Opening up Office
Good old Microsoft, the People’s Friend!
Computerworld reports today that the Seattle leviathan is to open its formats so that anybody can develop an application to read or write Office documents.
Well, not quite.
It’s all very well to release formats, but that’s of limited use if they’re still holding the patent.
Developing an application to read or write a document in Office format is in violation of Microsoft patents. In New Zealand, Australia, the European Union and the USA Microsoft has filed patent applications over the past two years covering the storage of completely formatted word processing documents in XML.
But Open Office has, for at least five or so years (originally as Star Office) been storing it’s documents in XML. Watch out for another a legal battle between Microsoft and Sun Microsystems, the owner of Open Office.
I am sure Microsoft will make licenses to use the patent available to ‘bona fide’ developers. They just won’t be able to use any of that nasty Open Source software at the same time (it supports terrorism don’t you know 
).
Government Computer News reports:
Andy Updegrove, a partner in the legal firm Gesmer Updegrove LLP in Boston and editor of the ConsortiumInfo.org blog, noted that earlier Microsoft licensing of its XML formats, though free, could obligate users of the format to seek permission from Microsoft to use the specification. This obligation could clash with the GNU General Public License, the license used by open-source developers.
The European Union has been putting the squeeze on Microsoft over it’s monopolistic practices. Microsoft’s move is progress of sort, but it is only responding to pressure and will be worth nothing as long as they don’t give up the patent. Unless it hands over *control* of the Office formats to an independent body, every other developer will always be playing catchup.
Watch out for the license to be published here some time Wednesday US time.
November 23rd, 2005 at 5:56 pm
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
November 23rd, 2005 at 6:42 pm
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.
November 23rd, 2005 at 6:43 pm
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!
November 23rd, 2005 at 6:45 pm
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?
November 23rd, 2005 at 7:36 pm
Clara - its true!
http://www.rodneyhide.com/index.php/weblog/linux/
November 23rd, 2005 at 9:18 pm
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
November 23rd, 2005 at 9:49 pm
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.”
November 24th, 2005 at 12:29 pm
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
November 24th, 2005 at 12:52 pm
“Embrace, Extend, Eliminate…”
Or just Embrace and Extend. That’s how they ruined CSS.
November 24th, 2005 at 8:00 pm
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)