Skip to main content

Home/ OpenDocument/ Group items tagged Microsoft

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Gary Edwards

BetaNews | ECMA to Begin Drafting XPS as Alternative Standard to PDF - 0 views

www.betanews.com/...1183144526

shared by Gary Edwards on 30 Jun 07 - Cached
  • "Be that as it may," Updegrove continues, "perpetuating one monopolistic market position after another seems wholly incompatible with the role of a global standards body, tasked with protecting the interests of all stakeholders. If OOXML, and now Microsoft XML Paper Specification, each sail through ECMA and are then adopted by ISO/IEC JTC1, then it may be time to wonder whether the time has come to declare 'game over' for open standards."
  • Gary Edwards on 30 Jun 07
     
    More on Andy UpDegrove's "Game Over for open standards" comment.
Gary Edwards

BetaNews | Microsoft Will Support ODF If It Doesn't 'Restrict Choice Among Formats' - 0 views

www.betanews.com/...1181922127

ecma376 odf officeopenxml ooxml opendocument

shared by Gary Edwards on 23 Jun 07 - Cached
  • None of this is to say that OpenDocument is perfect. Far from it. OpenDocument at present is crippled from an interoperability standpoint. I'm a member of the OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee and I think the resistance of the big vendors to fixing the interoperability warts is simply outrageous, particularly because they are fairly trivial changes. But the advancement of software users' interests are not advanced by painting OOXML as other than deeply flawed. It is vendor-specific and far from "open." The lesser of the two evils is clearly OpenDocument, which is at least open even if not yet interoperable. The sooner folks can start discussing practical methods of convergence, the better. See e.g., http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=27956 That set of slides summarizing a conference of some 20 European national governments' IT types says a lot more about the future of office document formats than Mr. Asellus has to offer.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 23 Jun 07
       
      Marbux hits a homerun! Right ON!
Gary Edwards

Is Open Source Dying? - 0 views

www.eweek.com/...0,1895,2148866,00.asp

iso linux odf ooxml open-source xml

shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Jun 07 - Cached
  • But behind the scenes, things are not quite as rosy. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which lived up to its left-leaning credentials (didn't Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously upbraid open-source proponents for being Communists?) broke important ground by mandating that state agencies switch to open-source platforms. There's just one problem: They can't seem to manage the transition. Sources close to the situation tell me that former state CIO Peter Quinn's resignation happened at least in part because of delaying tactics by vendors who publicly support open source but do their best to scuttle it behind the scenes.
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Jun 07
     
    Interesting topic which i've covered more fully with the OpenStack Blog : Connecting the Dots
Gary Edwards

InfoWorld Tech Watch | InfoWorld | Messaging standard OK'd for Web services | June 21, ... - 0 views

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

shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Jun 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 21 Jun 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

Ballmer threatens Linux and open source with patents again - Flock - 0 views

www.linux-watch.com/...NS3513440381.html

shared by Gary Edwards on 10 Oct 07 - Cached
  • To handle IP conflicts between open source and proprietary software organizations, Ballmer wants to see what he calls "an intellectual property interoperability framework between the two worlds." He did not give any specifics on what such a framework would look like.
  • Gary Edwards on 10 Oct 07
     
    You've got to be kidding me!  Balmer wants to establish "an intellectual property interoperability framework" that open source communities would honor?  I think that's called "open standards" implemented according to the ISO, W3C and International Trade Agreement Interoperability conformance requirements.

    Why doesn't Microsoft start with an honest effort to comply with where the rest of the world has long been?

    ~ge~

Gary Edwards

Open Malaysia: Rick Jelliffe - myths debunked? - 0 views

www.openmalaysiablog.com/...rick_jelliffe_m.html

shared by Gary Edwards on 17 Jun 07 - Cached
  • Additionally, ODF was not ratified with SVG, MathML, XLink, Zip and other W3C standards all together at the same time. Instead the prior W3C standards were already well established and approved in their own right and in their own time with the relevant experts of their specific domains vetting it. MSOOXML also incorporates proposed "standards" which failed in the marketplace and now is offered a "backdoor" to standardisation process by piggy backing this nebulous specification. (See VML vs SVG, and MathML vs Microsoft Office MathML) So there is a myth being built that ODF and its constituent parts are just as large as MSOOXML, and therefore MSOOXML is OK. I for one would rather MSOOXML be even larger; to cater for unknown tags like "lineWrapLikeWord6" or a Macro specification. However what troubles me is that the special relationship between Ecma and ISO should be abused with the fast tracking of this large specification.
  • Gary Edwards on 17 Jun 07
     
    Yoon Kit brings up an interesting point about the ISO consideration of MSOOXML (Ecma 376);  ISO approval of MSOOXML would backdoor a good many MS proprietary technologies that compete directly with W3C XML standards.

    YK gives the example of MS VML, which competes with the W3C SVG standard used by ODF.  He could have also cited that legacy versions of MSOffice (98-2003) make use of VML as the default graphic format, while MSOffice 2003 9with XML plugin) and MSOffice 2007 (by default) implements DrawingML as the replacement for VML. 

    So, would ISO approval of Ecma 376 backdoor VML and DrawingML in as "standards"?  Or MSOffice MathML?   One has to wonder since they are essential to MSOOXML.

Gary Edwards

antitrust_eu_us.pdf (application/pdf Object) - Flock - 0 views

ec.europa.eu/...antitrust_eu_us.pdf

anti-trust eu interoperability microsoft

shared by Gary Edwards on 27 Sep 07 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 27 Sep 07
     

Gary Edwards

Bangkok Post : Database - 0 views

www.bangkokpost.net/...09May2007_data05.php

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jun 07 - Cached
  • "That's the dirty little secret. When I talk to open source developers, at least half are talking about Windows, from SugarCRM, MySQL, PHP. Every single one," he said. Hilf said that Microsoft always faced a challenge in balancing interoperability and innovation. The current lawsuit with the EU competition commission is one case in point. "The [EU's] request was, 'you have to be as interoperable with non-windows systems as you are with your own. That way we can guarantee you're not going to leverage your market leading position to disadvantage others.' We've participated actively to explain why it's not a simple problem; there's this complex balance between innovation and standardisation. I think the EU has been learning," he said.
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Jun 07
     
    The dirty little secret is that the monopolist control over the "ecosystem" is still intact, and expanding from the desktop to servers, devices and the web.
Gary Edwards

The OpenChange Project: reader comment from Gary Edwards - CNET News.com - Flock - 0 views

www.news.com/5208-13580_3-0.html

exchange openchange openstack

shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Sep 07 - Cached
  • Unfortunately much of the world is unaware of the OpenChange Project launched by members of the SAMBA Community. OpenChange is a young project, but there are working solutions already. And everything is Open Source Software portable across multiple operating systems.
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Sep 07
     
    Comment to article about Microsoft Exchange and OSS
Gary Edwards

Microsoft and Its Rivals Take 'Office' Politics Global - WSJ.com - 1 views

online.wsj.com/...SB118843789318613086.html

eu odf ooxml

shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Sep 07 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Sep 07
     
    Another article from Charles Forelle of WSJ on Microsoft's efforts to corrupt the international standards process
Gary Edwards

INTERVIEW: Craig Mundie -- Microsoft's technology chief, taking over from Bill Gates ne... - 0 views

www.apcmag.com/...logy_chief_taking_over_from_bi

shared by Gary Edwards on 15 Sep 07 - Cached
  • They realised that there were other factors than initial purchase price that play into the ultimate long term economics associated with running systems.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Sep 07
       
      Yeah, like interoperability and integration with exsting documents, applciations and processes - near all of which are dominated and controlled by Microsoft. The Interoperability API for the MS products should have been totally opened by anti trust actions. Instead, MS was allowed by the USA anti trust settlement to commercialize interoperability - to the tune of $8 Million dollars per year per interop license.
Gary Edwards

A Savage Journey … ODF at the OOXML BRM « A Frantic Opposition - 0 views

robweird.wordpress.com/...a-savage-journey

brm ecma geneva iso odf ooxml opendocument openxml standards

shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Mar 08 - Cached
  • A Savage Journey … ‘Erupting from my vivid nightmares into the retro 80s faded luxury of a five-star hotel in Geneva, the pictures of the first victim reappeared on the wall.  The head of the Brazilian delegation-it’s only a matter of time now. My mind thrashes to disentangle the thrown spaghetti threads of blurred reasoning; who’s next, is it just the heads of delegation they are after, any NB member, P-members only? The fog lifts and it’s worse.  Who is behind this, them or us?  We outnumber them, but maybe their plan is more devious.  Must find Bonky Bob, he’ll know what to do.’ Enough levity for now.  The BRM has held few surprises, other than the rather galling situation where I was forced to publicly toe the INCITS line by the temporary head of delegation, a Microsoft employee, against my better judgement.
Gary Edwards

OOXML-ODF: The Harmonization Hope Chest | Orcmid's Lair - 0 views

orcmid.com/...f-harmonization-hope-chest.asp

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Feb 08 - Cached
  • 4. The Reality in the Punchbowl Meanwhile, Sam Hiser offers a different impression of the DIN effort [4]: "The ODF-to-OOXML harmonization effort being hosted by the German standards group, DIN, is Europe's best effort to resolve our Mexican Standoff between Microsoft, Sun and IBM. Even though harmonization is laughably complex and will not work unless the applications are harmonized too, the best and brightest of Germany are left to hope for success."  [emphasis mine: dh] Although the mission of the German effort is translation (Übersetzung), not harmonization, I find there is a very important point that is not made often enough:  People write, read, and edit office documents with little, if any, understanding of the particular format that makes them persistent in digital form.  The XML-based open formats do not change that.   People adapt to the software/device they are using by trial and error.  We train ourselves to obtain the visible results that we want.  Different people obtain superficially similar results by quite different means.   Even when someone has gone to the trouble to create style sheets, forms, macros, templates and other format-impacting aids, it is very loosey-goosey in practice.  And it still does not require paying attention to the file format.  
Gary Edwards

ODF Alliance on the Microsoft Disposition of ISO Comments on OOXML - 0 views

www.odfalliance.org/...isposition%20of%20Comments.pdf

brm odf odf-alliance ooxml opendocument openxml

shared by Gary Edwards on 30 Jan 08 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 30 Jan 08
     
    The ever audacious and prevaricating lobbyist group known as the ODF Alliance has posted their critique of Ecma's (Microsoft's) proposed disposition of ISO comments rejecting OOXML. The critique's appeal to ignorance is breath-taking in scope. E.g., whilst slamming DIS-29500 on the subject of interoperability, the same document pushes for harmonization using the following argument: "Harmonization starts from looking at where the two formats overlap - and there is a significant, perhaps 90 percent or more, area where OOXML and ODF do overlap - and expressing this functional overlap identically. This common functionality between ODF and OOXML would also include a common extensibility mechanism. The remaining 10 percent of the functionality, where these standards do not overlap, would represent the focus of the harmonization effort. That portion of it which represents a widespread need could be brought into the core of ODF. That remaining portion which only serves one vendor's needs, such as flags for deprecated legacy formatting options, could be represented using the common extensibility mechanism." And precisely how do vendor-specific extensions aid interoperability, particularly when the proposed "harmonization" does not require profiles and an interoperability framework?
Gary Edwards

Microsoft: IBM masterminded OOXML failure - ZDNet UK - 0 views

news.zdnet.co.uk/...0,1000000121,39292492,00.htm

shared by Gary Edwards on 31 Jan 08 - Cached
  • "It's a new way to compete," Tsilas said. "They are using government intervention as a way to compete. It's competing through regulation, because you couldn't compete technically."
Gary Edwards

Microsoft: IBM masterminded OOXML failure - ZDNet UK - 0 views

news.zdnet.co.uk/...0,1000000121,39292492,00.htm

shared by Gary Edwards on 31 Jan 08 - Cached
  • "IBM have asked governments to have an open-source, exclusive purchasing policy," Tsilas said. "Our competitors have targeted this one product — mandating one document format over others to harm Microsoft's profit stream." "It's a new way to compete," Tsilas said. "They are using government intervention as a way to compete. It's competing through regulation, because you couldn't compete technically."
Gary Edwards

South Africa, Netherlands and Korea striding toward ODF - 0 views

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

mandates odf ooxml plug-ins

shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Jan 08 - Cached
  • In Belgium, for instance, the government is using plug-ins to enable Microsoft Office to read and save files in ODF, Marcich said. The same plug-ins are being used in Massachusetts, which was the first governmental body to move to ODF. One prominent ODF backer, the unrelated Open Document Foundation, said in late October that it would stop backing ODF in favor of a more viable universal format called the Compound Document Format (CDF). Marcich said that "won't have any effect on the alliance or on ODF" adoption. Moreover, CDF, which is a World Wide Web Consortium format, differs greatly in features and goals than ODF. "We're talking about apples and oranges here," he said.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 20 Jan 08
       
      This ComputerWorld article is referenced by the State of New York in their request for information
Gary Edwards

Open Stack: ISO Does The Unthinkable. How ISO approval of MSOffice-OOXML will break th... - 0 views

openstack.blogspot.com/...ment-as-perfect-microsoft.html

css davinci interoperability msoffice odf ooxml xaml xhtml

shared by Gary Edwards on 22 Apr 08 - Cached
  • In August of 2007 we dropped ODF as the da Vinci target conversion format, and moved to the W3C's Compound Document Format (CDF) with an ePUB wrapper.The reason for this move is that we could not establish a reasonable degree of interoperability with OpenOffice ODF unless Sun supported the five generic eXtensions to ODF needed to hit the high fidelity conversion the da Vinci process is capable of.Since da Vinci is a clone of the MSOffice OOXML compatibility Kit, we use the same internal conversion process where imbr (in-memory-binary-representation) is converted to another format: imbr <> OOXML or, imbr <> RTF.While it's entirely compliant to eXtend ODF, without Sun's changes to OpenOffice ODF the application-platform-vendor independent interoperability end users expect would be meaningless.The problem as we see it is this; it is impossible to do a high fidelity conversion between two application specific XML formats. It is however quite possible to do a conversion between an application specific format and a generic (application-platform-vendor independent) format.
  • Gary Edwards on 22 Apr 08
     
    A summary of my views on ISO approval of MSOffice-OOXML and the impact it will have on the futrue of the open web.
  • Gary Edwards on 22 Apr 08
     
    In response to a recent question posted to a rather old OpenStack blog, i posted this summary of my views on ISO approval of MSOffice-OOXML and the impact it will have on the futrue of the open web.
Paul Merrell

GullFOSS - 0 views

blogs.sun.com/...office_open_xml_ooxml_filters

interop myth sources michael brauer odf ooxml sun

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 May 08 - Cached
  • ODF is the only file format that provides the level of interoperability and choice of products that our customers want.
    • Paul Merrell
      Paul Merrell on 29 May 08
       
      Brauer well knows that he speaks of "the level of interoperability and choice of products" that Sun wants, not what Sun customers want. See e.g., the IDABC ODEF Conference proceedings. ODF is not designed for interoperability and interoperability may only be achieved by all persons involved in the interchange of ODF documents standardizing on a particular editing implementation and version. In practical terms, that means everyone uses a particular version of OpenOffice.org or a clone of that version's code base.
  • OOXML? Isn't that Office Open XML? That file format, that Microsoft Office 2007 is using, that has been approved by ECMA as ECMA-376, and that is currently in a fast track process to become an ISO standard like ODF? That file format, that although its name is very similar to Open Office XML, has nothing to do with OpenOffice.org or ODF? And you may have wondered: What are Sun's OpenOffice.org developers doing with OOXML, and why? And when will we have an OOXML filter in OpenOffice.org?
Gary Edwards

A Closer Look At Those "Single Standard" Policy Mandates : Oliver Bell's weblog - 0 views

osrin.net/...ingle-standard-policy-mandates

shared by Gary Edwards on 25 Jan 08 - Cached
  • 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.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 25 Jan 08
       
      Hold on there Oliver. You've got the cart before the horse here. You say that, "standards need to be ready to support these two objectives". The objectives you sight are that of applications being desinged for interop (exchange) and collaboration. This observation is consistent with the vendor mantra coming out of Microsoft, Sun, and IBM: that interoperability is an application problem - not a standards issue. My view is that the only way we will have interoperability is if we design standards as totally application, platform and vendor independent. This demands a clean room approach, even to the extent of not allowing application vendors participation. At least not direct particpation where vendor business objectives might influence the standard. The first law of the Internet is that Interoperability rules. Interop must trump innovation. And innovation must be within the boundaries of the interoperability framework. Meaning, innovate on top of interop, but don't break that interop. Ever! This is exactly the opposite of how applications want to operate. They want innovation first, with interop as secondary feature based entirely on dooperative deals between vendors. That's not good enough for me or anyone else who believes that a universal fiel format is possible. The W3C approach is to focus entirely on the standards use requirements, completely shutting out application demands. With formats, this comes down to focusing on the basic document structures carried over from a few hundred years of document publication experience. The only proven formula for interop is to first write and establish the base standard. Then, let the applications adapt. Let the applications compete on how well they implement interoeprability standards, and build innovative features without disrupting or compromising that interop.
« First ‹ Previous 201 - 220 of 252 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page