implement the way Word '97 does").
Lord only knows what tactics Microsoft will use when usage of ODF is actually twice that of OOXML, and their Office Productivity Suite monopoly disappears...
He's got a point (Score:2, Funny)
Den som nämnde det han klämde det (Score:2)
Ask you local office what that means...
sigh
Who asked
Who farted
Do MS suspect they will lose the vote? (Score:2)
Why doesn't IBM listen to its Heart? (Score:2)
When CEO Squirts Ballmer dons his Love Beads and Stallman Wig[TM] and asks for Peace, Love, and Understanding, why does IBM fight a religious and political battle?
Peace out, Brothers and Sisters! We are Stardust. If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with.
cry more it's funny. (Score:2)
that's been MS's excuse for all their misdeeds of the past, that it's just business. I guess the point he is trying to make is that IBM isn't doing it to be a good guy, but frankly who cares if it prevents MS getting their hooks into a standard.
And the likes... (Score:2)
They have made this a religious and highly political debate.
Mwwhaaaaaa. Get the comfy chair!! Our quest against the non-believers must continue!
Seriously? Who actually wants to get stuck with *another* Microsoft spec that they either won't doc, honor or support. What do we fear? Could it be their history of "Embrace, Extend and Extinguish"?
"And the likes", Jeesh.
Not smart. (Score:2)
Did Themselves In (Score:2)
Microsoft (Score:2)
6000 Pages (Score:3, Interesting)
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After that, it's very harsh, and makes you cough.
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.
Very appropriate quotation at the bottom of /. (Score:2)
Proverb: "A thief believes that everyone steals."
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.
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False. ODF has the exact same sort of patent problems that OOXML does. In fact, ODF is in worse shape because Sun's IPR grant is only valid so long as Sun participates in the ODF committee.
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/ipr.php [oasis-open.org]
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.
Doesn't Matter (Score:2)
No (Score:2)
- Both are technically good (clear, easy to implement, do what they're supposed to do), and
- Neither are encumbered (patents or other royalty requirements).
If that's the case, then, while one standard might be better, two competing standards is actually just fine.
But I absolutely have to agree with your first statement: We don't want it.
I thought it was Sun? (Score:2)
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.
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Ghandi (Score:3, Insightful)
-- Mahatma Ghandi
So, we're definitely in the third phase now...
"Hey, Microsoft. You fight like a girl!"
no sir... (Score:2)
Rivals??? (Score:2)
LOL. Standards can't be "rival." They exist to level playing field and shift useless rivalry into other markets. In this case, it is to abolish file format locking to level playing field in productivity software market.
It could be IBM or ANYONE ELSE (Score:2)
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