Comments on: Opening up Office

By: imarubberducky

imarubberducky — Thu, 24 Nov 2005 07:00:05 +0000

It gets worse:
So Microsoft’s bid to open up its Office 12 data formats as international standards hasn’t really done much to sway critics. Sam Hiser, a Linux consultant whose opinion I trust, writes in his blog about a line-by-line interpretation of Microsoft’s agreement to not sue developers and others who choose to utilize these formats. The conclusion is somewhat shocking: The agreement applies only to the XML-based formats in Office 2003 and not Office 12, and since Office 12 is a full year away from release, he says that the Microsoft announcement is pure PR baloney aimed at freezing the market and dimming chances that the competing OpenDocument format will gain traction. I’d be startled to discover that was the case if, you know, Microsoft hadn’t done that kind of thing so many times in the past. In any event, Sam’s posts on this topic are good reading.
http://www.plexnex.com/

Taken from WinInfo (http://www.windowsitpro.com/windowspaulthurrott/Article/ArticleID/485 45/windowspaulthurrott_48545.html)

By: CutFoldGlue

CutFoldGlue — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 23:52:20 +0000

“Embrace, Extend, Eliminate…”

Or just Embrace and Extend. That’s how they ruined CSS.

By: bjchip

bjchip — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 23:29:33 +0000

Embrace, Extend, Eliminate…

MS has been convicted of monopoly on 2 continents and it seems to me that Gates’ secret ambition is to gain this distinction across the entire planet.

Don’t use Microstuffed, don’t pay Microstuffed.

respectfully
BJ

By: Christiaan

Christiaan — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 08:49:00 +0000

Microsoft have said they include as part of their licence a promise “not to sue”.

Check out http://consortiuminfo.org/newsblog/blog.php?ID=1761

Here’s a comment from there by J. Ruigrok van der Werven:

“It’s funny. I *work* for a university library and the example Office 12 ‘OpenXML’ files I had access to thanks to osnews.com were BINARY files. Having the byte descriptions of the file markup standardised might be all fine and dandy, but it will add NOTHING new to what we already had and were moving away from with XML, namely: ease of conversion between one format and another. Binary formats are inherently a vendor lock-in, how well described, whereas a document built up from *real* XML has this advantage (of ease of conversion, not to mention human readable). In my book it truly is about marketing and PR, nothing else.”

By: zANavAShi

zANavAShi — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 08:18:26 +0000

WOW! Rodney on Linux! Well I never

Bernard, you make a very good point there which I had overlooked. If MS were serious about supporting cross-platform compatability and Open Standards a more honest way to do it would be to add OpenDocument support to their existing filters.

I see here they are also aiming to meddle with the RSS standards:

http://www.betanews.com/article/Microsoft_Proposes_RSS_Extension/11326 87919

Hrmmmmmmm.

Oh, and I’ve been using Open Office since it’s first release and I love it. I wouldn’t go back to using MS Office again even if they paid me to

Cheers,
Z

By: Bernard Woolley

Bernard Woolley — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 06:36:34 +0000

Clara - its true!

http://www.rodneyhide.com/index.php/weblog/linux/

By: clara

clara — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 05:45:40 +0000

oh yeah, and I heard a rumour that Rodney Hide runs an OS OS, perhaps he could team up with Greens on an OSOS initiative?

By: clara

clara — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 05:43:10 +0000

I quite like that while Open Office (I run an UBUNTU OS which I highly recommend) can save files in .doc .xls and other MS formats the “free” Microsoft OS I got with my laptop, which contains cheap alternatives to its own Office products, cannot guarantee that it is compatible with its own formats e.g. it cannot guarantee compatibility between MS spreadsheet and MS Excel, now that’s service!

By: Bernard Woolley

Bernard Woolley — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 05:42:59 +0000

Its actually a typical Microsoft tactic. They are currently being threatened by the truely open format developed by OASIS members - the set of OpenDocument formats. MSFT has drawn stick from many quarters, and this is their half-hearted attempt to suck the market it and draw attention away from OpenDocument. The concern I’d have with MSFT is that the standardisation of their formats will take 18 months or so, whilst OD is here, now. MSFT could have just added OD read/write filters to Office - but no, they have to go and promote their own standard. Something is definitely fishy here.

By: zANavAShi

zANavAShi — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 04:56:03 +0000

Hiya Frog and all you loverly Green peeps,

I’ve been lurking here for so many months it’s about time I stopped being such a wimp and contributed

I was reading about this over at BetaNews today and although it seems like a step in the right direction for them it reeks of just another marketing strategy to prevent loosing customers. Doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.

I don’t think it is really addressing the underlying issue, which is that all documents which are related to government, education, news, internet and information should be based upon truly Open Source standards which are totally indpendent of any corporate interest.

This has already been wisely debated here…
http://blog.greens.org.nz/index.php/2005/10/26/bill-gates-works-for-th e-nbr/
….so I’ll just chime in to say that in my opinion Open Source standards are critical for a free democratic society and a hatip to Nandor for bringing the Open Source debate to the fore.

Cheers
Z