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A mus tread.  Carol Sliwa of ComputerWorld intervies Clark Kelso, California CIO.  ODF is the main issue, with clark casting all his answers in the context of business decisions.  Carol o fcourse is asking the best questions of any journalist alive.

Keep in mind that ComputerWorld and the Boston globe filed for the Freedom of Information Act to be invoked in Massachusetts.  They got access to all the eMail, documnetation, and conferencing notes concerning ODF  and Microsoft.  Carol's interview with Louis Gutierrez last week was filled with the same hard questions Clark Kelso fielded so deftly.

The "committee" Clark Kelso has set up to look at these issues is headed by Bill Welty, the CIO of the California Air Resources Board.  Bill is a long time opensource - Linux guy, but will be the firs tto admit that Microsoft is the only vendor providing a means of getting everything inot XML.  And that's the heart of any SOA strategy, "First, get everything into XML".

With a 500 million MSOffice desktop bound business process headstart, Microsoft has the extreme advantage in this much needed migration to XML. 

They now have their own proprietary application and platform bound version of XML; MOOXML (Microsoft OfficeOpenXML) heading for international standardization at ISO. 

They now have their XML Hub in place; the Exchange4/SharePoint Hub.  This is also an essential part of any SOA strategy.  You've got to have an XML Hub where the XML information streams and service connection to legacy black box systems can be piped into, managed and resolved.  The XML must also provide an end user interface to these information flows.  One that converges and integrates information, documents, data, and workflows into an easy to manage and participate in interface.  The E/S Hub excells at this because it covers the fundamentals of eMail, messaging, portal, calendar, scheduling, c

The FAA issues their "NO ViSTA" mandate, hinting that it might be permanent if they can come up with MSOffice alternatives.  They are looking at Google Apps!

Okay, so plan B does have legs.  The recent failure of ISO/IEC to stand up to the recidivist reprobate from Redmond is having repercussions.  Who would have ever thought ISO would fold so quickly without ceremony?  One day there are 20 out of 30 JTCS1 national bodies (NB's) objecting to Micrsoft's proprietary XML proposal, the MOOX Ecma 376 specfication, and the next ISO is approving without comment the placing of MOOX into the ISO fast track where approval is near certain.  With fast track, the technical objections and contradictions are assumed to be the provence of Ecma, and not the JTCS1 experts group.

Apparently the USA Federal Government divisions had a plan B contingency for just such a case.  And why not?  Microsoft was able to purchase a presidential pardon for their illegal anti trust violations.  If they can do that, what's to stop them from purchasing an International Standard?  Piece of cake!

But Google Apps?  And i say that as one who uses Google Docs every day.

The problem of migrating away from MSOffice and MOOX to ODF or some other "open" XML portable file format is that there are two barriers one must cross.

The first barrier is that of converting the billions of MS binary docuemnts into ODF XML. 

The second is that of replacing the MSOffice bound business processes that drive critical day to day business operabions. 

Google Apps is fine for documents that benefit from collaborative computing activities.  But there is no way one can migrate MSOffice bound business processes - the workgroup-worflow documents to Google Apps.  For one thing Google Apps is unable to facillitate important issues like XForms.  Nor can they round trip an ODF document with the needed fidelity a

Excuse me!  Excuse me!  Does the right hand know what the left hand is doing?

NiST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is authorized by the USA Department of Commerce. 

Years ago, in conjunction with the Department of Defense (WWI), the Dept of Commerce joined with two manufacturing consortia to form ANSI.  Int eh aftemath of WWII and the formation of ISO/IEC, the US Congress, at the behest of the Department of Commerce, authorized the NiST subdiary.  NiST then authorized (and continues to oversee) ANSI to take on the USA representation at ISO/IEC.

ANSI in turn authorized INCITS to take on the ISO/IEC document processing specific standardization issues.  It is INCiTS that represents the citizens on the ISO/IE SCT 1 workgroups (wk1) responsible for both ISO 26300 (OpenDocument - ODF) and Ecma 376 (MOOX).

Okay, so now we have the technical staffers at NiST refusing to allow purchases of Vista, MSOffice 2007 and IE 7.0.  What's going on?  And why is this happenign near everywhere at this exact same moment in time?

The answer is that this is clearly plan B. 

Plan A was to force Microsoft to enable MSOffice native use of ODF.  The reasoning here is that governments could force Microsoft to implement ODF, the monopolist control over desktops would be broken, and the the threat of MS leveraging that monnopoly into servers, devices and Internet systems be averted.

The key to this plan A was to mandate purchase requirements comply with Open Standards.  And not just any "Open Standards".  Microsoft had previously demonstrated how easy it was to use ECMA as rubber stamp for standards proposals that were anything but open.  This is why in August of 2004 the EU asked the OASIS ODF Technical Committee to submit ODF to ISO/IEC.  ISO had not yet been corrupted in the same way as the hapless money hungry ECMA.

Plan A was going along

Thanks for the insightful commentary Joe. I see things a bit differently. Maybe my tin foil hat is wearing a bit tight these days, but i see MSOffice XML (MOOXML and the MOOXML binary InfoSet) as a very important aspect of how Microsoft integrates and leverages their desktop office monopoly power into server side and device systems. It is the combination of MOOXML and .NET that creates the integration mesh between desktop, server systems, and devices. Imagine every application or service participating in either a loosely coupled or carefully crafted information processing chain, being fluent in MOOXML, and able to process internal data structures and processing instructions unique to .NET. Enterprise systems and services from ORACLE, IBM and SAP will not have this same integration fluency. The design of ISO MOOXML is such that it would be impossible for <b>non Microsoft server and device systems</b> to match the quality and depth of integration with the 500 million desktops running MSOffice bound business processes. Given that MOOXML will probably succeed at getting ISO/IEC approval, removing the last "legal" barrier for this MOOXML Stack, were looking at a massive migration of MSOffice bound workgroup - workflow business processes to a new lockin point; The Exchange/SharePoint Hub. With the real estate industry, this migration to to E/S hosted applications only took six months to completely replace years of desktop productivity shrinkware dominance. The leap in productivity was spectacular. The downside of this migration is that the real estate industry is now tied into Microsoft at the critically important business process level. A binding that will perhaps last through the next fifteen years.

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

Yeah.  I said this!  And i still think ODF has what it takes to become a universal file format.  But only if the "interoperability enhancment" proposals are made part of the specification.  You can't talk your way to universal interop.   It has to go into the spec!

OBTW, for you idiots who think i support OOXML as a standard?  You're idiots.  I support the quest for a universal file format that is totally application, platform and vendor independent.  The requirements, demands and criticisms we make of OOXML should be applied to every file format up for universal file format consideration.  Including ODF.  Including XHTML+ (XHTML, CSS3, RDF).  Including the EU IDABC "ODEF".

The one area where i differ from most universal interoperability seekers is that i fully believe the big vendors have left open a loop hole we can exploit.  The plugin architecture is fully able to convert a big vendors application to produce our beloved but elusive universal file format. 

This is important because the big vendors control "interoperability" by contolling the big vendor standards consortia, and, the major applications.  It's a double edged sword.

The ubiquitous plugin architecture enables universal interop seekers to exploit the applications any way we want.  What's missing is a truly open "universal" standards process that is outside the reach of big vendors. 

Personally i like the recent GPL3 process as a model on which to base emerging universal standards work.  Somehow the big vendors must be neutralized.  Otherwise, we;ll never see the universal inteop the world so desires.

idiots,
~ge~

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

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~

French experts have determined that it is technically possible to converge ODF and MS-OOXML, into a single, revisable document format standard?

The plan has four parts:

"Firstly, to restructure the ECMA standard in two parts so as to differentiate between, on the one hand, a core of essential and simple functionalities to be implemented (OOXML-Core) and, on the other hand, all the additional functionalities required for compatibility with the stocks of existing office document files created by numerous users, which will be gathered within a package called OOXML-Extensions."

"Secondly, AFNOR proposes to take into account a full series of technical comments submitted to the draft in order to make OOXML an ISO document of the highest possible technical and editorial quality."

"Thirdly, it proposes to attribute to OOXML the status of ISO/TS for three years."

Fourth, "Finally, AFNOR proposes to set up a process of convergence between ISO/IEC 26300 and the OOXML-Core. In order to achieve this, AFNOR will begin the simultaneous revision of ISO/IEC 26300 and of ISO/TS OOXML (subject to the latter being adopted after the aforementioned restructuring), so as to obtain the most universal possible single standard at the end of the convergence process. Any subsequent evolutions will be decided upon at ISO level and no longer at the level of such a group or category of players."




So there you go.  A solution that removes ODF and OOXML from the clam

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~

Great article series from eWeek.  A must read.  But it all comes down to interoperability across two stack models:  The Microsoft Vista Stack, and an alternative Open Stack model that does not yet exist!

Incompatible formats become a nightmare for the kind of integration any kind of SOA implementation depends on, let alone the Web 2.0 AJAX MashUps this article focuses on.

I wonder why eWEEK didn't include the Joe Wilcox Micrsoft Watch Article, "Obla De OBA Da".  Joe hit hard on the connection between OOXML and the Vista Stack.  He missed the implications this will have on MS SOA solutions.  Open Source SOA solutions will be locked out of the Vista Stack.  And with 98% or more of existing desktop business processes bound to MSOffice, the transition of these business processes to the Vista Stack will no doubt have a dramatic impact on the marketplace.  Before the year is out, we'll see Redmond let loose with a torrent of MS SOA solutions.  The only reason they've held back is that they need to first have all the Vista Stack pieces in place.

I don't think Microsoft is being held back by OOXML approval at ISO either.  ISO approval might have made a difference in Europe in 2006, but even there, the EU IDABC has dropped the ISO requirement.  For sure ISO approval means nothing in the US, as California and Massachusetts have demonstrated. 

All that matters to State CIO's is that they can migrate exisiting docuemnts and business processes to XML.  The only question is, "Which XML?  OOXML, ODF or XHTML+".

The high fidelity conversion ratio and non disruptive OOXML plugin for MSOffice has certainly provided OOXML with the edge in this process. <br

The title here has nothing to do with the content.  The original title is, "Politics is only a small part of this story". 

It's been a while since i last posted to the ZDNet TalkBack, and was totally thrown by the TalkBack formating needs.  My first post dropped all line breaks, and came out as one long run on sentence.

Now maybe that's the way i write, (and think), but at least with some formatting i can hide that fact!

Still, "Butcher This!" is not a bad title. 

~ge~

Published May 22, 2007, this comment was written in the aftermath of List Enhancement Proposal donnybrook at the ODF OASIS TC.

It was at the height of our List Enhancement battle with Sun that OASIS stepped in their threat to boot the OpenDocument Foundation.  OASIS carried out that threat in May.  The lesson we learned is clear and unequivocal.  Opposition to Sun, in either the marketplace (da Vinci) or in the OASIS ODF TC, can be quite hazzardous to your health.

Not that this comes as any surprise.  Nearly five years ago in 2002, when i first joined OASIS to work on OpenDocument, it was clear that OASIS was a big vendor consortia.  While OASIS does have an affordable "Lawn Jockey" program, Sun is clearly calling all the shots on the OASIS ODF TC.  This is why ODF is bound so tightly to the OpenOffice feature set.

Still, we thought the "Lawn Jockey" loophole could be used to balance out the interests and control of the OASIS big vendors.  We were wrong.  And it took near five years for the obvious to finally sink.  Well, "sink in" thanks to the OASIS hammer and boot.

~ge~

Game Over?  Probably.  I've been expecting Massachusetts to publicly revise the ODF mandate to include OOXML ever since Louis Gutierrez resigned in early October of 2006.  That was as clear a signal that ODF had failed in Massachusetts as anyone needed.

The only surprise is that it took the new CIO, Beth Pepoli so long to make the announcement that OOXML would be recognized as an officially recognized open XML file format going forward.

Andy UpDegrove of course does his best to downplay the significance of this announcement.  But how can this not be the deathnell for ODF? 

The failure of ODF in Massachusetts has resulted in a world wide recognition that it is impossible to implement ODF. 

This is exactly what happened to ODF mandate legislature in California.  The CIO's in California uniformly rejected both ODF legislation and Sun's hapless effort to set up an ODF Pilot Study based on what had happened in Massachusetts.  If Mass couldn't implement ODF, than they saw no reason for them to try.

And it does come down to "implementation". 

Most people think the implementation of ODF is as easy as downloading OepnOffice and converting your legacy docuemnts to ODF as they are used.  Simply fix the artifacts of conversion in process, and never look back.  OOo is free.  So what's not to like?

Well, the problem is that the world has fifteen plus years of building business processes, line of business integrated applications and other client/server integration on top of the MSOffice application suite.  These business processes are bound hard to MSOffice.

So the barrier for OpenOffice and ODF is twofold.  Any implementation of ODF must overcome both the binary documents conversion barrier, and, the MSOffice bound business process barrier.

The cost and disruption of a <font

Andy UpDegrove takes on the issue of Microsoft submitting their proprietary "XML alternative to PDF" proposal to Ecma for consideration as an international standard.  MS XML-PDF will compliment ECMA 376 (OOXML - OfficeOpenXML) which is scheduled for ISO vote in September of 2007.  Just a bit over 60 days from today.

Andy points out some interesting things; such as the "Charter" similarities between MS XML-PDF and MS OOXML submisssions to Ecma:

MS XML-PDF Scope: The goal of the Technical Committee is to produce a formal standard for office productivity applications within the Ecma International standards process which is fully compatible with the Office Open XML Formats. The aim is to enable the implementation of the Office Open XML Formats by a wide set of tools and platforms in order to foster interoperability across office productivity applications and with line-of-business systems. The Technical Committee will also be responsible for the ongoing maintenance and evolution of the standard.   Programme of Work: Produce a formal standard for an XML-based electronic paper format and XML-based page description language which is consistent with existing implementations of the format called the XML Paper Specification,…[in each case, emphasis added]

If that sounds familiar, it should, because it echoes the absolute directive of the original OOXML technical committee charter, wh

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

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~

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

Another call for the "convergence" of ODF and MS-OOXML, this time from the government technology magazine, GCN.com.

IMHO, there is a very steep technical barrier to both the harmonization and/or convergence of ODF and OOXML. The problem is that these file formats are application specific and bound respectively to OpenOffice and MSOffice feature sets and implementation models. The only way to perfect a harmonization or convergence file format effort is to dramatically change the reference applications.

With over 500 million MSOffice workgroup bound desktops in the world, changing that suite of applications is likely to break business processes with a global disruption factor that is simply unacceptable. OpenOffice on the other hand could better sustain such the needed layout engine changes, but estimates it will take 3-5 years to accomplish this.

Sun has often stated at the OASIS ODF TC (technical committee) that OpenOffice will not be bound and limited by having to mirror MSOffice features and implementation models. These arguments are often called application innovation rights.

In the past year alone, there have been no less than five ODF iX "interoperability enhancement" proposals submitted to the OASIS ODF TC members for discussion. The iX proposals are designed to solve the problem of high fidelity "round trip" conversion of MSOffice binary and xml documents with OpenOffice ODF documents.

Sadly, Sun and the other ODF application vendors fought and thoroughly defeated every aspect of these proposals even though the first three iX proposals were signed off on by Massachusetts ITD, and considered vital to the successful implementation of ODF there. ODF of course proved impossible to implement in Massachusetts. And without the iX interoperability enhancements, it is impossible for ODF plug-ins for MSOffice to perfect the high fidelity "round trip" conversion of existing doc

The battle to break ODF away from being limited to only those features supported by Sun's OpenOffice/StarOffice continues.  This eMail thread sets the stage for the upcoming presentation of the metadata proposal to the ODF mainline TC.

SEction 1.4.3 of the metadata proposal is a list of existign ODF elements that developers can apply RDF to.  And the reason given fo rwhy the list is so constrained?  Svante Schubert, co-editor and Sun employee has claimed on more than a few occassions that the reason for limiting the lis tis that Sun will only support RDF on those particular ODF elements in OpenOffice/StarOffice.  Therefore, everyone is similarly limited!

I kid you not. 
~ge~