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Gary Edwards

Microsoft sets July 1 as Office 2003 OEM drop-dead date - 0 views

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

shared by Gary Edwards on 19 Jun 07 - Cached
  • Microsoft Corp. announced today that it will pull the plug on Office 2003 the last day of June, after which it won't ship the suite to original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and system builders.
  • Gary Edwards on 19 Jun 07
     
    Microsoft is closing off the exits!  MSOffice 2003 is the only application suite capable of producing Ecma 376 documents, and now it's getting EOL'd. 

    The ISO vote on Ecma 376 isn't scheduled until September. 
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

Commercializing Interoperability -- gary_edwards's comment on "Linux leaders plot count... - 0 views

talkback.zdnet.com/5208-3513-0.html

shared by Gary Edwards on 15 Jun 07 - Cached
  • Is Microsoft commercializing "interoperability"? Is interoperability through privileged access to the interop API's now a strategic asset to be traded with partners in crime?
  • Gary Edwards on 15 Jun 07
     
    The first post in the ZDNet series discussing the many deals Microsoft is cutting with prominent LiNUX vendors.  My point is that interoperability plays a prominent role in each of these deals, and, the deals also involve partners supporting Microsoft directed interop between OpenOfficeXML and OpenDocument.  Coincidence? 

    I think not!

Gary Edwards

IBM undeterred by setbacks to ODF adoption | InfoWorld | News | 2007-06-08 | By China M... - 0 views

www.infoworld.com/...etbacks-to-ODF-adoption_1.html

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jun 07 - Cached
  • 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.
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Jun 07
     
    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?
Gary Edwards

» Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee Unplugged: Semantic Web better than APIs for d... - 0 views

blogs.zdnet.com/Berlind

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jun 07 - Cached
  • the general idea is for there to be a layer of data on the Internet that he calls the “data bus” and the way the data bus works is not too different from how we’ve heard Microsoft’s WinFS filesystem described where connectivity between related data items is organic rather than synthesized. For example, whereas today, a mashup developer may have to call upon two APIs to show where a specific Starbucks is on a map, the Semantic Web approach might involve little more than a simple query of that data bus using a query technology called SparQL.
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Jun 07
     
    Great explanation of the Semantic Web, RDF, SparQL versus big vendor Web API's
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

State's move to open document formats still not a mass migration - 0 views

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

california iso lai massachusetts oasis odf officeopenxml ooxml opendocument openxml xml

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Jun 07 - Cached
  • Only a tiny fraction of the PCs at Massachusetts government agencies are able to use the Open Document Format (ODF) for Office Applications, despite an initial deadline of this month for making sure that all state agencies could handle the file format.
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Jun 07
     
    Eric Lai keesp pokign at that Massachusetts hornets nest. One of these days he's going to crack it open, and it will be back to square one for the ODF Community.  Still missing from his research is the infoamous 300 page pilot study and accompanying web site where comments and professional observations document a year long study concernign the difficulties of implementing ODF solutions and making the migration.  <br><br>

    The study was focused on OpenOffice, StarOffice, Novell Office, and a IBM WorkPlace prototype.<br><br>

    The results of the year long pilot have never seen the public light of day.  But ComputerWorld is one of the media orgs that successfully filed a court action to invoke the freedom of information act in Massachusetts.  How come they can't find the Pilot Study?<br><br>

    At the end of the pilot study period, Massachusetts issued their infamous RFi; the request for information regarding the possiblity of a ODF plugin for MSOffice!  Meaning, the Pilot Study did not go well for the heroes of ODF - OpenOffice, StarOffice, Novell Office and WorkPlace.  Instead, Massachusetts sought an ODF plugin that would no doubt extend the life of MSOffice for years to come.  No rip out and replace here folks!<br><br>

    ~ge~
Gary Edwards

Between a rock and a hard place: ODF & CIO's - Where's the Love? - 0 views

www.consortiuminfo.org/...article.php

cio government microsoft oasis odf officeopenxml ooxml opendocument openxml

shared by Gary Edwards on 15 Jun 07 - Cached
  • So I'm disappointed.&nbsp;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.&nbsp; &nbsp; And who can blame them?&nbsp;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.
  • Gary Edwards on 15 Jun 07
     
    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
Gary Edwards

PlexNex: Achieving Openness - 0 views

fussnotes.typepad.com/...achieving_openn.html

ecma-376 iso microsoft odf officeopenxml ooxml opendocument xml

shared by Gary Edwards on 19 Jun 07 - Cached
  • "ECMA 376" is a set of file formats subject to ECMA and now to ISO. "Office 2007" is a set of file formats which extend "ECMA 376" file formats. Office 2007 file formats are undocumented per se. ECMA 376 are. ECMA 376 file formats are documented but only at a syntactic level. To realize the true meaning of every single attribute is to realize that the documentation is more like 600,000 pages, not 6,000. Of particular difficulty is to keep some kind of control over the virtually infinite combinations of such attributes. Quick analysis of the underlying schemas reveals that simple concepts such as text formatting is expressed in no less than 6 different and incompatible ways. This leads to thinking that the file formats were only designed to comply with existing legacy formats that themselves are the result of 15 years of inside/outside library aggregation (some of the libraries were bought from non-Microsoft vendors). In fact, the truth is, ask any reverse engineer third-party who worked with legacy formats, they'll tell you Microsoft essentially added angle brackets around the binary serialization in legacy formats. This makes for a very cool XML-based file format, not an international standard.
  • Gary Edwards on 19 Jun 07
     
    Whoa, Stepen Rodriguez knocks this one out of the park.  What an impressive dissembling of MS OfficeOpenXML and it's poor sister subset, Ecma 376.  Incredible. 
Gary Edwards

sw: Mail reader - 0 views

sw.openoffice.org/...ReadMsg

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Jun 07 - Cached
  • Fine; I hope that you also will specify the citation metadata then. Using unspecified metadata for *relevant* parts of the document in OOo can be the starting signal to kill ODF. I'm not sure if citation data is a "relevant part of the document" but without further investigation I assume it to be that.
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Jun 07
     
    The battle to break ODF away from being limited to only those features supported by Sun's OpenOffice/StarOffice continues.  This eMail thread sets the stage for the upcoming presentation of the metadata proposal to the ODF mainline TC.

    SEction 1.4.3 of the metadata proposal is a list of existign ODF elements that developers can apply RDF to.  And the reason given fo rwhy the list is so constrained?  Svante Schubert, co-editor and Sun employee has claimed on more than a few occassions that the reason for limiting the lis tis that Sun will only support RDF on those particular ODF elements in OpenOffice/StarOffice.  Therefore, everyone is similarly limited!

    I kid you not. 
    ~ge~

Gary Edwards

Billions of Legacy Binary Documents -- gary_edwards's comment on &quot;Linux leaders pl... - 0 views

talkback.zdnet.com/5208-3513-0.html

ecma-376 iso microsoft odf officeopenxml ooxml opendocument xml

shared by Gary Edwards on 19 Jun 07 - Cached
  • The point is that ODF has to be flexible enough so that the demand side of the equation can successfully convert their MSOffice documents to ODF. More important than simple one-way conversion is the need for high fidelity round trip conversion.
  • Gary Edwards on 19 Jun 07
     
    This is a follow up comment to a question cocerning my previous post, "commercialization of interoperability".  The question from "mosborne" is as follows:

    A different viewI'm not on the ODF TC, but I have followed its evolution through the information publicly available at Oasis.

    My outside view of some of the various interoperability discussions you mention is different than yours. I saw a resistance to adoption of features if the sole reason was because OOXML did it that way. The dissenting members wanted a more substantial reason, not simply to add OOXML "features" to ODF.

    If the goal is to simply make ODF like OOXML, then what is the point? You would have conceded all control to Microsoft since they have effective control of OOXML.It's an interesting question, but not well informed.  The threads at OASIS ODF having to do with interoperability are focused on efforts to have our cake and eat it too. 

    The List Enhancement Proposal thread played out over a six month period.  And yes, it is true that Sun fought the Novell proposal because they felt new and innovative features for OpenOffice/StarOffice were more important than the interoperability CIO's and IT departments are demanding.   But that misses the more important point that Novell was able to craft their interoperability proposal exactly so that the precious advanced feature sets of applications that command les sthan 1% marketshare would be accommodated.

    What Sun and most others on the ODF TC don't get is that the markets have no use for these new and innovative feature sets unless and until they can transition their documents and business processes out of MSOffice.  If workgroup bound end users can't do that first, it won't matter how
Gary Edwards

Singing Kumbaya -- gary_edwards's comment on "Linux leaders plot counterattack on Micro... - 0 views

talkback.zdnet.com/5208-3513-0.html

shared by Gary Edwards on 15 Jun 07 - Cached
  • have you noticed that IBM is softening their position on "harmonization"? There are a number of events to consider that might have influenced this change in tone:
  • Gary Edwards on 15 Jun 07
     
    More in that same "LiNUX Leaders plot counter attack on Microsoft" thread at ZDNet.  This time the issue is what has caused IBM to sing a differnet tune?  The tune known as "harmoniation".
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

Internet Archive: Details: Eben Moglen Lecture Edinburgh June 2007 (Streaming Video 384... - 0 views

www.archive.org/...June2007StreamingVideo384kbits

shared by Gary Edwards on 30 Jun 07 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 30 Jun 07
     
    Eben explains that the process behind the GPL3 is actually a newly christened collaborative legislation process that uniquely supercedes nations, treaties and the traditions of legialative law making.  He traces the evolution of the disemination of ideas. the protection of ideas, and the rise of digitized representation - computerized ideas.

    It's a wonderfully sweeping speach that takes collaborative community possibilities far beyond the realm of software.  I'm left wondering if this same approach can be used to re invent the open standards process?   Just as big vendors have come to control and stifle innovation in software through the assertion of property ownership of mathmatical ideas, open standards are similarly under the command and control of these same big vendors. 

    The GPL3 process may in fact be a model for a new open standards process.  And it comes non too soon!

    ~ge~

Gary Edwards

ConsortiumInfo.org - New Comment Draft of Mass. ETRM Includes OOXML - 0 views

www.consortiuminfo.org/...article.php

shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Jul 07 - Cached
  • this new draft includes Microsoft's OOXML formats as an acceptable "open format."&nbsp;
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Jul 07
     
    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
Gary Edwards

Can a file be ODF and Open XML at the same time? (and HTML? and a Java servlet? and a P... - 0 views

www.oreillynet.com/..._file_be_odf_and_open_xml.html

jellife odf ooxml pdf html OPC zip

shared by Gary Edwards on 14 Jan 09 - Cached
  • The recent bomb in the ODF world from Gary Edward’s claims that Sun successfully blocked the addition of features to ODF that would be needed for full interchange with Office are explosive not only because they demonstrate how ODF was (properly, in my view) developed to cope with the particular features of the participants, not really as a universal format, but also because the prop up Microsoft’s position that Open XML is required because it exposes particular features that ISO ODF is not capable of exposing. Both because ODF is still in progress and because sometimes the features are simply incompatible in the details.
  • Actually, ODF is about to get a new manifest along with the new metadata stuff. Because we base that on RDF, the manifest will also be RDF-based. It gives us the extensibility we want to provide (extension developers, for example, can add extra metadata they may need), without having to worry about breaking compatibility. The primary addition we've made is a mechanism to bind a stable URI to in-document content node ids and files. This is conceptually not all that different than what I see in OPC; it's just that the unique IDs are in fact URIs. Among other things, in the RDF context that allows further statements to be bound to those URIs. Bruce D'Arcus | July 29, 2007 01:02 PM
  • Gary Edwards on 14 Jan 09
     
    What Bruce doesn't explain in this highlighted clip is that Sun decided to limit the "extra metadata" developer might need to just a handful of elements Sun and IBM needed to use in OpenOffice. The original OpenDocument Foundation metadata proposal was to open up the use of metadata to the extent that metadata could be used for all aspects of presentation (formatting AND layout!).
  • Gary Edwards on 14 Jan 09
     
    This vendor specific - application specific limiting ended the last hope we had for ODF interoperability and backwards compatibility with the billions of "in-process" MSOffice documents known to be populating business processes the world over. In fact, the problem ODF adoption faces is primarily that of MSOffice bound business processes, reflected in these billions of workgroup-workflow documents.
  • Gary Edwards on 14 Jan 09
     
    Proposal to have a standard packaging for combining application specific XML formats, Open HTML, and PDF. Great comments. This July 2007 article links to a January 2009 article: http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/01/packaging-formats-of-famous-ap.html
Gary Edwards

CXOtoday.com > Interview > "Computing driven by OXML sets to a strong start" - 0 views

www.cxotoday.com/...551-82889-906.html

odf odf-ix ooxml

shared by Gary Edwards on 23 Aug 07 - Cached
  • Why does Microsoft want another standard, what's the rationale? There are at least 4 good reasons why: *ODF started out and was completed as an XML format, specifically supporting OpenOffice with a tight scope around that product. *It wasn't until 2005 that the spec was offered up as a general XML office document format and consequently renamed to ODF. *No opportunity existed for Microsoft to actually participate in this full process - given the original scope, the 6 months between the re-naming of the spec to ODF, and its subsequent approval by OASIS as a standard. *The scope of the ODF spec never included even the basic requirements that Microsoft required to support a fully open format, and nor did the OASIS technical committee want to include these requirements.
  • Gary Edwards on 23 Aug 07
     
    Erwin's StarOffice Tango has an exhaustive response to this Microsoft Q&A. Correcting false statements by Microsoft
Gary Edwards

Erwin's StarOffice Tango - 0 views

blogs.sun.com/..._false_statements_by_microsoft

shared by Gary Edwards on 23 Aug 07 - Cached
  • Correcting false statements by Microsoft
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 23 Aug 07
       
      Erwin's corrections to the CXOToday interview with Microsoft's always evolving talking points.
Gary Edwards

Re: [office-metadata] Suggested Changes on the Metadata proposal - 0 views

lists.oasis-open.org/...msg00065.html

conformance interoperability metadata odf-tc

shared by Gary Edwards on 23 Aug 07 - Cached
  • - A metadata aware ODF implementation *shall* not remove the xml:id attributes defined in sections [?] or change its values unless the removal or modification is the result of an edit operation caused be the user, or a similar action taken by some automatic processing of the document.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 23 Aug 07
       
      The road to universal interoperability! Document exchange demands that applications preserve information that other applications need.
  • Gary Edwards on 23 Aug 07
     
    Surprising post from Sun's Michael Brauer supporting the mandatory "shall - must" preservation of the metadata XML:id. Preservation of metadata information is critical to the high fidelity "round trip" interoperable exchange of ODF documents.

    Marbux is currently locked into a raging interoperability battle with the ODF Metadata Sub Committee where it's been proposed that preservation of metadata be optional!

    The entire thread is located here:
    ODF-Metadata-Proposal-22August2007

    This is one worth watching. The fight to limit ODF interoperability continues. Marbux is a distinguished Universal Interoperability expert with a blazing background in International Trade Agreements and anti trust based on interoperability violations.
Gary Edwards

Re: [office-metadata] Suggested Changes on the Metadata proposal - 0 views

lists.oasis-open.org/...msg00072.html

conformance-clause interoperability marbux metadata odf

shared by Gary Edwards on 23 Aug 07 - Cached
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 23 Aug 07
       
      Preserving metadata! Preserving application specific information. Preserving "unknown" information inside of a document
  • Unless we add conformance requirements for the preservation of metadata and processing instructions, the less featureful apps will never&nbsp; be able to round-trip documents with the more featureful apps. Our language should require that. Personally, I believe that the software-as-an-end-point client-side office suites are dinosaurs at the end of their era. They are being finished off by a thousand cuts as users spend less and less time using them and more and more time using other apps, such as web apps. ODF either develops methods for interoperability among all apps or it will die along with the office suites. E.g., Microsoft knows this and is busily migrating its Office development budget across the Sharepoint/Exchange server hubs to the network. Meanwhile, this TC fiddles with preserving the 1995 software-as-an-endpoint vision.
  • Gary Edwards on 23 Aug 07
     
    Marbux is clearly at the top of his game here as he hammers the interoperability issue.
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