So I'm disappointed. And not just on behalf of open documents, but on behalf of the CIOs of this country, who are now caught between a rock and a hard place, without a paddle to defend themselves with if they won't to do anything new, innovative and necessary, if a major vendor's ox might be gored in consequence.
After the impressive lobbying assault mounted over the past six months against open document format legislation, I expect you won't be hearing of many state IT departments taking the baton back from their legislators.
And who can blame them? If they tried, it wouldn't be likely to be anything as harmless as an open document format that would bite them in the butt.
Group items tagged
Between a rock and a hard place: ODF & CIO's - Where's the Love? - 0 views
-
Andy Updegrove weighs in on the wave of ODF legislative failures first decribed by Eric Lai and Gregg Keizer compiled the grim data in a story they posted at ComputerWorld last week titled Microsoft trounces pro-ODF forces in state battles over open document formats.
Andy believes that it is the failure of state legislators to do their job that accounts for these failures. He provides three reasons for this being a a failure of legislative duty. The most interesting of which is claim that legislators should be protecting CIO's from the ravages of aggressve vendors.
The sad truth is that state CIO's are not going to put their careers on the line for a file format after what happened in Massachusetts.
Andy puts it this way, "
And second, in a situation like this, it is a cop out for legislatures to claim that they should defer to their IT departments to make decisions on open formats. You don't have to have that good a memory to recall why these bills were introduced in the first place: not because state IT departments aren't a good place to make such decisions, but because successive State CIOs in Massachusetts had been so roughly handled in trying to make these very decisions that no state CIO in his or her right mind was likely to volunteer to be the next sacrificial victim.
As both Peter Quinn and Louis Gutierrez both found out, trying to make responsible standards-related decisions whe
Plan B: The NO ViSTA Mandates, and the failure of ISO/IEC - 0 views
-
Plan B: The "NO ViSTA" Mandates: the failure of Anti Trust Laws and International Trade Agreements to Stop The Great Monopolist, Microsoft A series of surprising government mandate announcements rolled out in the immediate aftermath of the ISO/IEC decision to fast track Ecma 376 otherwise known as Microsoft Office Open XML (MOOX). The three articles commented on here are all from Information Week, who has done yeoman work concerning the OpenDocument - MOOX controversy that has so upset Microsoft. Now the mighty monopolist can taste victory, with fast track approval of MOOX certain, and ISO/IEC in the bag. Incredibly the company that escaped a Court ordered death sentence by purchasing what amounts to a presidential pardon. They even avoided the stink of their own lobbyist and henchman Jack Abramoff, and his motley crew of Ralph Reed and Grover Nyquist operatives. Now they are well on their way towards purchasing an International Standard. So much for Plan A. Time for Plan B, the "NO ViSTA" mandate.
-
Okay. I've combined my three comments into a single page. Sadly Diigo does not offer spell checking. My apologies to all. Hoepfully this will be a better read.
Microsoft Suffers Latest Blow As NIST Bans Windows Vista - Technology News by Informati... - 0 views
-
In a new setback to Microsoft's public sector business, the influential National Institute of Standards and Technology has banned the software maker's Windows Vista operating system from its internal computing networks, according to an agency document obtained by InformationWeek.
-
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
Study: Open Document Format made gains in '07 | InfoWorld | News | 2008-01-04 | By Chri... - 0 views
-
"It's one thing to recognize ODF as a matter of policy in an enterprise architecture framework and another to mandate its use," he added. "Proprietary formats in the public sphere are going out of style and becoming unacceptable globally."
-
That's right! Which is why announcing a preference for HTML, XHTML, PDF and ODF is meaningless. A mandate for ODF RATHER THAN OOXML is the only way ODF can succeed as an open standard.
-
ODF and OOXML - The Final Act - 0 views
-
The format war between Microsoft’s Open Office XML (OOXML) and the open source OpenDocument Format (ODF) has flared up again, right before the looming second OOXML ISO vote in March.
-
“ISO has a policy that, wherever possible, there should only be one standard to maximise interoperability and functionality. We have an international standard for digital documentation, ODF,” IBM’s local government programs executive Kaaren Koomen told AustralianIT.
-
ODF has garnered some criticism for being a touch limited in scope, however, one of its strengths is that it has already been accepted as a worldwide ISO standard. Microsoft’s format on the other hand, has been criticised for being partially proprietary, and even a sly attempt by the software giant to hedge its bets and get in on open standards while keeping as many customers locked into its solutions as possible.
-
A "touch limited in scope"? Youv'e got to be kidding. ODF was not defined to be compatible with the billions of MSOffice binary (BIN) documents. Nor was it designed to further interoperability with MSOffice.
Given that there are over 550 million MSOffice desktops, representing upwards of 95% of all desktop productivity environments, this discrepancy of design would seem to be a bit more than a touch limited in scope!
Many would claim that this limitation was due to to factors: first that Microsoft refused to join the OASIS ODF TC, which would have resulted in an expanded ODF designed to meet the interoperability needs of the great herd of 550 million users; and second, that Microsoft refused to release the secret binary blueprints.
Since it turns out that both IBM and Sun have had access to the secret binary blueprints since early 2006, and in the two years since have done nothing to imptove ODF interop and conversion fidelity, this second claim doesn't seem to hold much water.
The first claim that Microsoft didn't participate in the OASIS ODF process is a bit more interesting. If you go back to the first OASIS ODF Technical Committee meeting, December 16th, 2002, you'll find that there was a proposal to ammend the proposed charter to include the statemnt that ODF (then known as Open Office XML) be compatible with existing file formats, including those of MSOffice. The "MSOffice" reference was of course not included because ODF sought to be application, platform and vendor independent. But make no mistake, the discussion that day in 2002 was about compatibility and the conversion of the legacy BIN's into ODF.
The proposal to ammend the charter was tabled. Sun objected, claiming that people would interpret the statement as a direct reference to the BIN's, clouding the charter's purpose of application, platform and vendor independence. They proposed that the charter ammendment b -
Will harmonization work? I don't think so. The problem is that the DIN group is trying to harmonize two application specific formats. OpenOffice has one way of implementing basic document structures, and MSOffice another. These differences are directly reflected in the related formats, ODF and OOXML. Any attempts to harmonize ODF and OOXML will require that the applications, OpenOffice and MSOffice, be harmonized! There is no other way of doing this unless the harmonized spec has two different methods for implementing basic structures like lists, tables, fields, sections and page dynamics. Not to mention the problems of feature disparities. If the harmonized spec has two different implementation models for basic structures, interoeprability will suffer enormously. And interoperability is after all the prupose of the standardization effort. That brings us to a difficult compromise. Should OpenOffice compromise it's "innovative" features and methods in favor of greater interoperability with MSOffice and billions of binary documents? Let me see, 100 million OpenOffice installs vs. 550 MSOffice installs bound to workgroup-workflow business processes - many of which are critical to day to day business operations? Sun and IBM have provided the anser to this question. They are not about to compromise on OpenOffice innovation! They believe that since their applications are free, the cost of ODF mandated "rip out and replace" is adequately offset. Events in Massachusetts prove otherwise! On July 2nd, 2007, Sun delivered to Massachusetts the final version of their ODF plug-in for MSOffice. That night, after reviewing and testing the 135 critical documents, Massachusetts made a major change to their ETRM web site. They ammended the ETRM to fully recognize OOXML as an acceptable format standard going forward. The Massachusetts decision to overturn th
-
- ...1 more annotation...
-
Correcto mundo! There should be only one standard to maximise interoeprability and functionality. But ODF is application specific to the way OpenOffice works. It was not designed from a clean slate. Nor was the original 2002 OpenOffice XML spec designed as an open source effort! Check the OOo source code if you doubt this claim. The ONLY contributors to Open Office XML were Sun employees! What the world needs is in fact a format standard designed to maximise interoperability and functionality. This requires a total application-platofrm-vendor independence that neither ODF or OOXML can claim. The only format that meets these requirements is the W3C's family of HTML-XML formats. These include advancing Compound Docuemnt Framework format components such as (X)HTML-5, CSS-3, XForms, SVG and SMiL.. The W3C's CDF does in fact meet the markeplace needs of a universal format that is open, unencumbered and totally application, platform and vendor independent. The only trick left for CDF is proving that legacy desktop applications can actually implement conversions from existing in-memory-binary-representations to CDF without loss of information.
XML.com: Standard Data Vocabularies Unquestionably Harmful - 0 views
-
At the onset of XML four long years ago, I commenced a jeremiad against Standard Data Vocabularies (SDVs), to little effect. Almost immediately after the light bulb moment -- you mean, I can get all the cool benefits of web in HTML and create my own tags? I can call the price of my crullers <PricePerCruller>, right beside beside <PricePerDonutHole> in my menu? -- new users realized the problem: a browser knows how to display a heading marked as <h1> bigger and more prominently than a lowlier <h3>. Yet there are no standard display expectations or semantics for the XML tags which users themselves create. That there is no specific display for <Cruller> and, especially, not as distinct from <DonutHole> has been readily understood to demonstrate the separation of data structure expressed in XML from its display, which requires the application of styling to accomodate the fixed expectations of the browser. What has not been so readily accepted is that there should not be a standard expectation for how a data element, as identified by its markup, should be processed by programs doing something other than simple display.
-
-
ODF and OOXML are contending to become the Standard Data Vocabulary for desktop office suite XML markup. Sun and Microsoft are proposing the standardization of OpenOffice and MSOffice custom defined XML tags for which there are no standard display expectations. The display expectations must therefore be very carefully described: i.e. the semantics of display fully provided.
In this article Walter Perry is pointing out the dangers of SDV's being standardized for specific purposes without also having well thought out and fully specified display semantics. In ODF - OOXML speak, we would call display presentation, or layout, or "styles".
The separation of content and presentation layer of each is woefully underspecified!
Given that the presnetation layers of both ODF and OOXML is directly related to how OpenOffice and MSOffice layout engines work, the semantics of display become even more important. For MSOffice to implement an "interoperable" version of OpenOffice ODF, MSOffice must be able to mimic the OpenOffice layout engine methods. Methods which are of course quite differeent from the internal layout model of MSOffice. This differential results in a break down of conversion fidelity, And therein lies the core of the ODF interoeprability dilemma!
-
-
There have also emerged a few "horizontal" data vocabularies, intended for expressing business communication in more general terms. One of these is the eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), about which more below. Most recently, governments and governmental organizations have begun to suggest and eventually mandate particular SDVs for required filings, a development which expands what troubles me about these vocabularies by an order of magnitude.
- ...5 more annotations...
Infocon 4 - DOD bars use of HTML e-mail, Outlook Web Access - 0 views
-
Wow, Outlook and Web OutLook eMail hit Infocon 4 and are banned by the DOD. The MS Exchange/ShrePoint Hub has been on a tear, with governments worldwide leading the way. And now this? Government mandates to use ODF on the desktop did not stop governmen
-
Wow, Outlook and Web OutLook eMail hit Infocon 4 and are banned by the DOD. The MS Exchange/ShrePoint Hub has been on a tear, with governments worldwide leading the way. And now this? Government mandates to use ODF on the desktop did not stop governmen
-
Wow, Outlook and Web OutLook eMail hit Infocon 4 and are banned by the DOD. The MS Exchange/ShrePoint Hub has been on a tear, with governments worldwide leading the way. And now this? Government mandates to use ODF on the desktop did not stop governmen
FAA May Ditch Microsoft's Windows Vista And Office For Google And Linux Combo - Technol... - 0 views
-
Bowen's compatibility concerns, combined with the potential cost of upgrading the FAA's 45,000 workers to Microsoft's next-generation desktop environment, could make the moratorium permanent. "We're considering the cost to deploy [Windows Vista] in our organization. But when you consider the incompatibilities, and the fact that we haven't seen much in the way of documented business value, we felt that we needed to do a lot more study," said Bowen. Because of Google Apps' sudden entry into the desktop productivity market
-
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
Game Over! Latest Draft of Mass. ETRM Includes OOXML - 0 views
-
this new draft includes Microsoft's OOXML formats as an acceptable "open format."
-
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
But can they implement ODF? South African Government Adopts ODF (and not OOXML) - 0 views
-
That said, it goes on to acknowledge that “there are standards which we are obliged to adopt for pragmatic reasons which do not necessarily fully conform to being open in all respects.
-
So, South Africa was watching closely the failed effort in Massachusetts to implement ODF? And now they are determined to make it work? Good thing they left themselves a "pragmatic" out; "there are standards which we are obliged to adopt for pragmatic reasons which do not necessarily fully conform to being open in all respects."
Massachusetts spent a full year on an ODF implementation Pilot Study only to come to the inescapable conclusion that they couldn't implement ODF without a high fidelity "round trip" capable ODF plug-in for MSOffice. In May of 2006, Pilot Study in hand, Massachusetts issued their now infamous RFi, "the Request for Information" concerning the feasibility of an ODF plug-in clone of the MS-OOXML Compatibility Pack plug-in for MSOffice applications. At the time there was much gnashing of teeth and grinding of knuckles in the ODf Community, but the facts were clear. The lead dog hauling the ODf legislative mandate sleigh could not make it without ODf interoperability with MSOffice. Meaning, the rip out and replace of MSOffice was no longer an option. For Massachusetts to successfully implement ODf, there had to be a high level of ODf compatibility with existing MS documents, and ODf application interoperability with existing MS applications. Although ODf was not designed to meet these requirements, the challenge could not have been any more clear. Changes in ODf would have to be made. So what happened?
Over a year later,
IBM In Denial Over Lotus Notes - Forbes.com - 0 views
-
The marketing folks in IBM's Lotus division are starting to sound like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who insists he's winning a fight even as he loses both arms and legs: "'Tis but a scratch," the Black Knight declares after one arm is lopped off. "Just a flesh wound," he says after losing the other. "I'm invincible!" The same goes for IBM's (nyse: IBM - news - people ) Lotus, which keeps declaring victory even as Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) carves it up.
-
Want to know the real reason why IBM and Microsoft are going at it hammer and tong over document formats? Here it is. Lotus Notes is getting clobbered by the Exchange/SharePoint juggernaut.
The article is old, but the point is well taken. Today the Exchange/SharePoint juggernaut i sover 65% marketshare. IBM is struggling to protect the Lotus Stack against an impossible foe.
The thing is, Microsoft E/S will ALWAYS have better integration with the MSOffice - Outlook desktop monopoly base (550 M and counting). Most of this "integration" is due to the high fidelity exchange of documents in Microsoft's proprietary XML mode known as MS-OOXML. Forget the charade that MS-OOXML is an open standard called Ecma 376. MSOffice and infamous XML Compatibility Pack Plug-in do not implement Ecma 376. The Pack implements MS-OOXML.
One key differnece between MS-OOXML and Ecma 376 us that MS-OOXML is infused with the Smart Tags components. These are for metadata, data binding, data extraction, workflow, intelligent routing and on demand re purposing of docuemnt components. In effect, MS-OOXML :: Smart Tags combines with proprietary .NET Libraries, XAML and soon enough Silverlight to replace the entire span of W3C Open Internet Technologies.
Can you say "HTML"?
Okay, so why does this matter to IBM and the future of Lotus Notes?
The end game of the document format wars is that of a stack model that converges desktop, server, devices and web information systems. The MS Stack uses MS-OOXML as the primary transport of accelerated content/data/multi media streams running across the MS Stack of desktop, server, device and web application systems. It's the one point of extreme interoperability.
It's also a barrier that no non MS applicatio or service can penetrate or interoperate with except on terms Microsoft dictates.
A Closer Look At Those "Single Standard" Policy Mandates : Oliver Bell's weblog - 0 views
-
2. Achieving interoperability is rarely as straight forward as selecting a single technical standard, and many of the policy positions around the world recognize this. Applications need to be designed to work together, groups need a solid framework for collaboration and the standards need to be ready to support these two objectives.
Open XML blogging in 2007 - Doug Mahugh - Site Home - MSDN Blogs - 0 views
-
At the height of the Document Wars, Doug Mahugh posted this year end, month to month, blow by blow list of blog assaults. I stumbled upon Doug's collection following up on a recent (December 20th, 2010) eMail comment from Karl. Karl had been reading the infamous "Hypocrisy 101" blog written by Jesper Lundstocholm: http://bit.ly/hgCVLV Recently i was researching cloud-computing, following the USA Federal Government dictate that cloud-computing initiatives should get top priority first-consideration for all government agency purchases. The market is worth about $8 Billion, with Microsoft BPOS and Google Apps totally dominating contract decisions in the early going. The loser looks to be IBM Lotus Notes since they seem to have held most of systems contracts. So what does this have to do with Hypocrisy 101? To stop Microsoft BPOS, IBM had to get a government mandate for ODF and NOT OOXML. The reason is now clear. Microsoft BPOS is dominating the early rounds of government cloud-computing contracts because BPOS is "compatible" with the legacy MSOffice desktop productivity environment. Lotus symphony is not. Nor is OpenOffice or any other ODF Office Suite. This compatibility between BPOS and legacy MSOffice productivity environments means less disruption and re engineering of business process costs as governments make the generational shift from desktop "client/server" productivity to a Web productivity platform - otherwise known as "cloud-computing". IMHO, neither ODF or OOXML were designed for this cloud-computing :: Web productivity platform future. The "Web" aspect of cloud-computing means that HTML-HTTP-JavaScript technologies will prevail in this new world of cloud-computing. It's difficult, but not impossible, to convert ODF and OOXML to HTML+ (HTML5, CSS3, Canvas/SVG, JavaScript). This broad difficulty means that cloud-computing does not have a highly compatible productivity authoring environment designed to meet the transition needs
IBM undeterred by setbacks to ODF adoption | InfoWorld | News | 2007-06-08 | By China M... - 0 views
-
You might think the steady defeat of bills in several U.S. states to mandate the use of free interoperable file formats might dampen the spirits of IBM, one of the prime supporters of ODF (OpenDocument Format). Far from it, said IBM's Bob Sutor, who sees the recent news as par for the course in the evolution of any open standard.
-
Thus spoke the little Dutch Boy, his finger in the dike, his confidence large. Meanwhile, people with half a brain were heading for the high ground. California, Texas, Massachusetts and the EU IDABC come to mind. Hello bob! Can you say ODEF?
The End of ODF & OpenXML - Hello ODEF! - 0 views
-
Short slide deck of Barbara Held's February 28th, 2007 EU IDABC presentation. She introduces ODEF, the "Open Document Exchange Format" which is designed to replace both ODF and OpenOfficeXML. ComputerWorld recently ran a story about the end of ODF, as they covered the failure of six "legislative" initiatives designed to mandate ODF as the official file format. While the political treachery surrounding these initiatives is a story in and of itself, the larger story, the one that has world wide reverberations, wasn't mentioned. The larger ODF story is that ODF vendors are losing the political battles because they are unable to provide government CIO's with real world solutions. Here are three quotes from the California discussion that really say it all: "Interoperability isn't just a feature. It's the basic requirement for getting your XML file format and applications considered"..... "The challenge is that of migrating our existing documents and business processes to XML. The question is which XML? OpenDocument or OpenXML?" ....... "Under those conditions, is it even possible to implement OpenDocument?" ....... Bill Welty, CIO California Air Resource Board wondering if there was a way to support California legislative proposal AB-1668. This is hardly the first time the compatibility-interoperability issue has challenged ODf. Massachusetts spent a full year on a pilot study testing the top tier of ODF solutions: OpenOffice, StarOffice, Novell Office and IBM's WorkPlace (prototype). The results were a disaster for ODF. So much so that the 300 page pilot study report and accompanying comments wiki have never seen the light of day. In response to the disastrous pilot study, Massachusetts issued their now infamous RFi; a "request for information" about whether it's possible or not to write an ODF plugin for MSOffice applications. The OpenDocument Foundation responded to the RFi with our da Vinci plugin. The quick descriptio
Microsoft's 'Men in Black' kill Florida open standards legislation - 0 views
-
Rep. Homan and his son Doug tried to add their little open standards boost to SB 1974 as quietly as possible. They wanted the modified bill to at least get through its first committee approval before anyone spotted what they had done. But Microsoft's Florida lobbyists were on the ball and spotted it almost immediately. "It was like the movie 'Men in Black,'" says Rep. Homan. "Three Microsoft lobbyists, all wearing black suits." Another lobbyist (unaffiliated with Microsoft) who would speak only "on background" laughed at the "Men in Black" description. "I know those guys," he said. "They even wear sunglasses like in that movie. They are the 'Men in Black' of Florida lobbying, for sure." A legislative staff employee who would lose his job if he were quoted here by name said, "By the time those lobbyists were done talking, it sounded like ODF (Open Document Format, the free and open format used by OpenOffice.org and other free software) was proprietary and the Microsoft format was the open and free one." Two other legislative employees (who must also remain anonymous) told Linux.com that the Microsoft lobbyists implied that elected representatives who voted against Microsoft's interests might have a little more trouble raising campaign funds than they would if they helped the IT giant achieve its Florida goals.
-
It seems Microsoft has blocked another attempt by concerned legilators to mandate open file formats for governemnt information. Good read with some great quotes. The legislation passage itself is extremely well written.
O(blog N) » California's Open-Document Bill: AB 1668 - 0 views
-
I have an email apparently originating from Microsoft asking people to support their opposition to California A.B. 1668 - Open Document Format, Open Source. by writing to the California Assemblymen involved in this bill. This email has contact information for the Assemblymen involved, and a lot of information about their position regarding ODF.
-
+1 ODF in California. A good summary of the issues.
Microsoft playing three card monte with XML conversion, with Sun as the "outside man" w... - 0 views
-
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
-
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
ODF and OOXML must converge!! AFNOR, the French Standards Body, announces proposals for... - 0 views
-
AFNOR has recommended to ISO adopting an approach enabling it to guarantee – using ISO processes – mid-term convergence between Open Document Format (ODF) and OfficeOpen XML (OOXML), as well as the stabilisation of OOXML on a short-term basis.
-
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. 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.
-
Here's the meat of the French convergence proposal.
-
-
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
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