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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

ODF officially died on February 28, 2007, at the Advanced eGovernment Conference in Berlin.  Hellow ODEF

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

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

Uh?  The ODF failure in Massachusetts doesn't count as evidence that ODF was not designed to be compatible with existing MS documents or interoperable with existing MSOffice applications?

And it's not just the da Vinci plug-in that failed to implement ODF in Massachusetts!  Nine months later Sun delivered their ODF plug-in for MSOffice to Massachusetts.  The next day, Massachusetts threw in the towel, officially recognizing MS-OOXML (and the MS-OOXML Compatibility Pack plug-in) as a standard format for the future.

Worse, the Massachusetts recognition of MS-OOXML came just weeks before the September 2nd ISO vote on MS-OOXML.  Why not wait a few more weeks?  After all, Massachusetts had conducted a year long pilot study to implement ODF using ODF desktop office sutie alternatives to MSOffice.  Not only did the rip out and replace approach fail, but they were also unable to integrate OpenOffice ODF desktops into existing MSOffice bound workgroups.

The year long pilot study was followed by another year long effort trying to implement ODF using the plug-in approach.  That too failed with Sun's ODF plug-in the final candidate to prove the difficulty of implementing ODF in situations where MSOffice workgroups dominate.

California and the EU-IDABC were closely watching the events in Massachusetts, as was most every CIO in government and private enterprise.  Reasoning that if Massachusetts was unable to implement ODF, California CIO's totally refused IBM and Sun's effort to get a pilot study underway.

Across the pond, in the aftermath of Massachusetts CIO Louis Guiterrez resignation on October 4th, 2006, the EU-IDABC set about developing their own file format, ODEF.  The Open Document Exchange Format splashed into the public discussion on February 28th, 2007 at the "Open Document Exchange Workshop" held in Berlin, Germany.

Meanwhile, the Sun ODF plug-in is fl

Wow! The ODF peasants with pitchforks are have taken to the streets, and ISO document expert Alex Brown is taking them on. The volumes of traffic generated by any discussion of the ISO XML document wars continues to amaze. It's very one sided though. The basic problem seems to be that ISO has accepted two XML document format standards, OOXML and ODF, with OOXML being held to a higher set of expectations than ODF. Alex would do well if he could step back from the OOXML - ODF war, and move the discussion to something like the theoretical IDABC ODEF: the European "Open Document Exchange Formats" design. With ODEF as single set of XML format requirements against which both OOXML and ODF can be measured and compared, Alex might be able to neutralize the heated emotions of angry Open Source - Open Standards - Open Web supporters, who mistakenly think ODF measures up to ODEF expectations and requirements. Trying to compare ODF to OOXML isn't getting us anywhere. At some point, we have to ask ourselves what is it that we want from a standardized XML document format. Having participated in both the Massachusetts pilot study and the California pilot discussions, i have to say that the public expectations were that XML formats would have a basic set of characteristics: open markup; structured separation of content, presentation and logic; high level interoperability (exchange), and Web ready. These are basic "must have" expectations. XML formats were expected to be "better" than 1998 HTML-CSS. But when we apply the basic set of expectations, todays HTML+ (webkit HTML5, CSS4, SVG/Canvas, JS, JS Libs) turns out to be a far better format. Where the XML formats really fall off the wagon are the interoperability and Web ready expectations. For the life of me i don't see how anyone can compare ODF or OOXML interoperability with that of HTML+. And of course, HTML+ is the native language/for

Jesper Lund Stocholm was kind enough to point out that, once again, GrokLaw is stoking the fires of the XML document wars. This time PJ takes on Alex Brown, of the ISO SC34 document standards group convenor. And Alex responds ... and responds ... and responds. of course, the attacks keep coming! I left Jesper a rather lengthy comment at: http://tinyurl.com/document-wars

There must be something in the air.  The end user inspired idea that applications should be able to exchange documents perfectly preserving the presentation (man percieved appearance as opposed to machine interpreted layout-rendering) is gaining a rabid momentum.

Yesterday it was the Intel ODF Test Suite results falling into the hands of Microsoft, who is now using the results to argue that OpenOffice doesn't fully support - implement ODF.  The Intel ODF Test Suite is notable in that the test is near 100% about comparative  "presentation" :: an object to object ocmparison of a KOffice document to an OpenOffice rendering of that document and vice versa.

Today we have the EU IDABC hosting a continent wide conference discussing the same  issue :: the "exchange" of ODF documents.  They've even gone so far as to coin a new term; ODEF - OpenDocument Exchange Format!

This morning i also recieved an invite to join a new OASIS discussion list, "The DocStandards Interoperability List".  The issue?  The converision and exchange of documents between different standards.

And then there is the cry for help from Sophie Gautier.  This is an eMail that has worked it's way up to both the OASIS ODF Adoption TC and OASIS ODF Mainline TC discussion lists.  The problem is that Microsoft is presenting the Intel ODF Test Results to EU govenrments.  Sophie needs a response, and finds the truth hard to fathom.

Last week the legendary document processing expert Patrick Durusau jumped into the ODF "Lists" embroglio with his concern that the public has a different idea about document exchange - interoperability than the ODF TC.  A very different idea.  The public expects a visual preservation of the documents presentation qual

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 chuckleheads at Sun's StarOffice/OpenOffice Hamburg office respond to Florian's comprehensive lis tof suggestions to greatly improve ODF interoperability. 

Make no mistake about it. Microsoft is absolutely right about three things: .... Compatibility with existing file formats is not an ODF concern. .... Sun controls the OASIS ODF TC. .... Sun makes certain that ODF is bound tightly to the OpenOffice feature set. Sun's view of interoperability is that of a one way street. Documents can be converted into ODF-OOo/SO, but they are guaranteed to break during any kind of document routing or round tripping. This is also the reason why the Sun "external" plugin for MSOffice fails. One way conversion simply isn't enough to crack the hold MSOffice has on critical day to day business processes. The only way to that is with a conversion process able to maintain high level fidelity while round tripping. As the EU IDABC has figured out, the ODF-OOo/SO specification is loaded with interoperability break points. That's why they are turning to ODEF, which can be seen as a version of ODF that is truly application independent and optimized for interoperability. ~ge~

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

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~

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

My response to Tiffany's eWEEK article, Office file formats fail to communicate, and the GCN article, Can't we just get along?. good articles both.
My comments are the first time i've responded directly to Sun's proprietary eXtensions allegation. The truth is that we refused to release the da Vinci plug-in with the must have iX "interoperability enhancements". Sun of course totally opposed our iX proposals, insuring that ODF would fail in Massachusetts, California, Denmark, Belgium and with the EU-IDABC.
Nice work Sun! Yeah, that's the ticket. Limit ODF's interoperability so much so that it is impossible to implement ODF, and the world willl beat a path to your door.
Right!
~ge~ ~ge~

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

This is the full response to Swapnil's seven questions.  It's long.  But we hold back nothing!  Thanks again to Marbux.  He is a peach!

This discussion is part of a much larger response to a series of questions from a LiNUX magazine in India.  The mighty Marbux helped answer the questions, so please don't mistake his eloquence for my customary thundering.

Incredible comment by Marbux!  With one swipe he takes out both Ecma 376 and ODF. 

Microsoft has written a letter claiming that they will support ODF in MSOffice, but only if ISO approves Ecma 376 as a second office suite XML file format standard.  ODF was approved by ISO nearly a year ago.

Criticizing Ecma 376 is easy.  It was designed to meet the needs of  a proprietary application, MSOffice, and, to meet the needs of the emerging MS Vista Stack of applications that spans desktop to server to device to web platforms.  It's filled with MS platform dependencies that make it impossibly non interoperable with anything not fully compliant with Microsoft owned API's.

Criticizing ODF however is another matter entirely.  Marbux points to the extremely poor ODF interoperability record.  If MOOXML (not Ecma 376 - since that is a read only file format) is tied to vendor-application specific MSOffice, then ODF is similarly tied to the many vendor versions of OpenOffice/StarOffice.

The "many vendor" aspect of OpenOffice is somewhat of a scam.  The interoperability that ODF shares across Novell Office, StarOffice, IBM WorkPlace, Red Office, and NeoOffice is entirely based on the fact that these iterations of OpenOffice are based on a single code base controlled 100% by Sun.  Which is exactly the case with MSOffice.  With this important exception - MOOXML (not Ecma 376) is interoperable across the entire Vista Stack!

The Vista Stack is comprised of Exchange/SharePoint, MS Live, MS Dynamics, MS SQL Server, MS Internet Server, MS Grove, MS Collaboration Server, and MS Active Directory.   Behind these applications sits a an important foundation of shared assets: MOOXML, Smart Documents, XAML and .NET 3.0.  All of which can be worked into third party, Stack dependent applications through the Visual Studio .NET IDE.

Here are some thoughts i wou