Matusow's Blog : Open XML, ODF, PDF, and XPS in Office - 0 views
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Paul Merrell on 22 May 08Whoopee! Everyone gets to add vendor-specific extensions to standards like ODF to enable some quality of Sharepoint/Exchange/Outlook interop in their apps, just as soon as Microsoft gets around to offering adequate specfications. History teaches that may be a very long time, and of course the relevant Microsoft patent RAND terms apply, because the disclosures are made outside the context of a standard that requires otherwise. And of course the OASIS RF on RAND policy does not forbid new ODF features subject to RAND terms and the policy is silent on the subject of vendor-specific extensions. Methinks FOSS may have just lost its "open standard" ODF.
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Office is NOT implementing ODF 1.0 from ISO. That spec is not representative of the marketplace today, it is not what is implemented in OpenOffice, it is not what IBM is using for Symphony, and it is not referenced in the Massachusetts ETRM policy.
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As I have been arguing, there are no full featured implementations in existence of the ISO/IEC:26300 OpenDocument standard and every government that has adopted the international standard as its own internal standard or procurement specification is subject to legal challenge because of the lack of implementations.
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In my opinion, the continued interest in innovation presented by those solutions will speak much louder than the formats themselves.
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You can have standards and you can have innovation. But you can't have interop if you embrace and extend standards. The need for stable, fully-specified formats for document interchange purposes apparently is not part of Microsoft's plan. Scant wonder, neither ODF nor OOXML is designed for document interchange among competing vendors' apps. They are both standards designed to allow a single vendor to maintain dominant market share among implementors of those standards. Microsoft will soon diominate market share in both so-called "standards." The embrace of a standard is necessary to extend and extinguish it.
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While this is a big deal announcement for the Office product team (check out Doug Mahugh's blog), my take on it is predictably focused on the longer-term interoperability factors.
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the API that will allow ANY document format to register itself with Office and be set as the default will be made available as planned. Additionally, the work with DAISY and other specialized document formats will move forward as well.
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The documentation of client/server protocols for Office-related technologies (such as SharePoint and Exchange/Outlook communications) will remain available to the public.