Yes, this was inevitable. First it was Linux, which threatened Windows and now it’s OpenDocument, which threatens Microsoft’s biggest cash cow—Microsoft Office. Disinformation is yet again used as a weapon and Novell is the ammunition.

Just published:

This study is a fact-based analysis of the emerging open document standards, Open XML and ODF.

Groklaw has already commented on this ‘study’: “PJ: Jungle drums tell me that Microsoft is spreading this odd report around. Why wouldn’t it, when it includes hilarious sentences like this first one I’ve chosen? ODF, just to explain, is already an ISO standard. Open XML is not. Also notice the big “if” and then how they make use of the deal with Novell. Novell, Novell, what were you thinking? Not about ODF, obviously.”.

To add some context, IDC has served Microsoft with grossly biased reports in the past. Just months ago there was this:

The study, conducted by research firm IDC and commissioned by Microsoft, said Windows Vista will be installed on over 30 million personal computers in Denmark, France, Germany, Poland, Spain and United Kingdom within the first year of shipment.

Also covered here: IDC pronounces Linux unimportant to European economy

Need we even go back in time and find similar work by Microsoft-funded pressure groups and astroturfing?

In 2001, the Los Angeles Times accused Microsoft of astroturfing when hundreds of similar letters were sent to newspapers voicing disagreement with the United States Department of Justice and its antitrust suit against Microsoft. The letters, prepared by Americans for Technology Leadership, had in some cases been mailed from deceased citizens or nonexistent addresses.

How about this recent tidbit: “Bill Gates lends cash to buy newspapers – $350 million to MediaNews”?

I would like to quote two recent articles from the most reliable source there is on that matter.

Article #1

MA Governor-Elect Names MS Anti-ODF Lobbyist to Technology Advisory Group

That person is Brian Burke, the Microsoft Regional Director for Public Affairs, and if that surprises you, it surprises me as well, given the degree of acrimonious debate and disinformation witnessed in Massachusetts over the last 15 months involving the Information Technology Division’s transition to ODF…. it is my understanding that it was Burke who led the lobbying effort on Beacon Hill against ODF, and also urged legislators to introduce the amendment intended to take away much of the ITD’s planning power generally, and as regards standards specifically, and hand it to a task force made up of political appointees…. Although I’m told that Burke announced yesterday at the first meeting of the new working group that he will be participating as a private citizen rather than a Microsoft employee, I believe that Burke should recuse himself from participating in any discussions or recommendations relating to document format standards.

Article #2

ComputerWorld Documents Microsoft’s Lobbying in Massachusetts

The article goes on to describe the back-channel negotiations between State CIO Louis Gutierrez and Microsoft’s Alan Yates, and the way that Microsoft played the lobbying card throughout those discussions

Additional resources:

• Open Source Foes In Bed With Abramoff
• Microsoft plays Massachusetts Senate card
• Politics and tech companies: follow the money

Other recent cases of Microsoft lobbying:

• Changing the Report, After the Vote
• US politicians go to bat for Microsoft
• US ambassador to the EU was former Microsoft lobbyist
• EU official joins consultancy serving Microsoft
• Report Says Nonprofits Sold Influence to Abramoff
• Years of deadlock on EU patent bring some new thinking

As Shane recently pointed out, Novell is heading toward South Africa where it will confront resistance to its foolish moves. Tectonic has some more details which complement the full schedule.

As a quick reminder, a principal IT chief vowed to extricate Novell products and it seems evident that South Africans are leaning toward Ubuntu, which works in Canonical’s favour. Mark Shuttleworth is, after all, South African. Novell may have given the excuse to many who were looking for SuSE/SUSE/SLED/SLES/Opensuse alternatives. They are the victim of their own tactlessness.

Wake-up call of the day

This one has just been published in PCWorld:

“Microsoft tacitly notified other players in commercialized open source that Microsoft sets the rules for Windows interoperability from now on”

Chilling statement of the day:

There are many contenders, but let us pick foolish statements like
“open-source backers don’t understand the software business“. There were other people who selfishly sought to please their own interests and support their businesses, integrity aside.

A misinformed & self-serving perspective from a pro-Microsoft figure has just been published by CNET [rel="nofollow"]. It should very well demonstare why you must boycott Novell.

The days of kumbaya, where vendors are locked arm in arm singing open-source love songs to “grow the market” through co-opetition are over.

Comments in this article prove it to be flamebait, but judge this for yourselves. Don’t let it make you angry. Instead, remember that some people live in a bubble where ideas as fundamental as eCommrse become a personal property.

Related reading:

Big businesses boast of patent benefits, for small businesses

A report published by an EU task force on intellectual property claims that small businesses benefit from a patent system, despite lacking almost any participation by the small business community.

Instead, the report, titled IPR (intellectual property rights) for competitiveness and innovation, was written up almost entirely by large corporations and the patent industry.

[...]

The report does note objections from the likes of patentfrei.de and Sun Microsystems, which were recorded at some length in the report. But this does not appear to have impacted the conclusion of the report in any way

[...]

Jean-Pierre Laisne, of ObjectWeb, an open source software community, said that he found the report useless: participants were told that all their contributions would be recorded but at the end only those of Business Software Alliance and Microsoft were used.

Even opinions that came from Linux vendors were altogether ignored.

Microsoft’s Open XML format has a poisonous nature. There is little or no question about it. The highly respectable Bob Sutor explains why.

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.

Several hours ago, Novell announced, in the form of a press release, that it would support Open XML in OpenOffice. Why on earth would Novell boast about it? Is it a Microsoft press release? Just like Corel, which previously fell victim to a Microsoft deal and some time afterwards dropped WordPerfect support for GNU/Linux, Novell is helping Microsoft sabotage OpenDocument adoption. OpenDocument is the ISO standard which is recognised by various office suites.

As a result of this mishap, Microsoft will continue to offer ODF support as a semi-functional plug-in for Office 2007. Novell’s move gives backing to this loose ‘support’, despite its promise to preserve the status of ODF format. Sadly, this type of strategy has the same effect on the EU‘s antitrust ruling.

This is by no means shocking anymore. Not so long ago, Novell carried a joint full page advert in the UK Financial Times (paid for by Microsoft), which boasted patent protection (in a country where such patents are illegal). This leads to confusions and develops Linux misconceptions/myths, which Microsoft tried to encourage and reinforce.

Thank you, Novell, for helping Microsoft control and manipulate a standard while changing public perception. In other news, Novell continues with the ‘chair shuffle’. I can only imagine, based on several such stories, that they have been losing some staff recently. They are quite likely in the process or reorganisation amid the departure of betrayed developers and angry customers.

Here is a quote-worthy statement from Groklaw regarding an interview with Novell’s marketing VP:

Linux Action Show has an interview with Novell VP for Marketing Justin Steinman, who talks about the deal. He says some interesting things. One thing he says is the Novell has noted that the deal for non-compensated developers (he calls them “hobbyists”) should be irrevocable, and Microsoft is “willing to talk about it.” Of course, that isn’t the real problem. The real problem is distribution and sharing and the apparent acknowledgement of some unknowable Microsoft “IP” — whatever that is. What about the compensated developers?…