Microsoft guns Open XML onto ISO fast track
,----[ Quote ]
| Rajchel wrote that she decided to move Open XML forward after consulting
| with staff at the International Technology Task Force. She did not
| mention that the 6,000-page proposal, submitted by another standards
| body, Ecma International, had garnered comments and criticism from 20
| out of the 30 countries sitting on the JTC-1 committee.
`----
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9012860&intsrc=news_ts_head
I wonder how many threats/briberies are going on there.
Related:
Q&A: Former Mass. CIO feels 'bittersweet pride' after battles with Microsoft,
legislature
,----[ Quote ]
| As CIO of Massachusetts from February to November last year, Louis
| Gutierrez had to endure most of the brunt of Microsoft Corp.'s political
| wrath over a state policy calling for the adoption of the Open Document
| Format for Office Applications, or ODF -- a rival to the software vendor's
| Office Open XML file format.
|
| [...]
|
| Do you see any reason for there to be two standards? If you were
| starting blank-slate, there certainly would not be value to creating
| two separate standards. Over time, it has sometimes been useful to
| have the competition of two standards to keep both sides honest.
| But I don't see particular value in the long-term co-existence of
| two separate standards.
`----
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9012760&source=rss_news50
>From the previous CIO....
,----[ Quote ]
| Quinn: Almost to a person, to anybody involved or who knows about
| the ODF issue, they attributed the story to Microsoft, right, wrong
| or otherwise. Senator Pacheco may be a bully but I do not believe he
| is disingenious and would stoop to such a tactic. Senator Pacheco and
| Secretary Galvin's office remain very heavily influenced by the
| Microsoft money and its lobbyist machine, as witnessed by their
| playbook and words, in my opinion.
|
| Quinn: I believe that the ODF decision will stand. I believe MS
| will continue to do anything and everything it can to stop it. And I
| know my seat wasn't even empty and they (MS) took another shot at
| the title, to no avail. This horse is out of the barn and I see no
| way for it to go back in. Remember, all we are asking for was and is
| for Microsoft to commit to open and the standards process; so
| everyone looks really bad if the plug gets pulled at this juncture.
`----
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060119232859729
MA Governor-Elect Names MS Anti-ODF Lobbyist to Technology Advisory Group
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20061128161343183
The Sorry State of Massachusetts
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=2006111603531029
Microsoft offers schools in Mass. free software (to stop ODF adoption)
http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-6090196.html?part=rss&tag=6090196&subj=news
Microsoft plays Massachusetts Senate card
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=32515
Politics and tech companies: follow the money
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061110-8194.html
Years of deadlock on EU patent bring some new thinking
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/08/business/patents.php
,----[ Quote ]
| "A source that deals with the company said unofficially that Gates
| proposed Microsoft's Digital Rights Management technology as a national
| standard to fight piracy at the governmental level."
`----
http://www.kommersant.com/p719683/r_528/
Leaked letter warns of open source 'threat to eco-system'
http://www.techworld.com/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=7109
Study: open source needs official support; Lobbyist disagrees with "flawed"
conclusions
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061017-8011.html
Report Says Nonprofits Sold Influence to Abramoff
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/12/AR2006101200889.html
Open Source Foes In Bed With Abramoff
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/12/2036223&from=rss
EU official joins consultancy serving Microsoft
http://today.reuters.com/news/articleinvesting.aspx?view=CN&storyID=2006-10-03T134311Z_01_L03693228_RTRIDST_0_TECH-MICROSOFT-OFFICIAL.XML&rpc=66&type=qcna
US ambassador to the EU was former Microsoft lobbyist
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34706
US politicians go to bat for Microsoft
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/26/microsoft_eu_political_lobbying/
Changing the Report, After the Vote
http://insidehighered.com/news/2006/09/01/commission
When is a standard not a standard?
,----[ Quote ]
| OOXML's method of dealing with the problem in effect locks out
| all applications that are not Microsoft Office, whereas ODF's
| method keeps the standard vendor neutral and usable by any
| office suite
`----
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/node/2110
Microsoft playing three card monte with XML conversion
,----[ Quote ]
| Gary Edwards of the Open Document Foundation, a leading member
| of its technical committee, says Microsoft is playing proprietary
| games aimed at controlling XML file formats and preventing the
| Open Document Format from gaining a foothold.
`----
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=959
Is Open XML a one way specification for most people?
,----[ Quote ]
| Who will implement Open XML correctly and fully? Maybe Microsoft.
| Why? Since it is essentially a dump into XML of all the data
| needed for all the functionality of their Office products and
| since those products are proprietary, only they will understand
| any nuances that go beyond the spec. The spec may illuminate
| some of the mistakes that have been made and are now being
| written into a so called standard for all to have to implement,
| but I'm guessing there might be a few other shades of meaning
| that will not be clear. Fully and correctly implementing Open
| XML will require the cloning of a large portion of Microsoft's
| product. Best of luck doing that, especially since they have
| over a decade head start. Also, since they have avoided using
| industry standards like SVG and MathML, you'll have to
| reimplement Microsoft's flavor of many things. You had
| better start now. So therefore I conclude that while Microsoft
| may end up supporting most of Open XML (and we'll have to
| see the final products to see how much and how correctly),
| other products will likely only end up supporting a subset.
`----
http://sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=1145
Is Office Open XML A One-Way Standard? Ask Microsoft
,----[ Quote ]
| Way back in October, Bob Sutor, IBM's open standards guru, wrote
| a piece on his blog where he described the Office Open XML
| standard as a one way standard, because the format is so complex
| and so geared towards compatibility with legacy Office compatibility
| that it could never be implemented as a fully functional file format
| by any competing personal productivity applications (PPAs) like
| WordPerfect and OpenOffice. I agree with a lot of his points but
| didn't feel compelled to write about it since the issue had been
| covered pretty comprehensively in the blogosphere.
`----
http://blogs.adobe.com/shebanation/2006/12/open_xml_one-way.html
Signs That Your "Open Standard" May Not Be Open Enough
,----[ Quote ]
| If OOXML is an open standard, why must Mac MS Office users wait so
| long for OOXML support? Correct me if I am wrong, but MS Office on
| the Mac is developed by Microsoft themselves, how is it that the
| Windows Office development team had access to the OOXML specification
| but the Mac Office team did not?
|
| [...]
|
| Microsoft's ECMA submission comprised more than 6,000 pages. The
| challenge of plowing through so much could drag out
| approval by ISO. (ODF's submission was less than 700 pages.)
|
| [...]
|
| So, while Microsoft's own developers struggle to comprehend and
| implement their own proposed "standard" file format, perhaps Mac
| MS Office customers can use Novell OpenOffice for their Windows MS
| Office compatibility needs.
`----
http://boycottnovell.com/2006/12/07/signs-that-your-open-standard-may-not-be-open-enough/
Novell's "Danaergeschenk", by Georg Greve
,----[ Quote ]
| So in the case of OpenXML, Microsoft now seems to be using Novell to
| put a pro forma implementation of OpenXML into OpenOffice.org, which
| will make it easier to migrate from OpenOffice.org to Microsoft
| Office but can never be sufficient to read all Microsoft Word Documents.
|
| One reason for this is the sheer size of the implementation; another
| reason relates to the containers used within OpenXML, which make use
| of Microsoft's proprietary implementations instead of industry
| standards such as SVG. Moreover, there is really no knowing what
| kind of hooks Microsoft has put into the specification that people
| will not detect at first reading. Indeed, it is quite possible
| that OpenXML will allow what Bruce Perens refers to as "Predatory
| Pratices" in his definition of an Open Standard.
|
| And while there will be a migration path from OpenOffice.org to
| Microsoft Office, Microsoft avoids opening the inverse path to
| any other ODF-compliant Office program, by neglecting ODF support
| in Microsoft Office.
|
| [...]
|
| Bob Sutor, IBM's Vice President of Standards and Open Source has
| written a good analysis why the specification is more akin to a
| denial of service attack than an Open Standard. OpenXML
| basically represents a change of strategy: Instead of trying
| to hide information by not telling anything about their products
| to anyone, they've apparently now switched to hiding information
| in noise, which is by far the more effective method.
`----
http://groklaw.net/article.php?story=20061208135621706
Sun slams Ecma's OpenXML OK
,----[ Quote ]
| "Make sure you follow how well the Novell and Corel implementations
| do," he wrote. "If they falter, watch out for those who try to blame
| those companies or open source itself, when the root of the problem
| may be with the Microsoft Office OpenXML spec in the first place."
`----
http://www.itweek.co.uk/itweek/news/2170681/sun-slams-ecma-openxml-ok
The Way Forward -- Georg Greve Responds to Groklaw's Comments
,----[ Quote ]
| Make no mistake: the choice isn't between being able to interoperate
| with Microsoft, thanks to Novell doing interoperability work for
| them, or being stuck in some ODF ghetto, unable to read Microsoft
| documents. Everyone wants to interoperate. The question is how.
| The problem is Microsoft. The solution lies with Microsoft. They
| need to get with the program and follow standards like everyone
| else, instead of insisting the world bend to their ways.
|
| It's not normal or acceptable that we can't all freely share
| documents with one another, no matter what operating system we
| like to use. We can send each other email, even if you are on
| Windows and I'm on Linux. Why isn't that the norm for
| everything? It ought to be. The bottleneck is Microsoft. FOSS
| software is happy to interoperate with any other software. Why
| won't Microsoft?
`----
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20061212025314700#comments
|
|
