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INTERVIEW: Craig Mundie -- Microsoft's technology chief, taking over from Bill Gates - 0 views

www.apcmag.com/...logy_chief_taking_over_from_bi cdf odf officeopenxml ooxml opendocument
shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • In this exclusive interview with APC, Mundie says the notion of all software delivered entirely through the web browser is now widely recognised as being 'popular mythology'. He also stakes the claim that Google's existence and success was contingent on Microsoft creating Windows. He talks about what's coming down the pipeline for future versions of Windows, and his belief that Windows can get still more market share than it has today. He also discusses the issues around the recent controversy over the Office Open XML file format.
  • So Vista is in its diffusion cycle and until there is enough of it out there, you won't really see the developer community come across.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
       
      Uh, the diffusion we really should be focused on involves the OOXML plug-in for MSOffice, IE 7.0, MSOffice 2007, and the Exchange/SharePoint Hub. 

      The Exchange/SahrePoint juggernaught is now at 65% marketshare, with Apache servers in noticeable decline.

      So it seems the improtant "diffusion" is going forward nicely.  The exploitation of the E/S Hub has also started, and here the Microsoft deelopers have an uncahllenged advantage.  Most of the business processes being migrated to the E/S Hub are coming off the MSOffice bound desktop.  Outsiders to the MS Stack do not have the requisite access to the internals that drive these MSOffice bound business processes, so they have little hope of getting into the "exploitation" cycle.

      This aspect was on full display at the recent Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.  The only way a O2 provider can position their service as a collaborative addon to existing business processes is to have some higher level of interop-integration into those processes beyond basic conversion to HTML.

      Most O2 operatives struggle to convince the market that an existing business process can be enhanced by stepping outside the process and putting the collaboration value elsewhere.  While this approach is disruptive and unfriendly, it tends to work until a more integrated, more interoperable coolaboration value becomes available.

      And that's the problem with O2.  Everyone is excited over the new collaboration possibilities, but the money is with the integration of collaborative computing into existing business processes.  This is a near impossible barrier for non Microsoft shops and would be competitors.  If you're Microsoft though, and you control existing formats, applications and processes, the collaboration stuff is simple value added on.  It's all low hanging fruit that Microsoft can get paid to deliver while O2 players struggle to f
  • So far, we have delivered about 60 million copies. That would represent about six per cent of the global Windows install base. So it has probably got to get up another few percentage points before you will start to see a big migration of the developer community.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
       
      What is he talking about? Does a developer write to Vista? Or do they write to MS Stack ready .NET - OOXML-Smart Documents, XAML, Silverlight stuff?
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Rather, what will happen is that you'll have, a seamless integration of locally running software in increasingly powerful client devices (not just desktops) and a set of services that work in conjunction with that. A lot of what we are doing with the Live platform not only allows us to provide the service component for our parts, but also gives the abilities for the developer community to perfect their composite applications and get them deployed at scale.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
       
      Bear in mind that these "service components" are proprietary, and represent the only way to connect MS clients to the rest of the MS STack of applications.
  • Microsoft's business is not to control the platform per se, but in fact to allow it to be exploited by the world's developers. The fact that we have it out there gives us a good business, but in some ways it doesn't give us an advantage over any of the other developers in terms of being able to utilise it.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
       
      Oh right! The anti trust restrictions will not be lifted until November. Have to be careful here. But how is it Craig that non Microsoft devlopers and service providers will be albe to access and interoperate with important "service components"?
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    Great inteview, i'll comment as i make my way down the page.  Hopefully others will do the same.
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Lotus Symphony gets some OOXML support : News : Software - ZDNet Asia - 0 views

www.zdnetasia.com/...0,39044164,62055288,00.htm
shared by Alex Brown on 03 Jul 09 - Cached
  • Symphony 1.3, released last week, now enables imports of documents using Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) format. However, the free-of-charge office suite does not yet let users save documents in OOXML.
    • Alex Brown
      Alex Brown on 03 Jul 09
       
      shhhhh
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State's move to open document formats still not a mass migration - 0 views

www.computerworld.com/...article.do california davinci interop iso massachusetts oasis odef odf ooxml opendocument politics xml
shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • June 08, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Only a tiny fraction of the PCs at Massachusetts government agencies are able to use the Open Document Format (ODF) for Office Applications, despite an initial deadline of this month for making sure that all state agencies could handle the file format.
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    Use of ODF remains minimal on government PCs in Massachusetts
    Eric Lai ....... June 8, 2007

    Bummer!  Do you think IBM is silent on this because they are busy cutting sweetheart deals with MS?  Are they going to hang Sun on this?  I'm sure that by next week IBM will have to respond to ODEF.   This just keeps getting better.  So in both Texas and California they wonder if it's even possible to implement ODF solutions.  No one wants to get into that hole with Massachusetts.

    ~ge~


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Quible Correction -- garyedwards@...'s comment on "Microsoft: We were railroaded in Mas... - 0 views

talkback.zdnet.com/5208-3513-0.html ibm massachusetts microsoft odf railroaded sun
shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • Microsoft was invited, and did join the OASIS Open Office XML File Format TC as a founding member with observer status. Although the name of the TC was changed in September of 2004 (at the request of the EU) to "OpenDocument", Microsoft remains a member with observer status. All that need be done to convert their status from observer to voting member is to notify the TC Chairman of your intentions, show up for two consecutive phone conferences, and you are a voting member. It's that simple.
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    This is part of a series of talkback responses i had made to a ZDNet article, "Microsoft: We were railroaded in Massachusetts on ODF".  Andy Updegrove participated in this exchange.

    My comment was picked up by the Heise in a FSF Free Software Foundation Europe article, "The Converter Hoax".

    ~ge~

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Microsoft Partners with Atlassian & NewsGator - SharePoint Goes Web 2.0 - Flock - 0 views

www.readwriteweb.com/...ft_partners_with_atlassian.php exchange html ms-ooxml sharepoint w3c web20
shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • 4) Linking; Within Confluence, users can access SharePoint document facilities. By including SharePoint lists and content within Confluence, users can (in a single click) edit Microsoft Office documents.
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    Pay close attention here boys and girls because here it is.  Wonder why Microsoft is wealing, dealing and ready to shell out billions for Web 20 collaboration software?  It's to tie them into the MS Stack of MSOffice, IE, Exchange/SharePoint, MS LIve, MS Dynamics, MS SQL Server, etc.

    Grand convergence is the convergence of desktop, server, device and web systems.  It increasing looks like were going to have to live with the MS Stack and the Open Stack of grand convergence interoperability.  One will be able to have perfect interop within it's walls, with all applications able to handle the same compound XML document.  The other will be totally unable to implement an inteoperable version of MS-OOXML. 

    Members of the MS Stack will be able to access everything in the Open Stacks, but outside systems will have limited (crippled) access into the MS Stack.  Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.  Here we go again.

    ~ge~



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War rages on over Microsoft's OOXML plans: Insight - Software - ZDNet Australia - 0 views

www.zdnet.com.au/...0,139023769,339284737,00.htm australia cdf interop iso microsoft odf ooxml opendocument
shared by Gary Edwards on 27 Dec 07 - Cached
  • "We feel that the best standards are open standards," technology industry commentator Colin Jackson, a member of the Technical Advisory committee convened by StandardsNZ to consider OOXML, said at the event. "In that respect Microsoft is to be applauded, as previously this was a secret binary format." Microsoft's opponents suggest, among a host of other concerns, that making Open XML an ISO standard would lock the world's document future to Microsoft. They argue that a standard should only be necessary when there is a "market requirement" for it. IBM spokesperson Paul Robinson thus describes OOXML as a "redundant replacement for other standards". Quoting from the ISO guide, Robinson said that a standard "is a document by a recognised body established by consensus which is aimed at achieving an optimum degree of order and aimed at the promotion of optimum community benefits". It can be argued that rather than provide community benefit, supporting multiple standards actually comes at an economic cost to the user community. "We do not believe OOXML meets these objectives of an international standard," Robinson said.
  • Gary Edwards on 27 Dec 07
     
    "aimed at achieving an optimum degree of order .... and .... aimed at the promotion of optimum community benefits:. Uh, excuse me Mr. Robinson, tha tsecond part of your statement, the one concerning optimum community benefits - that would also disqualify ODF!! ODF was not designed to be compatible with the 550 million MSOffice desktops and their billions of binary docuemnts. Menaing, these 550 million users will suffer considerable loss of information if they try to convert their existing documents to ODF. It is also next to impossible for MSOffice applications to implement ODF as a fiel format due to this incompatbility. ODF was designed for OpenOffice, and directly reflects the way OpenOffice implements specific document structures. The problem areas involve large differences between how OpenOffice implments these structures and how MSOffice implements these same structures. The structures in question are lists, fields, tables, sections and page dynamics. It seems to me that "optimum community benefits" would include the conversion and exchange of docuemnts with some 550 million users!!!! And ODF was clearly not designed for that purpose!
  • Gary Edwards on 27 Dec 07
     
    I don't agree with this statement from Microsoft's Oliver Bell. As someone who served on the OASIS ODF Technical Committee from it's inception in November of 2002 through the next five years, i have to disagree. It's not that Microsoft wasn't welcome. They were. It's that the "welcome" came with some serious strings. Fo rMicrosoft to join OASIS would have meant strolling into the camp of their most erstwhile and determined competitors, and having to ammend an existing standard to accomodate the implementation needs of MSOffice. There is simply no way for the layout differences between OpenOffice and MSOffice to be negotiated short of putting both methodologies into the spec. Meaning, the spec would provide two ways of implementing lists, tables, fields, sections and page dynamics. A true welcome would have been for ODF to have been written to accomodate these diferences. Rather than writing ODF to meet the implementation model used by OepnOffice, it would have been infinitely better to wrtite ODF as a totally application independent file format using generic docuemnt structures tha tcould be adapted by any application. It turns out that this is exactly the way the W3C goes about the business of writing their fiel format specifications (HTML, XHTML, CSS, XFORMS, and CDF). The results are highly interoperable formats that any applciation can implement.
  • Gary Edwards on 27 Dec 07
     
    You can harmonize an application specific format with a generic, applicaiton independent format. But you can't harmonize two application specific formats!!!!
    The easy way to solve the document exchange problem is to leave the legacy applications alone, and work on the conversion of OOXML and ODF docuemnts to a single, application independent generic format. The best candidate for this role is that of the W3C's CDF.
    CDF is a desription of how to combine existing W3C format standards into a single container. It is meant to succeed HTML on the Web, but has been designed as a universal file format.
    The most exciting combination is that of XHTML 2.0 and CSS in that it is capable of handling the complete range of desktop productivity office suite documents. Even though it's slightly outside the W3C reach, the most popular CDF compound is that of XHTML, CSS and JavaScript. A combination otherwise known as "AJAX".
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Brian Jones: Open XML Formats : Specifying the document settings - 0 views

blogs.msdn.com/...ing-the-document-settings.aspx contradictions ecma eooxml inconsistencies interoperability iso microsoft oasis odf openxml
shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • # re: Specifying the document settings @ Thursday, January 11, 2007 5:11 AM Brian, the fact that you are encouraging people not to use those compatibility flags does not matter at all here. There obviously will be documents with those flags turned on, right? Otherwise you wouldn't have put this in the standard. So it's just a corner case, but still: This means ONLY your office suite will be able to display those documents correctly, even if a competing program implemented the whole specification. Why? Because you didn't specify how those flags affect the display of the document (a hell of a specification you have there...). I still haven't seen any answer to this valid criticism. It's a competitive advantage for Microsoft since the standard is incomplete and your company is the only one that has the missing parts. - Stephan Stephan Jaensch
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    Nice catch by Stephan Jaensch.  He caught Brian Jones trying wriggle out of corner Rob Weir has trapped the mighty Microsoft Blogmeister in.  The last line of Stephan's question to Brian Jones says it all; the incompleteness and undocumented aspects of the EOOXML specification give Microsoft an incredibly unfair competitive advantage regarding the billions of binary MSOffice documents in circulation and vital to critical day to day business operations the world over. 

    The quote from Stephan:  "I still haven't seen any answer to this valid criticism. It's a competitive advantage for Microsoft since the standard is incomplete and your company is the only one that has the missing parts."

    The response from Brian?  We're waiting.  We've been waiting.  With each passing day the EOOXMl specification looks more like a monopolist endagered species protection order than the open standard Microsoft is trying to palm it off as.

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OpenDocument Foundation drops support for ODF, backs obscure W3C format - Arstechnica R... - 0 views

arstechnica.com/...-backs-obscure-w3c-format.html cdf odf ooxml opendocument w3c
shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • The OpenDocument Foundation has decided to end its support for OASIS's OpenDocument Format (ODF) and instead support W3C's Compound Document Format (CDF), which is currently described in the Web Integration Compound Document Core 1.0 draft. This move reflects growing concerns within the interoperability advocacy community about the long-term viability of both ODF and Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML).
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Is this valid? - ODF List Archives - 0 views

lists.oasis-open.org/...msg00107.html interoperability odf
shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • just played a little with other ODF applications. Looks like Lotus Symphony can handle input fields with paragraphs breaks in it. The XML it produces is:
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    Archives of all OASIS ODF TC disussions.  Does not include Metadata, Formula or Accessibility lists
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ODF Split Shakes Up Document Battle | Redmond Developer News Michael Desmond - 0 views

reddevnews.com/...article.aspx cdf odf ooxml w3c
shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • The ongoing file format battle between proponents of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) took a surprising turn lthis week, when a key ODF proponent announced that it intended to abandon the ISO-approved specification. The move by the OpenDocument Foundation comes less than two months after Microsoft lost a key ISO vote to approve OOXML as a standard.
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    Thi sis Michael Desmons's second article on the file format wars.
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OOXML-ODF: The Harmonization Hope Chest | Orcmid's Lair - 0 views

orcmid.com/...f-harmonization-hope-chest.asp
shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Feb 08 - Cached
  • 4. The Reality in the Punchbowl Meanwhile, Sam Hiser offers a different impression of the DIN effort [4]: "The ODF-to-OOXML harmonization effort being hosted by the German standards group, DIN, is Europe's best effort to resolve our Mexican Standoff between Microsoft, Sun and IBM. Even though harmonization is laughably complex and will not work unless the applications are harmonized too, the best and brightest of Germany are left to hope for success."  [emphasis mine: dh] Although the mission of the German effort is translation (Übersetzung), not harmonization, I find there is a very important point that is not made often enough:  People write, read, and edit office documents with little, if any, understanding of the particular format that makes them persistent in digital form.  The XML-based open formats do not change that.   People adapt to the software/device they are using by trial and error.  We train ourselves to obtain the visible results that we want.  Different people obtain superficially similar results by quite different means.   Even when someone has gone to the trouble to create style sheets, forms, macros, templates and other format-impacting aids, it is very loosey-goosey in practice.  And it still does not require paying attention to the file format.  
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Wizard of ODF: OASIS invited to join Microsoft in the DIN technical report - harmoniz... - 0 views

www.oasis-open.org/...msg00040.html din eu harmonization iso oasis odf ooxml xml
shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Jan 08 - Cached
  • the WG is busy working on a first draft. This'll include mainly work in Wordprocessing. Spreadsheet and Presentation is still in the very early work. So help from the ODF TC would be great --- and a liaison would make sense IMHO. To give you an idea why help from the ÓDF TC would be needed I'll briefly outline some questions which arose: * Need for more use-cases, i.e. feasable interop scenarios * Discussions of unspecified behaviour (e.g numbering in 1.0, spreadsheet formulas, compatibilty options, etc.) and their impact on interop scenarios * Questions regaring generic settings like e.eg. form:control-implementation="ooo:com.sun.star.form.component.Form", or tweaking a la http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=51726. * Possible interop problems not handled by the specs (e.g. graphics, WMF, EMF, SVM, etc.) or e.g. font metrics and font embedding. As you see there are a lot of overlapping areas with eg. the "ODF interop" we dealt with in the workshop in Barcelona. [This issue is hosted in the Adoption TC, right? Maybe this TC is also suited as a liaison partner?]
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 29 Jan 08
       
      Uh Oh. Microsoft and Novell joined the EU's call to harmonize ODF and OOXML, but Sun and IBM refused the invite. Now we have the invite in front of the OASIS ODF TC!. Is there any rock big enough for them to hide under if they also refuse?
      And if the OASIS ODF does join the EU-DIN-ISO effort, where doe stha tleave IBM, Sun and their inistance on a politically mandated "rip out and replace" as the only acceptable solution?
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BetaNews | Microsoft: Office Format War Over - 0 views

www.betanews.com/...1173114057 iso microsoft odf ooxml opendocument openxml xml
shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • "Over the past few years, we've had two important file formats come into the market, OpenXML and ODF. Both were designed for different purposes, and both have been valuable additions to the market. Now we can also say that we have multiple implementations of both formats."
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    The war is over?  When did Microsoft surrender?  And when did they sign the official terms of surrender?

    The terms of surrender are simple. Microsoft must agree to fully support and implement ODF as a native file format in all versions of MSOffice qualified for the current OOXML compatibility kit. Furthermore, MSOffice must offer end users the choice of selecting ODF as the default MSOffice file format.

    Those are the terms of surrender, and i for one don't see how the Microsoft or Novell Translator plugin's qualify?  These things are garbage!

    What if an MSOffice user was to work on a document, save it to OOXML only to open it later to find a near totally useless and corrupted document with a conversion fidelity equal to that achieved by the hapless MCN Translator Plugins?

    Right.  What's good for the goose is good for the gander.  Until these idiotic MCN Translators can achieve a conversion fidelity between ODF and OOXML acceptable to MSOffice users - comparable to native documents use and expectations, they should be regarded for what they are: an experimentation proving conclusively that OOXML is not even close to being interoperable with ODF.

    ~ge~
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Groklaw - Digging for Truth - 6 views

www.groklaw.net/comment.php
shared by Jesper Lund Stocholm on 05 Oct 09 - Cached
  • You harmed us and our families. You harmed the public, and you will have to live with that judgment from us.
    • Jesper Lund Stocholm
      Jesper Lund Stocholm on 05 Oct 09
       
      Legendary comment ... :o) "You harmed our families. You harmed the public and you will have to live with that judgement from us"
  • Gary Edwards on 06 Oct 09
     
    What an amazing conversation. It's true that ODF was NOT designed to be compatible with MSOffice and the legacy binary format. That's not to say there were not considerable efforts within the OASIS Open Office XML TC (ODF) pushing for compatibility. But Sun successfully held off these efforts, insisting that ODF was not designed to be compatible with MSOffice or the MSOffice binaries. Many asked the obvious question, "How are end users supposed to convert their information (billions of legacy "in-process" binary documents) to ODF if ODF is not designed for that conversion?" Stellent, represented by Phil Boutros, and Corel, represented by Paul Langille and Tom Magliery, were particularly obsessed with this problem. Without "compatibility", how were end users supposed to convert their documents? Needless to say, Sun prevailed. ODF is 100% perfectly compatible with OpenOffice/StarOffice, by design. It is not compatible with the billions of "in-process" compound business documents essential to world trade, commerce and information exchange. What a shame, ~ge~
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