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Gary Edwards

EU-IDABC ODEF Workshop 2007 in Berlin - Documentation - presentations - 0 views

ec.europa.eu/...5935

california davinci interop iso massachusetts oasis odef odf ooxml opendocument politics xml

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • IDABC ODEF Workshop 2007 in Berlin
  • As information exchange in and with public administrations is very often bound to documents, editing, archiving and exchange possibilities for documents are crucial for the optimum function of administrations, both in terms of practicality and cost. Initiatives such as the PEGSCO Recommendations on Open Document Formats published by the IDABC Management Committee, demonstrate public administrations preference for "open" document exchange and storage formats that are subject to formal standardisation via international standardisation procedures.   The primary objectives of the Berlin event, held at the German Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI), were to: compile further input from Member State public administrations on their experiences and strategies on ODEF gather industry viewpoints on the initiatives relating to ODEF standardization and information on future standardisation developments provide a platform for exchange between stakeholders in public administrations and main industry players The program of the workshop included, among other: ODEF Strategies: Examples from European Administration Practical Experiences with the implementation of ODEF Report on ODEF-Standardisation activities  4 parallel sessions with participants   A panel discussion with stakeholders 
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    ODF officially died on February 28, 2007, at the Advanced eGovernment Conference in Berlin.  Hellow ODEF
Gary Edwards

ODF1.2 Interoperability Proposal - 0 views

www.oasis-open.org/...msg00048.html

california compatibility davinci interoperability iso massachusetts oasis odf officeopenxml ooxml opendocument openxml plugin xml

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • Subject: Suggested ODF1.2 items From: "Florian Reuter" <freuter@novell.com> To: <office@lists.oasis-open.org> Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 17:03:24 +0100 Suggested enhancement for OpenDocument V1.2
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
       
      This message was submitted to the ODF-OOo/SO OASIS TC the day Florian joined Novell. His Novell contract allowed him to continue his work as the OpenDcoument Foundation's CTO. Take note of the response from Sun's Michael Brauer. It's a classic. The link is at the bottom of the page. ~ge~
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    Part of the sad but enduring "History of Failed ODF Interoperability Attempts".  This particular message is dated November 20th, 2006. 

    The OpenDocument Foundation was notified a week earlier that the "benefactor" ODF Community group Louis Gutierrez had asked IBM and Oracle to put together in Massachusetts had failed.  This was the group Louis formed around the da Vinci plugin and our InfoSet APi. 

    Florian has been hired by Novell, and his first day on the job he finds out about the IBM - Novell deal with Microsoft.  Now he has write the MOOXML plugin for OpenOffice using the MS-CleverAge Translator Project work.  So he writes this message to the ODF TC [office] list. 

    The interoperability enhancements Florian suggests are based on the <interoperability eXtensions> submitted in August to the ODF Metadata SC for consideration.

    The first element in this list tha tFlorian chose to tackle related to "Lists".  He called it the "LIst Override Proposal".  This became the now infamous "List Enhancement Proposal War" that resulted in Sun having OASIS boot out the Foundation.

    Such is life in big vendor ODF'dom

    ~ge~

Gary Edwards

Reality Check: ODF vs. OpenXML - 0 views

weblog.infoworld.com/...odf_vs_openxml.html

microsoft mooxml oasis odf officeopenxml opendocument openxml sun

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • Where do I stand? Well, at the risk of getting a lot of hate mail saying I am in Microsoft's pocket, if what Robertson and Paoli say about OpenXML and ODF is correct, then I think OpenXML is needed, at least until ODF becomes backward-compatible with older Office file formats and offers the capabilities large organizations require in their productivity solutions to run their business.
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    Great comments by the sincere but mislead pro ODF community.  If these guys only knew how much ODF is under the control of big vendor Sun and their standards spitting buddies at OASIS.
Gary Edwards

LOL :: Microsoft's Jean Paoli on the XML document debate - 0 views

www.itwriting.com/blog

cdf microsoft mooxml odf odf-ix officeopenxml opendocument paoli

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • What’s distinctive about the goals of OOXML? Primarily, to have full fidelity with pre-existing binary documents created in Microsoft Office. “What people want is to make sure that their billions of important documents can be saved in a format where they don’t lose any information. As a design goal, we said that those formats have to represent all the information that enables high-fidelity migration from the binary formats”, says Paoli. He mentions work with institutions including the British Library and the US Library of Congress, concerned to preserve the information in their electronic archive. I asked Paoli if such users could get equally good fidelity by converting their documents to ODF. “Absolutely not,” he says. “I am very clear on that. Those two formats are done for different reasons.” What can go wrong? Paoli gives as an example the myriad ways borders can be drawn round tables in Microsoft Office and all its legacy versions. “There are 100 ways to draw the lines around a table,” he says. “The Open XML format has them all, but ODF which has not been designed for backward compatibility, does not have them. It’s really the tip of the iceberg. So if someone translates a binary document with a table to ODF, you will lose the framing details. That is just a very small example.”
  • “Open Document Format and Office Open XML have very different goals”, says Paoli, responding to the claim that the world needs only one standard XML format for office documents. “Both of them are formats for documents … both are good.”
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
       
      The door should have been slammed shut on OOXML near five years ago when, on December 14th, 2006, at the very first OASIS ODF TC meeting, Stellent's Phil Boutros proposed that the charter include, "compatibility with existing file formats and interoperability with existing applications" as a priority objective.
  • I put it to Paoli that OOXML is hard to implement because of all its legacy support, some of which is currently not well documented. “I don’t believe that at all. It’s actually the opposite,” he says. He make the point that third parties like Corel, which have previously implemented support for binary formats like .doc and .xls, should find it easy to transition to OOXML. “We believe Open XML adoption by vendors like Corel will be very easy because they have already been doing 90% of the work, doing the binary formats. The features are already there.”
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
       
      WordPerfect does an excellent import of MSWord .doc documents. But there is no conversion! It's a read only rendering. Once you start editing the document in WP, all kinds of funny things happen, and the perfect fidelity melts away like the wicked witch of west in a bucket full of water.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Another benefit Paoli claims for OOXML is performance. “A lot of things are designed differently because we believe it will work faster. The spreadsheet format has been designed for very big spreadsheets because we know our users, especially in the finance industry, use very large spreadsheets.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
       
      Wrong. The da Vinci plug-in prototype we demonstrated to Massachusetts on June 19th, 2006 proved that there is little or no difference in spreadsheet performance between a OOXML file, and an ODF file.

      In fact, ODF version of the extremely large test file beat the OOXML load by 12 seconds.

      Where the performance difference comes in is at the application level. MS Excel can load a OOXML version of a large spreadsheet faster than OpenOffice can load an ODF version of that same spreadsheet.

      If you eliminate the application differential, and load the OOXML file and the ODF version of that same spreadsheet into a plug-in enabled Excel, the performance differences are negligible.

      The reason for this is that the OOXML plug-in for Excel has a conversion overhead identical to the da Vinci plug-in for Excel. It has nothing to do with the file format, and everythign to do with the application.

      ~ge~
  • Paoli points to the conversion errors as evidence of how poorly ODF can represent legacy Office documents. My hunch is that this has more to do with the poor quality of the converter.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
       
      Note that these OASIS ODF TC November 20th iX "interoperability enhancement" suggestions were submitted by Novell as part of their effort to perfect a OOXML plug-in for OpenOffice!!!!

      "Lists" were th first of these iX items to be submitted as formal proposal. And Sun fought that list proposal viciously for the next four months. The donnybrook resulted i a total breakdown of the ODF consensus process. But, it ensured that never again would anyone be stupid enough to challenge Sun's authority and control of the OASIS ODF TC.

      Sun made it clear that they would viciously oppose any other efforts to establish interoperability with existing Microsoft documents, applications, processes effort.

      Point taken.

      ~ge~
  • the idea that Sun is preparing a reference implementation of OOXML is laughable.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
       
      Sorry Tim. It's true. Sun and Novell are working together to develop native OOXML file support in OpenOffice. You can find this clearly stated in the Gullfoss Planet OpenOffice blogs.

      The funny thing is that Sun will have to implement and support the November 20th iX enhancements submitted by Novell!! (Or, the interoperability frameworks also submitted by Novell in February of 2007). There is simply no other way for OpenOffice to implement OOXML with the needed fidelity.

      ~ge~
  • One of new scenarios enabled by the “custom xml parts” (again, if you read their blogs, you must have heard of this stuff) is the ability to bind xml sources and a control+layout so that it enables the equivalent of data queries (we’ve had in Excel for many years already), just with a source which is part of the package, contrary to the typical external data source connection. Well this stuff, besides the declaration (which includes, big surprise, GUIDs and stuff like that) requires the actual Office 2007 run-time to work. So whenever MS says this stuff is interoperable, they cannot mean you can take this stuff away in another application. Because you can’t. This binding is more or less the same than the embedding of VBA macros. It’s all application-specific, and only Microsoft’s own suite knows how to instantiate this stuff.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
       
      Stephan whacks this one out of the park! Smart Documents will replace VBa scripts, macros and OLE functionality going forward. It's also the data binding - workflow and metadata model of the future. And it's all proprietary!

      It's the combination of OOXML plus the MSOffice- Vista Stack specific Smart Documents that will lock end users into the Vista Stack for years to come.

      Watch out Google!

      ~ge~
  • Has Microsoft published the .doc spec publicly? Then why should ODF worry about the past? It’s not ODF’s concern to worry about Microsoft’s past formats. (Understand that the .doc format alone changed six times in the last eight versions of Office!) That’s Microsoft’s legacy problem, not ODF’s.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
       
      There really is no need to access the secret binary blueprints. The ACME 376 plug-in demonstration proves this conclusively. The only thing the ACME 376 demo lacks is that we didn't throw the switch on the magic key to release all VBa scripts, macros and OLE bindings to ACME. But that can be done if someone is serious about converting the whole shebang of documents, applications and processes.

      The real problem is that although ACME 376 proves we can hit the high fidelity required, it is impossible to effectively capture that fidelity in ODF without the iX interoperability enhancements. The world expects ODF interoperability. But as long as Sun opposes iX, we can't pipe from ACME 376 to ODF.

      ~ge~
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    Tim Anderson interviews Microsoft's Jean Paoli about MOOXML and ODF.    Jean Paoli of course has the predictable set of answers.  But Tim anderson provides us with some interesting insights and comments of his own.  There is also a gem of a comment from Stephane Rodriquez, the reknown spreadsheet expert.

    The bottom line for Microsoft has not changed.  MOOXML exists because of the need for an XML file format compatible with the legacy of existing MSOffic ebinary documents.  He claims that ODF is not compatible, and offers the "page borders" issue as an example.

    Page borders?  What's that got to do with the ODF file format?   These are application specific, application bound proprietary graphics that can not be ported to any other application - like OpenOffice.  The reason has nothign whatsoever to do with ODF and everything to do with the fact that the page border library is bound to MSOffice and not available to other applications like OpenOffice. 

    So here is an application specific feature tha tJean Paoli claims can not be expressed in ODF, but can in MOOXML.  But when are running the da Vinci ODF plugin in MSWord, there is no problem whatsoever in capturing the page borders in ODF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  No problem!!!!!!!!!!

    The problem is opening up that same da Vinci MSWord document in OpenOffice.  That's where the page borders are dropped.  The issue is based entirely on the fact that OpenOffice is unable to render these MSWord specific graphics bound to an MSOffice only library.

    If however we take that same page border loaded da Vinci MSWord document, and send it half way across the world to another MSWord desktop running da Vinci, the da Vinci plugin easily loads the ODF document into MSWord where it is perfectly rendered, page borders and all!!!!!!!!

    Now i will admit that this is one very difficult issue to understand.  If not f
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    Great interview. Tim can obviously run circles around poor Jean Paoli.
Gary Edwards

But can money buy love? :: Another Microsoft Sponsored OOXML Study - 0 views

www.microsoft-watch.com/...fts_sponsored_ooxml_study.html

cdf interoperability ms-xml odf officeopenxml ooxml opendocument vista-stack

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  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    Joe Wilson of Microsoft Watch knocks another one out of the park. Why is it that so few in the media get it? Or anyone else for that matter? Matt Assay gets it. But few understand the Vista Stack and the importance of OOXML in the transition of the monopoly base from MSOffice to the Vista Stack. No doubt the arrogance of those who dare challenge Microsoft is both a necessary blessing and guaranteed curse. Take for instance the widely held assumption that Microsoft invented MS-XML (OfficeOpenXML) in response to OpenDocument (ODf). This is false, misleading and will inevitably result in a FOSS death spiral in the face of a Vista Stack juggernaut. But it sure does feel good.

    Joe Wilson at Microsoft Watch points out the real reason for MS-XML, and why ISO approval of OOXML is so important. Microsoft needs OOXML approved as an international standard because OOXML is the binding model for the emerging Vista Stack of loosely coupled but information integrated applications.

    The Vista Stack model converges desktop, server, device and web information systems using OOXML-Smart Documents, .NET 3.0 and the XAML presentation layer as the binding components.

    The challenge for Microsoft is to migrate existing MSOffice bound business processes, line of business integrated apps, and advanced add-ons to the Exchange/SharePoint Hub. Once the existing documents, applications (MSOffice) and processes are migrated to the E/S Hub, they can be bound tightly to the rest of the Vista Stack.

    Others see OOXML as some sort of surrender or late recognition that the salad days of MSOffice are over. They jubilantly point to Web 2.0, Office 2.0 and rise of the LiNUX Desktop as having ushered in this end of monopoly for MSOffice. Like the ODf champions, these people are similarly sadly mistaken!

    While they celebrate, Microsoft is quie
Gary Edwards

What will it be for ODF? Continuation of limited interop? Or a transition to Universa... - 0 views

lists.oasis-open.org/...msg00072.html

cdf conformance-clause interoperability marbux metadata odf odf-tc ooxml

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    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
       
      Preserving metadata! Preserving application specific information. Preserving "unknown" information inside of a document
  • Unless we add conformance requirements for the preservation of metadata and processing instructions, the less featureful apps will never&nbsp; be able to round-trip documents with the more featureful apps. Our language should require that. Personally, I believe that the software-as-an-end-point client-side office suites are dinosaurs at the end of their era. They are being finished off by a thousand cuts as users spend less and less time using them and more and more time using other apps, such as web apps. ODF either develops methods for interoperability among all apps or it will die along with the office suites. E.g., Microsoft knows this and is busily migrating its Office development budget across the Sharepoint/Exchange server hubs to the network. Meanwhile, this TC fiddles with preserving the 1995 software-as-an-endpoint vision.
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    Marbux is clearly at the top of his game here as he hammers the interoperability issue.
Gary Edwards

Microsoft: the cloud as feature - Rough Type - 0 views

www.roughtype.com/...the_web_as_feat.php

microsoft ms-stack msoffice msooxml ooxml

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • In the short term and even medium term, it is very likely that mainstream business customers will be more comfortable viewing the cloud as an add-on to rather than a replacement for their traditional Office programs. The competitive battle, in other words, will be fought largely on Microsoft's turf, and on that turf a certain amount of messiness is both allowed and expected. "Google and other Office competitors will be breathing a sigh of relief this morning," writes Mike Arrington. If so, it's a sigh they may come to regret.
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    Here we go.  The final piece to the MS Stack puzzle falls into place.  Nick Carr provides excellent commentary and analysis.  As usual.
Gary Edwards

Can a file be ODF and Open XML at the same time? (and HTML? and a Java servlet? and a P... - 0 views

www.oreillynet.com/..._file_be_odf_and_open_xml.html

jellife odf ooxml pdf

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • The recent bomb in the ODF world from Gary Edward’s claims that Sun successfully blocked the addition of features to ODF that would be needed for full interchange with Office are explosive not only because they demonstrate how ODF was (properly, in my view) developed to cope with the particular features of the participants, not really as a universal format, but also because the prop up Microsoft’s position that Open XML is required because it exposes particular features that ISO ODF is not capable of exposing. Both because ODF is still in progress and because sometimes the features are simply incompatible in the details.
  • Actually, ODF is about to get a new manifest along with the new metadata stuff. Because we base that on RDF, the manifest will also be RDF-based. It gives us the extensibility we want to provide (extension developers, for example, can add extra metadata they may need), without having to worry about breaking compatibility. The primary addition we've made is a mechanism to bind a stable URI to in-document content node ids and files. This is conceptually not all that different than what I see in OPC; it's just that the unique IDs are in fact URIs. Among other things, in the RDF context that allows further statements to be bound to those URIs. Bruce D'Arcus | July 29, 2007 01:02 PM
Gary Edwards

Microsoft playing three card monte with XML conversion, with Sun as the "outside man" w... - 0 views

blogs.zdnet.com/open-source

backwards-compatibility iso microsoft odf ooxml xml

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • In a highly informative post to his Open Stack blog Wednesday, Edwards explains how three key features are necessary for organizations to convert to open formats. These are: Conversion Fidelity - the billions of binaries problem Round Trip Fidelity - the MSOffice bound business processes, line of business integrated apps, and assistive technology type add-ons Application Interop - the cross platform, inter application, cross information domain problem
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    Dana Blankenhorn posted this article back in March of 2007.  It was right at the time when the OASIS ODF TC and Metadata XML/RDF SC (Sub Committee) were going at it hammer and tong concerning three very important file format characteristics needed to fulfill a real world interoperability expectation:

    .... Compatibility - file format level interop -
    :::  backwards compatibility / compatibility with existing file formats, including the legacy of billions of binary Microsoft documents

    ....... Interoperability - application level interop-
    ::::::  application interoperability including interop with all Microsoft applications

Gary Edwards

Sun Supports OOXML as an ISO Standard? - 0 views

www.computerworld.com/...article.do

iso odef odf ooxml openwave xhtml xml

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - No Cached
  • Sun Microsystems Inc., largely considered an avowed opponent of Open XML because of its own development and support for the competing, ODF-based StarOffice suite, found itself in the unexpected position of stating its support for ratifying Open XML -- albeit after some changes in the proposal are made.
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    Quote: Sun Microsystems Inc., largely considered an avowed opponent of Open XML because of its own development and support for the competing, ODF-based StarOffice suite, found itself in the unexpected position of stating its support for ratifying Open XML -- albeit after some changes in the proposal are made. "We wish to make it completely clear that we support DIS 29500 becoming an ISO Standard and are in complete agreement with its stated purposes of enabling interoperability among different implementations and providing interoperable access to the legacy of Microsoft Office documents," Jon Bosak, a Sun representative to V1, wrote in an e-mail to other committee members over the weekend. "Sun voted No on Approval because it is our expert finding, based on the analysis so far accomplished in V1, that DIS 29500 as presently written is technically incapable of achieving those goals, not because we disagree with the goals or are opposed to an ISO Standard that would enable them." Sun "found itself in the unexpected position of stating its support for ratifying OOXML"?  What???? This is the official position of Sun?

    For the near five years that i have been a member of the OASIS ODF TC, Sun has opposed
Gary Edwards

Groklaw - Microsoft, antitrust and innovation, by Georg Greve - 0 views

www.groklaw.net/article.php

antitrust interoperability microsoft odf

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • Interoperability: The second abusive practice the Commission found Microsoft guilty of is the deliberate obstruction of interoperability, generally achieved through arbitrary and willful modification of Open Standards. This makes it impossible for competitors to write interoperable software. This is to the detriment of customers, who find themselves locked into the products of one vendor, the antithesis of competition.
  • It might look much worse in the light of public statements that Microsoft will not even commit to standards that it has proposed itself, such as the recent Microsoft OfficeOpenXML (OOXML) format it wants approved by ISO. The less people talk about the interoperability side of the case, the better for Microsoft. Otherwise people might connect MS-OOXML to the fact that Microsoft initiated the standardisation effort in the workgroup server area to open the market and later started obstruction of interoperability on its own standard to drive the innovator out of the market.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
       
      Great point. I think tha tanytime a big vendor embraces an open standard they should committ to full public documentation and explanation of any eXtensions to their implementaiton of that standard. Interoperability matters!
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    Excellent explanation of Microsoft's problems in Europe.  One can only hope that the successor to the Bush Administration is paying attention. 
Gary Edwards

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Fat Guy in Salesforce hell - Flock - 0 views

www.roughtype.com/...fat_guy_in_sale.php

anti-trust integration interop interoperability

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • Second, don't underestimate the lock-in power that programs like Outlook and Excel and Quickbooks and Peachtree and their associated files still hold, particularly in smaller businesses. Someday we may have standard document formats and easily transportable data, but we don't yet. The competitive battle for the future of software is going to be fought out at the level of the Little Picture as much as at the level of the Big Picture. Lose sight of either one, and you'll be in trouble. In other words: It ain't over till the Fat Guy rants.
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    Wow!  Another great quote from Nick.  When we were at the Office 2.0 Conference a few weeks ago, this was the problem every single collaborative computing initiative was facing.  Sure they had great collaborative efforts.  But these efforts were outside exisitng businesss processes and applications!  That's fine for kids and consumers.  But it's the kiss of death for enterprise, smb, and organizations with workgroup busines sprocesses based on MSOffice and Outlook.

    So no matter how innovative the WEb 2.0 - Office 2.0 - Enterprise 2.0 applications and services are, they are setting the marketplace for Microsoft to come in and take everything.  Because Microsoft and Microsoft alone ownes the interoperability - integration interfaces into MSOffice and Outlook, they are in a position to destroy any of the 2.0 players at will.  It's simply a matter of entering the space with their own 2.0 application or service.

    The more i see of this, the more convinced i am that the governemnts of the world are going to have to step in stop Microsoft's push to move from the desktop into server, device and web systems.

    ~ge~

Gary Edwards

[office] List Proposal Vote Deadline on Wednesday - 0 views

www.oasis-open.org/...msg00006.html

interoperability odf ooxml

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    The List Proposal donnybrook refuses to go away. In a recent argument concerning Rick Jellife's controversial post, "Harmonization by augmenting ODF with OOXML elements", ODF defender Bruce D'Arcus pointed to his own OASIS ODF TC message thread in an effort to defend Sun.

    The issue is that Rick Jellife and others are wondering why it is that Sun opposes interoperability enhancements to ODF that would solve the problem of converting MS binary and XML documents to ODF, and back.

    Bruce's reference introduces the incredibly acrimonious "List Proposal Vote Deadline" thread. He also brings up a really important problem. The ODF Charter does not reference compatibility with existing file formats as a key objective.

    The consequences of this neglect in the ODF Charter is that every time the issue of compatibility with existing MS binary or xml documents comes up, Sun claims it's, "Outside the Charter and Out of Scope".

    I've been hearing that excuse for the last five years!! Meanwhile, the world has discovered it's impossible to implement ODF without also having to totally rip out and replace MSOffice. And that means a costly re engineering all existing business processes, line of business integrated apps, and assistive technology add-ons.

    ODF failed in Massachusetts because Sun and OASIS TC refused to recognize the importance of an ODF plugin for MSOffice offering the same high fidelity "round trip" conversion as the OOXML plugin for MSOffice.

    For one reason or another, big ODF vendors are locked into a "rip out and replace - legislative mandate" strategy. A strategy to limit the interoperability of ODF with MS documents, applications, and processes has only one consequence. As Massachusetts proved to the world, ODF is impossible to implement if you have workgroups and business processes based
Gary Edwards

Frankly Speaking: Microsoft's Cynicism - Flock - 0 views

www.computerworld.com/...article.do

cdf iso odf officeopenxml ooxml opendocument

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • In July, Jones was asked on his blog whether Microsoft would actually commit to conform to an officially standardized OOXML. His response: “It’s hard for Microsoft to commit to what comes out of Ecma [the European standards group that has already OK’d OOXML] in the coming years, because we don’t know what direction they will take the formats. We’ll of course stay active and propose changes based on where we want to go with Office 14. At the end of the day, though, the other Ecma members could decide to take the spec in a completely different direction. ... Since it’s not guaranteed, it would be hard for us to make any sort of official statement.”
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
       
      Then why is Microsoft dragging us through this standardization nonsense? Is this nothing more than thinly veiled assault on open standards in general?
  • To at least some people at Microsoft, this isn’t about meeting the needs of customers who want a stable, solid, vendor-neutral format for storing and managing documents. It’s just another skirmish with the open-source crowd and rivals like IBM, and all that matters is winning.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
       
      The battle between OOXML and ODF is very much about two groups of big vendor alliances. Interestingly, both groups seek to limit ODF interoperability, but for different reasons.

      See: The Plot To Limit ODF Interop
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    Good commentary from Frank Hayes of Computerworld concerning a very serious problem. Even if ISO somehow manages to approve MS-OOXML, Microsoft has reserved the right to implement whatever extension of Ecma-OOXML they feel like implementing. The whole purpose of this standardization exercise was to bring interoperability, document exchange and long term archive capability to digital information by separating the file formats from the traditions of application, platform and vendor dependence.

    If Microsoft is determined to produce a variation of OOXML that meets the needs of their proprietary application-platform stack, including proprietary bindings and dependencies, any illusions we might have about open standards and interoeprability will be shattered.  By 2008, Microsoft is expected to have over a billion MS-OOXML ready systems intertwined with their proprietary MS Stack of desktop, server, device and web applications. 

    How are we to interoperate/integrate non Microsoft applications and services into that MS Stack if the portable document/data/media transport is off limits?  If you thought the MS Desktop monopoly posed an impossible barrier, wait until the world gets a load of the MS Stack!

    Good article Frank.

    ~ge~

Gary Edwards

Indecision in Redmond as Web apps charge : Office 2.0 and Google Apps - 0 views

weblog.infoworld.com/...013777.html

cdf html odf officeopenxml ooxml opendocument

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  • the fact is that Redmond could own this new space if it wanted to. All it would need to do is push interoperability and integration between lightweight Web versions of Office applications and its desktop fatware. Advanced features would be absent from the lightweight versions, but the company could ensure any Office doc would load on the Web -- whatever new desktop service packs and upgrades might appear -- and online document management could be integrated with Windows for offline access.
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    Great quote from Eric Knorr.  He hits the nail on the head here, pointing out the problem Office 2.0  Web Apps and SaaS apps face:  If these Web wonders have interoperability and high fidelity document exchange with MSOffice, their collaborative features are value added wonders for existing business processes and workgroup-workflow scenarios.  If, on the other hand they lack this level of interop - integration with MSOffice documents and processes, the value add becomes a problematic split in a business process.  The only way to overcome that kind of a split is to take the entire process.  Which is difficult for lightweight mashup happy web wonders to do.

    Which leaves each and every one of these Office 2.0 - Web 2.0 - Saas Apps vulnerable to Microsoft.  As long as Micrsoft owns the interop-integration keys to MSOffice, the web wonders live a precarious life.  At any time Microsoft can swoop in and take it all.

    Today, the MSOffice OOXML file format displays perfectly in a browser.  It's 100% web ready, but only the MS Stack of applications gets to play.  Web wonders are not likely to recieve a Redmond invite now or ever.

    Which brings us to the issue of the da Vinci plug-in for MSOffice.  da Vinci is a clone of the OOXML plug-in for MSOffice, and fully leverages the same internal conversion process that OOXML enjoys.  It can achieve the same high fidelity "round trip" conversion that OOXML is capable of.  Maybe even better. 

    The problem for da Vinci isn't conversion fidlelity.  Nor is it capturing  business process important VBa scripts, macros, OLE, and security settings.  da Vinci can do that just fine.  The problem is that da Vinci cannot pipe MSOffice developer platform documents into ODF!!  For the love of five generic eXtensions, called the iX "interoperability enhancements", which the OASIS ODF TC blew off, ODF
Gary Edwards

The trap is set! Phony OASIS Messaging standard OK'd for Web services - 0 views

weblog.infoworld.com/...012609.html

apache ipr iso microsoft oasis odf officeopenxml ooxml opendocument rand web-services ws xml

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • OASIS considers WS-ReliableMessaging critical for SOA, in that it can handle a variety of SOA requirements. WS-ReliableMessaging can be extended to enable integration with capabilities such as security. SOAP binding for interoperability is included. WS-ReliableMessaging is part of a series of Web services specifications dubbed WS-* that have been championed by companies such as Microsoft.
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    Check out the comments below this article.  There are links to Ian Foster of Globus and to the Marbux license disseration posted with the OpenDocument Foundation's NO VOTE at OASIS.
Gary Edwards

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~



Gary Edwards

Brendan's Roadmap Updates: My @media Ajax Keynote - 0 views

weblogs.mozillazine.org/...my_media_ajax_keynote.html

shared by Gary Edwards on 11 Jan 08 - Cached
  • Standards often are made by insiders, established players, vendors with something to sell and so something to lose. Web standards bodies organized as pay-to-play consortia thus leave out developers and users, although vendors of course claim to represent everyone fully and fairly. I've worked within such bodies and continue to try to make progress in them, but I've come to the conclusion that open standards need radically open standardization processes. They don't need too many cooks, of course; they need some great chefs who work well together as a small group. Beyond this, open standards need transparency. Transparency helps developers and other categories of "users" see what is going on, give corrective feedback early and often, and if necessary try errant vendors in the court of public opinion.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 11 Jan 08
       
      Brendan's comment about the open standards process and the control big vendors have over that process is exactly right. The standards contsortia are pay to play orgs controlled entirely by big vendors. OASIS and the OpenDocuemnt Technical Committee are not exceptions to this problematic and troublesome truth.
      The First Law of the Internet is that Interoperability trumps everything - including innovation. The problem with vendor driven open standards is that innovation ontinually trumps interoperability. So much so that interop is pretty much an after thought - as is the case with ODF and OOXML!
      The future of the Open Web will depend on open source communities banding together with governemnts and user groups to insist on the First Law of the Internet: Interoeprability. If they don't, vendors will succeed in creating slow moving web standards designed to service their product lines. Vendor product lines compete and are differentiated by innovative features. Interoeprability on the other hand is driven by sameness - the sharing of critical features. Driving innovation down into the interop layer is what the open standards process should be about. But as long as big vendors control that process, those innovations will reside at the higher level of product differentiation. A level tha tcontinues to break interoperability!
Gary Edwards

ODF Civil War: Bulll Run - Suggested Changes on the Metadata proposal - OASIS ODF - 0 views

www.oasis-open.org/...msg00072.html

metadata odf odf-civil-war ooxml

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07 - Cached
  • From our perspective it would be better to aim for doing the job in ODF 1.2, even if that requires delay. We will oppose ODF 1.2 at ISO unless the interoperability warts are cleaned up. What the market requires is no longer in doubt. See the slides linked above and further presentations linked from this page, &lt; http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/6474/5935&gt;. Substantial progress toward those goals would seem to be mandatory to maintain Europe's preference for a harmonized set of file formats that uses ODF to provide the common functionality. Delaying commencement of such work enhances the likelihood that governments will tire of waiting for ODF to become interoperable with MS Office and simply go with MOOXML. We may not be able to force Microsoft to participate in the harmonization work, but we will be in a far better position if we have done everything we can in aid of that interoperability without Microsoft's assistance. As the situation stands, we have what is known in the U.S. as a "Mexican stand-off," where neither side has taken a solitary step toward what Europe has requested. We have decided to do that work via a fork of ODF; it is up to this TC whether it wishes to cooperate in that effort.
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
     
    This is the famous marbux response to Sun regarding Sun's attempt to partially implement ODF 1.2 XML-RDF metadata.  It's a treasure.

    There is one problem with marbux's statement though.  We had decided long ago not to fork ODF even if the five iX "interoperability enhancement" proposals were refused by the OASIS ODF TC.   This assurance was provided to Massachusetts CIO Louis Gutierrez witht he the first ODF iX proposal submitted on July 12th, 2006.  Louis ended up signing off on three iX proposals before his resignation October 4th, 2006.

    The ODF iX enhancements were essential to saving ODF in Massachusetts.  Without them, there was no way our da Vinci plug-in could convert existing MSOffice documents and processes to ODF with the needed round trip fidelity.

    For nearly a year we tried to push through some semblance of the needed iX enhancements.  We also tried to push through a much needed Interoperability Framework, which will be critical to any ISO approval of ODF 1.2.

    Our critics are correct in that every iX effort was defeated, with Sun providing the primary opposition. 

    Still rather than fork ODF, we are simply going to move on. 

    On October 4th, 2006, all work on ODF da Vinci ended - not to be resumed unless and until we had the ODF iX enhancements we needed to crack the MSOffice bound workgroup-workflow business process barrier.

    In April of 2007, with our OASIS membership officially shredded by OASIS management, bleeding from the List Enhancement Proposal doonybrook, and totally defeated with our hope - the metadata XML-RDF work, we threw in the towel.

    Since then we've moved on to CDF, the W3C Compound Document format.  Incredibly, CDF is able to do what ODF can not.  With CDF we can solve the three primary problems confronting governments and MSOffice bound workgroups everywhere. 

    The challenge for these g
Gary Edwards

Home - Berkman Center for Internet & Society - 0 views

cyber.law.harvard.edu/...home

shared by Gary Edwards on 15 Dec 07 - Cached
  • There were 5 successive Roundtables.  Each roundtable was led by 5 short presentations before the topic was opened to the floor for general discussion.  The first roundtable focused on "What is ODF, and why are open document standards important". There were many questions regarding how open standards affect competition and innovation, whether ODF is in fact the best standard, issues of archiving and interoperability with ODF as well as how ODF addresses/will address concerns of accessibility for disabled persons. The second Roundtable discussed how various software developers were responding to ODF and the third roundtable focused on whether governments or non-governmental and consumer organizations should systematically use procurement policy to promote ODF.  The following roundtable was a lively discussion on whether national or global "agreements" can play a role in promoting ODF and how.  During that roundtable as well as the last one on "Reflections and next steps", there were discussions of future work and strategies on ODF in a new international forum, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to be held in Athens, Greece, October 30 - November 3, 2006.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Dec 07
       
      The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at the Harvard Law School held an Open Document Conference, October 23rd, 2006. Just a few weeks after the October 4th, 2006 resignation of Massachusetts CIO Louis Gutierrez. This is the summary report of organizer Manon Ress. Sam Hiser represented the OpenDocument Foundation. The ZERO Interop problems that plague ODF implementation were not discussed. Strangely :) Another point not discussed is the fact that ODF is not an Internet file format. It's a desktop office suite only format. This constraint is written into the ODF charter. Interestingly, one of the problems of making ODF Web ready is that of highjacked W3C standards. Highjacking occurs when a specification or application takes existing W3C standards and changes the namespace reference to it's own. This is what ODF does. The reason for doing this is to constrain and limit the W3C standard to just those aspects implemented by the ODF reference application, OpenOffice. XForms, SVG, SMiL, XHTML, RDF/XML and RDFa are problematic examples of W3C namespaces that have been highjacked by ODF to meet the specific implementation constraints of OpenOffice. This impacts developers who rely on standard libraires to do conversions and processing. The libraries are built to the proper W3C namespace, and unfortunately assume that ODF complies. It doesn't, So developers have to investigate how OpenOffic eimplements XForms and SVG, and build special ODF libraries before they can use ODF on the Web. It can be done, i think. But it's a train wreck of a mess guaranteed to destroy the high level of web interoperability users and developers expect.
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