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.
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Open Document | Online Community for the OpenDocument OASIS Standard - 0 views
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This is the official community gathering place and information resource for the OpenDocument Format (ODF) OASIS Standard (ISO/IEC 26300). Suitable for text, spreadsheets, charts, graphs, presentations, and databases, ODF frees documents from their applications-of-origin, enabling them to be exchanged, retrieved, and edited with any OpenDocument-compliant software or tool. This is a community-driven site, and the public is encouraged to contribute content.
Microsoft Suffers Latest Blow As NIST Bans Windows Vista - Technology News by Informati... - 0 views
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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
ODF Can Handle Anything MSOffice Throws At It - 0 views
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This commentary, based on Tim Bray's "Life is Complicated" blog and comment section, was published by Lxer. Well worth the examination.
Microsoft Hit By U.S. DOT Ban On Windows Vista, Explorer 7, and Office 2007 - Technolog... - 0 views
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» E-Mail » Print » Discuss » Write To Editor late last year -- can be resolved. "We have more confidence in Microsoft than we would have 10 years ago," says Schmidt. "But it always makes sense to look at the security implications, the value back to the customer, and those kind of issues." The DOT's ban on Vista, Internet Explorer 7, and Office 2007 applies to 15,000 computer users at DOT proper who are currently running the Windows XP Professional operating system. The memo indicates that a similar ban is in effect at the Federal Aviation Administration, which has 45,000 desktop users. Compatibility with existing applications appears to be the Transportation Department's major concern. According to a separate memo, a number of key software applications and utilities in use in various branches of the department aren't Vista compatible. Among them are Aspen 2.8.1, ISS 2.11, ProVu 3.1.1, and Capri 6.5, according to a memo issued by staffers at the DOT's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Any prolonged ban on new Microsoft technologies by the federal government could have a significant impact on the software maker's bottom line, as Microsoft sells millions of dollars in software to the feds annually. http://as.cmpnet.com/event.ng/Type=count&ClientType=2&AdID=125682&FlightID=75634&TargetID=2625&SiteID=222&AffiliateID=283&EntityDefResetFlag=0&Segments=1411,3108,3448,11291,12119&Targets=2625,2878,7904,8579&Values=34,46,51,63,77,87,91,102,140,222,227,283,442,646,656,1184,1255,1311,1405,1431,1716,1767,1785,1798,1925,1945,1970,2217,2299,2310,2326,2352,2678,2727,2767,2862,2942,3140,3347,3632,3636,3638,3890,3904,4080,448
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Whoa, those government desktops add up quickly. This Vista ban will immediately effect over 50,000 desktops, with tens of thousands more possibly impacted by the IE 7.0 ban. The MS Exchange/SharePoint Hub juggernaut is based on IE 7.0, which is not available for Windows 2000 - MSOffice 2000 desktops.
Lack of Vista Stack compatibility with non Microsoft application is given as the reason for the ban. But notice the "alternatives" to Vista mentioned; Novel SuSE and Apple Mac. What kind of interop - compatibility do they offer? My guess is ZERO!
The reality is that the DOT is trapped. My advice would be stay exactly where they are, keeping the current MSOffice desktop installs running. Then, install the Foundation's daVinci ODF plugin for MSOffice.
This will insure that Windows OS and MSOffice bound business processes can continue to function without disruption. Win32 APi based applications like those mentioned in the article can continue. Critical day to day business processes, workgroup and workflow related activities can continue without disruption or costly re engineering demanded by a cross platform port.
What daVinci doe sdo is move the iron triangle that binds Windows-MSOffice applications to business processes and documents, to an ODF footing. Once on a ODF footing, the government can push forward with the same kind of workgroup - workflow - intelligent docuemnt - collaborative computing advnaces that the Vista Stack was designed to deliver. Only this push will involve the highly competitive "the customer is sovereign" environment of ODF ready desktop, server, device and Web 2.0 systems. End of Redmond lock-in. End of the costly iron triangle and the force march upgrade treadmill that so enriches Microsoft.
So what's not to like? We can do this.
~ge~
http://docs.google.com/View?docID=dghfk5w9_20d2x6rf&revi
BetaNews | Microsoft: Office Format War Over - 0 views
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"Over the past few years, we've had two important file formats come into the market, OpenXML and ODF. Both were designed for different purposes, and both have been valuable additions to the market. Now we can also say that we have multiple implementations of both formats."
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The war is over? When did Microsoft surrender? And when did they sign the official terms of surrender?
The terms of surrender are simple. Microsoft must agree to fully support and implement ODF as a native file format in all versions of MSOffice qualified for the current OOXML compatibility kit. Furthermore, MSOffice must offer end users the choice of selecting ODF as the default MSOffice file format.
Those are the terms of surrender, and i for one don't see how the Microsoft or Novell Translator plugin's qualify? These things are garbage!
What if an MSOffice user was to work on a document, save it to OOXML only to open it later to find a near totally useless and corrupted document with a conversion fidelity equal to that achieved by the hapless MCN Translator Plugins?
Right. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Until these idiotic MCN Translators can achieve a conversion fidelity between ODF and OOXML acceptable to MSOffice users - comparable to native documents use and expectations, they should be regarded for what they are: an experimentation proving conclusively that OOXML is not even close to being interoperable with ODF.
~ge~
Any objections? For Open XML standard, yes (still) - 0 views
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This brief summary of the ODF <>OOXML controversy covers the recent response by Ecma to the ISO/IEC JTC 1 National Body members who filed objections to placing Ecma 376 on an ISO fast track approval process. This article has the actual ECMA Response PDF! A document that is well worth reading and studying.
Essentially Ecma has told ISO to take a hike!
In responding to the different objections, Ecma chose to explain their position without once offering to fix or remedy he many problems and issues that so concern the 20 different NB's filing objections. Not once! No compromise whatsoever, only the preachy attitude that the objecting NB's simply don't understand the wonders of Ecma 376 or what a ISO "contraditction" means.
Take a Hike! Up Yours! Screw you and the horse you rode in on too!
Pick your metaphor, it's all the same.
Fighting Wal-Mart - Even if OpenDocument wins at ISO, ODF will lose in the marketplace ... - 0 views
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The point being -- it doesn't matter if the folks backing ODF are right. It doesn't matter that ODF is a more-credible, streamlined, logical and transparent spec than OOXML. What matters is that Microsoft is giving corporate developers what they want -- an XML-paved road directly into the Microsoft Office suite found on 90 percent of corporate desktops. And what's more, the company is upping the ante, with Visual Studio Tools for Office, new Office Business Applications and innovations like the Office 2007 Fluent UI. So the challenge for ODF proponents is a steep one. Even if they win the battle, and somehow deny Microsoft ISO approval, they can still lose the war. Because in the end, it doesn't really matter who is right. What matters is who can deliver the most compelling value to IT organizations married to the Microsoft Office suite.
ODF, PDF, The Antic Waste Land, and Monica's Blue Dress - Rob Weir - 0 views
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An intriguing idea is whether we can have it both ways. Suppose you are in an ODF editor and you have a "Save for archiving..." option that would save your ODF document as normal, but also generate a PDF version of it and store it in the zip archive along with ODF's XML streams. Then digitally sign the archive along with a time stamp to make it tamper-proof. You would need to define some additional access conventions, but you could end up with a single document that could be loaded in an ODF editor (in read-only mode) to allow examination of the details of spreadsheet formulas, etc., as well as loaded in a PDF reader to show exactly how it was formated.
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Intriguing? Rob Weir knows full well that the Foundation proposed this exact same feature set as part of the da Vinci Plug-in design for Massachusetts, July of 2006!!!!!!!!!
The Complete Feature list of the da Vinci plug-in for MSOffice that was proposed and signed off on by CIO Louis Gutierrez in early August of 2006 was well known by IBM's representatives who were working hand in hand with us at the time: Rob Weir, Don Harbison and Doug Heintzman.
Louis Gutierrez had asked IBM and Oracle to create a "benefactors Group" to overcome the challenge that Massachusetts ITD did not have a budget. IBM and Oracle selected Google, Sun, Novell, Intel, and Nokia as key benefactors. The group was provided with the complete feature set and roadmap for da Vinci development.
The da Vinci roadmap was the schedule announced by Louis Gutierrez in his mid year report, August 17th, 2006.
The da Vinci plug-in feature set, in order of priority, consisted of:
ODF iX Approval at OASISPlug-in for MS WORDAccessibility Interface for all ODF documents in MS WordPDF - ODF iX Digital Signature containerPlug-in for MS ExcelInteroperability Wizard for OpenOfficePlug-in for PowerPointXForms InterfaceThe roadmap we provided Louis and the "benefactors" was sceduled out with deliverables, test periods, and cost per deliverable. The buy-in per "benefactor" was set at $350,000, and i
Peter O'Kelly: ODF * 2 and Open XML |BurtonGroup - 0 views
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A bunch of press channels picked up the "ODF abandons ODF" story and apparently didn't do sufficiently detailed homework on the charter/status/etc. of ODF the group. There's a lot more to this topic -- stay tuned...
Is this valid? - ODF List Archives - 0 views
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just played a little with other ODF applications. Looks like Lotus Symphony can handle input fields with paragraphs breaks in it. The XML it produces is:
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Archives of all OASIS ODF TC disussions. Does not include Metadata, Formula or Accessibility lists
ODF Split Shakes Up Document Battle | Redmond Developer News Michael Desmond - 0 views
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The ongoing file format battle between proponents of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) took a surprising turn lthis week, when a key ODF proponent announced that it intended to abandon the ISO-approved specification. The move by the OpenDocument Foundation comes less than two months after Microsoft lost a key ISO vote to approve OOXML as a standard.
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Thi sis Michael Desmons's second article on the file format wars.
War rages on over Microsoft's OOXML plans: Insight - Software - ZDNet Australia - 0 views
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"We feel that the best standards are open standards," technology industry commentator Colin Jackson, a member of the Technical Advisory committee convened by StandardsNZ to consider OOXML, said at the event. "In that respect Microsoft is to be applauded, as previously this was a secret binary format." Microsoft's opponents suggest, among a host of other concerns, that making Open XML an ISO standard would lock the world's document future to Microsoft. They argue that a standard should only be necessary when there is a "market requirement" for it. IBM spokesperson Paul Robinson thus describes OOXML as a "redundant replacement for other standards". Quoting from the ISO guide, Robinson said that a standard "is a document by a recognised body established by consensus which is aimed at achieving an optimum degree of order and aimed at the promotion of optimum community benefits". It can be argued that rather than provide community benefit, supporting multiple standards actually comes at an economic cost to the user community. "We do not believe OOXML meets these objectives of an international standard," Robinson said.
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"aimed at achieving an optimum degree of order .... and .... aimed at the promotion of optimum community benefits:. Uh, excuse me Mr. Robinson, tha tsecond part of your statement, the one concerning optimum community benefits - that would also disqualify ODF!! ODF was not designed to be compatible with the 550 million MSOffice desktops and their billions of binary docuemnts. Menaing, these 550 million users will suffer considerable loss of information if they try to convert their existing documents to ODF. It is also next to impossible for MSOffice applications to implement ODF as a fiel format due to this incompatbility. ODF was designed for OpenOffice, and directly reflects the way OpenOffice implements specific document structures. The problem areas involve large differences between how OpenOffice implments these structures and how MSOffice implements these same structures. The structures in question are lists, fields, tables, sections and page dynamics. It seems to me that "optimum community benefits" would include the conversion and exchange of docuemnts with some 550 million users!!!! And ODF was clearly not designed for that purpose!
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I don't agree with this statement from Microsoft's Oliver Bell. As someone who served on the OASIS ODF Technical Committee from it's inception in November of 2002 through the next five years, i have to disagree. It's not that Microsoft wasn't welcome. They were. It's that the "welcome" came with some serious strings. Fo rMicrosoft to join OASIS would have meant strolling into the camp of their most erstwhile and determined competitors, and having to ammend an existing standard to accomodate the implementation needs of MSOffice. There is simply no way for the layout differences between OpenOffice and MSOffice to be negotiated short of putting both methodologies into the spec. Meaning, the spec would provide two ways of implementing lists, tables, fields, sections and page dynamics. A true welcome would have been for ODF to have been written to accomodate these diferences. Rather than writing ODF to meet the implementation model used by OepnOffice, it would have been infinitely better to wrtite ODF as a totally application independent file format using generic docuemnt structures tha tcould be adapted by any application. It turns out that this is exactly the way the W3C goes about the business of writing their fiel format specifications (HTML, XHTML, CSS, XFORMS, and CDF). The results are highly interoperable formats that any applciation can implement.
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You can harmonize an application specific format with a generic, applicaiton independent format. But you can't harmonize two application specific formats!!!!
The easy way to solve the document exchange problem is to leave the legacy applications alone, and work on the conversion of OOXML and ODF docuemnts to a single, application independent generic format. The best candidate for this role is that of the W3C's CDF.
CDF is a desription of how to combine existing W3C format standards into a single container. It is meant to succeed HTML on the Web, but has been designed as a universal file format.
The most exciting combination is that of XHTML 2.0 and CSS in that it is capable of handling the complete range of desktop productivity office suite documents. Even though it's slightly outside the W3C reach, the most popular CDF compound is that of XHTML, CSS and JavaScript. A combination otherwise known as "AJAX".
Home - Berkman Center for Internet & Society - 0 views
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There were 5 successive Roundtables. Each roundtable was led by 5 short presentations before the topic was opened to the floor for general discussion. The first roundtable focused on "What is ODF, and why are open document standards important". There were many questions regarding how open standards affect competition and innovation, whether ODF is in fact the best standard, issues of archiving and interoperability with ODF as well as how ODF addresses/will address concerns of accessibility for disabled persons. The second Roundtable discussed how various software developers were responding to ODF and the third roundtable focused on whether governments or non-governmental and consumer organizations should systematically use procurement policy to promote ODF. The following roundtable was a lively discussion on whether national or global "agreements" can play a role in promoting ODF and how. During that roundtable as well as the last one on "Reflections and next steps", there were discussions of future work and strategies on ODF in a new international forum, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to be held in Athens, Greece, October 30 - November 3, 2006.
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The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at the Harvard Law School held an Open Document Conference, October 23rd, 2006. Just a few weeks after the October 4th, 2006 resignation of Massachusetts CIO Louis Gutierrez. This is the summary report of organizer Manon Ress. Sam Hiser represented the OpenDocument Foundation. The ZERO Interop problems that plague ODF implementation were not discussed. Strangely :) Another point not discussed is the fact that ODF is not an Internet file format. It's a desktop office suite only format. This constraint is written into the ODF charter. Interestingly, one of the problems of making ODF Web ready is that of highjacked W3C standards. Highjacking occurs when a specification or application takes existing W3C standards and changes the namespace reference to it's own. This is what ODF does. The reason for doing this is to constrain and limit the W3C standard to just those aspects implemented by the ODF reference application, OpenOffice. XForms, SVG, SMiL, XHTML, RDF/XML and RDFa are problematic examples of W3C namespaces that have been highjacked by ODF to meet the specific implementation constraints of OpenOffice. This impacts developers who rely on standard libraires to do conversions and processing. The libraries are built to the proper W3C namespace, and unfortunately assume that ODF complies. It doesn't, So developers have to investigate how OpenOffic eimplements XForms and SVG, and build special ODF libraries before they can use ODF on the Web. It can be done, i think. But it's a train wreck of a mess guaranteed to destroy the high level of web interoperability users and developers expect.
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OpenDocument Foundation drops support for ODF, backs obscure W3C format - Flock - 0 views
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The OpenDocument Foundation has decided to end its support for OASIS's OpenDocument Format (ODF) and instead support W3C's Compound Document Format (CDF), which is currently described in the Web Integration Compound Document Core 1.0 draft. This move reflects growing concerns within the interoperability advocacy community about the long-term viability of both ODF and Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML).
Inside PDF: CDF - 0 views
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The real technical content of the CDF recommendations is in details of how to glue these various (XML markup) languages together once they all have been processed into their respective DOMs. It establishes conventions for how a script might reach across DOM boundaries, how events might get propagated across DOM boundaries and stuff like that. I won't go into this any deeper because you will get more accurate information by just reading the W3C documents. But the main idea of CDF is to bring these variously defined content types into a uniform "framework" so that scripts can operate more at a document level instead of being confined to their own document child.
IBM, Sun Microsystems Launch ODF Toolkit Union To Grow Adoption, Community and Software... - 0 views
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"November 5, 2008 IBM and Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced the launch of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) Toolkit Union, a new open-source software community project organized to make document software more innovative, versatile and useful for business."
Brian Jones: Open XML Formats : More on yesterday's ODF announcement - 0 views
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"Even though ODF 1.0 is the official ISO version of the format, the decision was made to use version 1.1 which had some accessibility improvements. Hopefully future versions of ODF will be brought back to ISO so that we have a more current ISO version soon. You also may have noticed that we as Microsoft plan to start participating in the ODF standardization efforts, whether that happens in OASIS or ISO. ... I've heard different opinions though on what to do if the standard says one thing and Open Office does something else. I think the right thing to do is to follow the standard, but I'd be curious to hear what other folks have to say." Note that this Jones post includes several links to commentary on the ODF support announcement written by other Softies
Office 2007 won't support ISO's OOXML - SD Times On The Web - 0 views
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In a surprise move, the company also announced that it intends to participate in the OASIS ODF working group and the corresponding ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 Subcommittee 34 working groups for ODF, as well as the ISO Technical Committee 171 working group for PDF, said Doug Mahugh, senior product manager for Microsoft Office.He added that Microsoft would also introduce an API to allow developers to plug their own converters for formats, such as ODF, into Office to make it the default conversion path. ODF 1.1 was chosen over the ISO-standard ODF 1.0 as a practical decision based upon interoperability with existing implementations, Mahugh explained.
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The announcement of the new API for others to use for plug-ins is not new news. It was originally made when Microsoft claimed to have gotten religion on interoperability a few months ago. The wookie is that the only conceivable reason for a new API for use by others is that Microsoft does not want to disclose the specs for its existing API. That in turn suggests that the API for use by others will have functionality different from the API used by Microsoft itself, almost certainly far less.
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“Customers that are expecting true document fidelity from XML-based, ISO-standard document formats will continue to be disappointed,” said Michael Silver, a Gartner Research vice president. Silver observed that the most compatible formats to use today are Microsoft’s legacy binaries, and he believes that Microsoft will be unlikely to convince customers to move to OOXML in the foreseeable future.
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Microsoft to support PDF, ODF 1.1 and ISO OOXML in MSOffice 14. The company will also join the OASIS ODF TC and working group for ISO PDF.
Patrick Durusau on ODF and interoperability - 0 views
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Interoperability is one of the primary reasons why I like XML in general and ODF in particular.
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