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Gary Edwards

Once More unto the Breach: The Best Presentation on Software Business and Open Source I... - 0 views

stephesblog.blogs.com/...the_best_presen.html

linux opensource openstandards oracle redhat wallstreet

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Mar 07 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Mar 07
     
    hey, this really is the best presentation ever.  No audio recording, bu the slides are more than enough to put this presentation over the top.  Key issues are RedHat vs Oracle, and the value of "software" as Wall street sees things.  Extremly inofmraitve and well worht the trek through over 50 slides. 
Gary Edwards

MSFT: Let's Do VHS Versus Betamax All Over - 0 views

lnxwalt.wordpress.com/...do-vhs-versus-betamax-all-over

massachusetts microsoft odf ooxml opendocument openxml

shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Mar 07 - Cached
  • “You want the customers to vote with their wallets,” Hilf said.”The most healthy market environment is where there is competition.”
  • Gary Edwards on 12 Mar 07
     
    Another great commentary from Walt Hucks.  This time his target is the over the top self serving statements from Microsoft about consumers wanting "competition" between standards.  I was a loser in the BetaMAX wars.  At least SONY had an edge in those wars of claiming a somewhat, although leglible, advantge in video fidleity.  Microsoft OOXML has no such advantage over ODF.  None whatsoever.

    Walt once again exposes Microsoft as the company you can count on to treat customers as mindless idiots.    Given the choice, customers would choose ODF over OOXML hands down, time after tiem, every time.  But they are not given "the choice".  Mcirosoft spends a lot of spin cycles complaining and whining about IBM and others not providing native support for OOXML.  Incredibly, they do this while announcing loudly that they have no intention of ever supporting ODF nativiely in their own applications?  What's u with that?  Leveraging the monopoly.  That's what.

Gary Edwards

Microsoft Watch - Business Applications - Convergence=Integration - 0 views

www.microsoft-watch.com/...convergence_integration.html

chains exchange hubs microsoft odf office ooxml opendocument openxml sharepoint xml

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Mar 07 - Cached
  • Microsoft significantly increases cross-integration of features with the company's other software. Microsoft acquired most of the products making up its Dynamics product line, and what a motley crew. New products and versions bring the Dynamics line more into the Microsoft family, in part by convergence—or increased integration with the company's other software.
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Mar 07
     
    Thanks for the insightful commentary Joe. I see things a bit differently. Maybe my tin foil hat is wearing a bit tight these days, but i see MSOffice XML (MOOXML and the MOOXML binary InfoSet) as a very important aspect of how Microsoft integrates and leverages their desktop office monopoly power into server side and device systems. It is the combination of MOOXML and .NET that creates the integration mesh between desktop, server systems, and devices. Imagine every application or service participating in either a loosely coupled or carefully crafted information processing chain, being fluent in MOOXML, and able to process internal data structures and processing instructions unique to .NET. Enterprise systems and services from ORACLE, IBM and SAP will not have this same integration fluency. The design of ISO MOOXML is such that it would be impossible for <b>non Microsoft server and device systems</b> to match the quality and depth of integration with the 500 million desktops running MSOffice bound business processes. Given that MOOXML will probably succeed at getting ISO/IEC approval, removing the last "legal" barrier for this MOOXML Stack, were looking at a massive migration of MSOffice bound workgroup - workflow business processes to a new lockin point; The Exchange/SharePoint Hub. With the real estate industry, this migration to to E/S hosted applications only took six months to completely replace years of desktop productivity shrinkware dominance. The leap in productivity was spectacular. The downside of this migration is that the real estate industry is now tied into Microsoft at the critically important business process level. A binding that will perhaps last through the next fifteen years.
Gary Edwards

Microsoft Suffers Latest Blow As NIST Bans Windows Vista - Technology News by Informati... - 0 views

www.informationweek.com/...showArticle.jhtml

iso microsoft odf ooxml xml

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Mar 07 - Cached
  • 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.
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Mar 07
     
    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
Gary Edwards

FAA May Ditch Microsoft's Windows Vista And Office For Google And Linux Combo - Technol... - 0 views

www.informationweek.com/...showArticle.jhtml

iso microsoft odf ooxml xml

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Mar 07 - Cached
  • Bowen's compatibility concerns, combined with the potential cost of upgrading the FAA's 45,000 workers to Microsoft's next-generation desktop environment, could make the moratorium permanent. "We're considering the cost to deploy [Windows Vista] in our organization. But when you consider the incompatibilities, and the fact that we haven't seen much in the way of documented business value, we felt that we needed to do a lot more study," said Bowen. Because of Google Apps' sudden entry into the desktop productivity market
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Mar 07
     
    The FAA issues their "NO ViSTA" mandate, hinting that it might be permanent if they can come up with MSOffice alternatives.  They are looking at Google Apps!

    Okay, so plan B does have legs.  The recent failure of ISO/IEC to stand up to the recidivist reprobate from Redmond is having repercussions.  Who would have ever thought ISO would fold so quickly without ceremony?  One day there are 20 out of 30 JTCS1 national bodies (NB's) objecting to Micrsoft's proprietary XML proposal, the MOOX Ecma 376 specfication, and the next ISO is approving without comment the placing of MOOX into the ISO fast track where approval is near certain.  With fast track, the technical objections and contradictions are assumed to be the provence of Ecma, and not the JTCS1 experts group.

    Apparently the USA Federal Government divisions had a plan B contingency for just such a case.  And why not?  Microsoft was able to purchase a presidential pardon for their illegal anti trust violations.  If they can do that, what's to stop them from purchasing an International Standard?  Piece of cake!

    But Google Apps?  And i say that as one who uses Google Docs every day.

    The problem of migrating away from MSOffice and MOOX to ODF or some other "open" XML portable file format is that there are two barriers one must cross.

    The first barrier is that of converting the billions of MS binary docuemnts into ODF XML. 

    The second is that of replacing the MSOffice bound business processes that drive critical day to day business operabions. 

    Google Apps is fine for documents that benefit from collaborative computing activities.  But there is no way one can migrate MSOffice bound business processes - the workgroup-worflow documents to Google Apps.  For one thing Google Apps is unable to facillitate important issues like XForms.  Nor can they round trip an ODF document with the needed fidelity a
Gary Edwards

Plan B: The NO ViSTA Mandates, and the failure of ISO/IEC - 0 views

docs.google.com/View

government iso microsoft odf ooxml vista xml

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Mar 07 - Cached
  • Plan B: The "NO ViSTA" Mandates:&nbsp; the failure of Anti Trust Laws and International Trade Agreements to Stop The Great Monopolist, Microsoft A series of surprising government mandate announcements rolled out in the immediate aftermath of the ISO/IEC decision to fast track Ecma 376 otherwise known as Microsoft Office Open XML (MOOX).&nbsp; The three articles commented on here are all from Information Week, who has done yeoman work concerning the OpenDocument - MOOX controversy that has so upset Microsoft.&nbsp; Now the mighty monopolist can taste victory, with fast track approval of MOOX certain, and ISO/IEC in the bag.&nbsp; Incredibly the company that escaped a Court ordered death sentence by purchasing what amounts to a presidential pardon.&nbsp; They even avoided the stink of their own lobbyist and henchman Jack Abramoff, and his motley crew of Ralph Reed and Grover Nyquist operatives.&nbsp; Now they are well on their way towards purchasing an International Standard.&nbsp; So much for Plan A.&nbsp; Time for Plan B, the "NO ViSTA" mandate.
  • Gary Edwards on 13 Mar 07
     
    Okay.  I've combined my three comments into a single page.  Sadly Diigo does not offer spell checking.  My apologies to all.  Hoepfully this will be a better read.
Gary Edwards

Ecma Responds « Opportunity Knocks - 0 views

lnxwalt.wordpress.com/...ecma-responds

shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Mar 07 - Cached
  • No, the real problem to me is that Microsoft wants to position OOXML as just a base format that their implementation is based on. And that the implementation adds all the other parts that are supposed to be non-XML, which includes VBA macros, OLE, DRM, password-protection, …
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Mar 07
     
    Walt Hucks and Stephane Rodriguez have taken on the MS Ecma response to ISO/IEC JTC S1 National Bodies objections and contradiciton findings that were filed at the end of the ISO/IEC Ecma 376 fast track - contradiction review phase.  

    The one - two punch Walt and Stephane provide is the clearest statement yet of what's really behind th eenormity of Microsoft's effort to establish their own international standards for XML file formats.  In particular, they discuss the issue of business processes bound to the MSOffice - VBA API layer through macros, scripts, OLE, DRM, and password protection type mechnaisms.

    They also point out that Ecma 376 is just a baseline file format that will be eXtended by MS Applications on implementation.  It is the this collection of embedded system specific processing instructions that bind current business processewss to MSOffice, and will hold the monopoly base of 500 million desktops intact as MS makes the tranistion from desktop shrinkwrap sales to server side systems and services stacks.

Gary Edwards

Q&amp;A: Calif. CIO Steers Clear of Ideology on File Formats - 0 views

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

california iso microsoft mooxml msoffice odf ooxml opendocument openxml xml

shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Mar 07 - Cached
  • We’re trying to view it as a straight business decision. What are the costs associated with one approach over another? Does it serve all of our business needs? If it doesn’t serve a business need, how do we satisfy that business need? We’re trying to view this just as a plain-vanilla, nonpartisan, nonideological issue.
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Mar 07
     
    A mus tread.  Carol Sliwa of ComputerWorld intervies Clark Kelso, California CIO.  ODF is the main issue, with clark casting all his answers in the context of business decisions.  Carol o fcourse is asking the best questions of any journalist alive.

    Keep in mind that ComputerWorld and the Boston globe filed for the Freedom of Information Act to be invoked in Massachusetts.  They got access to all the eMail, documnetation, and conferencing notes concerning ODF  and Microsoft.  Carol's interview with Louis Gutierrez last week was filled with the same hard questions Clark Kelso fielded so deftly.

    The "committee" Clark Kelso has set up to look at these issues is headed by Bill Welty, the CIO of the California Air Resources Board.  Bill is a long time opensource - Linux guy, but will be the firs tto admit that Microsoft is the only vendor providing a means of getting everything inot XML.  And that's the heart of any SOA strategy, "First, get everything into XML".

    With a 500 million MSOffice desktop bound business process headstart, Microsoft has the extreme advantage in this much needed migration to XML. 

    They now have their own proprietary application and platform bound version of XML; MOOXML (Microsoft OfficeOpenXML) heading for international standardization at ISO. 

    They now have their XML Hub in place; the Exchange4/SharePoint Hub.  This is also an essential part of any SOA strategy.  You've got to have an XML Hub where the XML information streams and service connection to legacy black box systems can be piped into, managed and resolved.  The XML must also provide an end user interface to these information flows.  One that converges and integrates information, documents, data, and workflows into an easy to manage and participate in interface.  The E/S Hub excells at this because it covers the fundamentals of eMail, messaging, portal, calendar, scheduling, c
Gary Edwards

Tim Anderson's ITWriting - Tech writing blog » Microsoft's Jean Paoli on the ... - 0 views

www.itwriting.com/blog

microsoft mooxml odf paoli

shared by Gary Edwards on 24 Apr 07 - Cached
  • What’s distinctive about the goals of OOXML? Primarily, to have full fidelity with pre-existing binary documents created in Microsoft Office. “What people want is to make sure that their billions of important documents can be saved in a format where they don’t lose any information. As a design goal, we said that those formats have to represent all the information that enables high-fidelity migration from the binary formats”, says Paoli. He mentions work with institutions including the British Library and the US Library of Congress, concerned to preserve the information in their electronic archive. I asked Paoli if such users could get equally good fidelity by converting their documents to ODF. “Absolutely not,” he says. “I am very clear on that. Those two formats are done for different reasons.” What can go wrong? Paoli gives as an example the myriad ways borders can be drawn round tables in Microsoft Office and all its legacy versions. “There are 100 ways to draw the lines around a table,” he says. “The Open XML format has them all, but ODF which has not been designed for backward compatibility, does not have them. It’s really the tip of the iceberg. So if someone translates a binary document with a table to ODF, you will lose the framing details. That is just a very small example.”
  • “Open Document Format and Office Open XML have very different goals”, says Paoli, responding to the claim that the world needs only one standard XML format for office documents. “Both of them are formats for documents … both are good.”
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 19 Aug 07
       
      The door should have been slammed shut on OOXML near five years ago when, on December 14th, 2006, at the very first OASIS ODF TC meeting, Stellent's Phil Boutros proposed that the charter include, "compatibility with existing file formats and interoperability with existing applications" as a priority objective.
  • Another benefit Paoli claims for OOXML is performance. “A lot of things are designed differently because we believe it will work faster. The spreadsheet format has been designed for very big spreadsheets because we know our users, especially in the finance industry, use very large spreadsheets.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 19 Aug 07
       
      Wrong. The da Vinci plug-in prototype we demonstrated to Massachusetts on June 19th, 2006 proved that there is little or no difference in spreadsheet performance between a OOXML file, and an ODF file.

      In fact, ODF version of the extremely large test file beat the OOXML load by 12 seconds.

      Where the performance difference comes in is at the application level. MS Excel can load a OOXML version of a large spreadsheet faster than OpenOffice can load an ODF version of that same spreadsheet.

      If you eliminate the application differential, and load the OOXML file and the ODF version of that same spreadsheet into a plug-in enabled Excel, the performance differences are negligible.

      The reason for this is that the OOXML plug-in for Excel has a conversion overhead identical to the da Vinci plug-in for Excel. It has nothing to do with the file format, and everythign to do with the application.

      ~ge~
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Paoli points to the conversion errors as evidence of how poorly ODF can represent legacy Office documents. My hunch is that this has more to do with the poor quality of the converter.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 19 Aug 07
       
      Note that these OASIS ODF TC November 20th iX "interoperability enhancement" suggestions were submitted by Novell as part of their effort to perfect a OOXML plug-in for OpenOffice!!!!

      "Lists" were th first of these iX items to be submitted as formal proposal. And Sun fought that list proposal viciously for the next four months. The donnybrook resulted i a total breakdown of the ODF consensus process. But, it ensured that never again would anyone be stupid enough to challenge Sun's authority and control of the OASIS ODF TC.

      Sun made it clear that they would viciously oppose any other efforts to establish interoperability with existing Microsoft documents, applications, processes effort.

      Point taken.

      ~ge~
  • the idea that Sun is preparing a reference implementation of OOXML is laughable.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 19 Aug 07
       
      Sorry Tim. It's true. Sun and Novell are working together to develop native OOXML file support in OpenOffice. You can find this clearly stated in the Gullfoss Planet OpenOffice blogs.

      The funny thing is that Sun will have to implement and support the November 20th iX enhancements submitted by Novell!! (Or, the interoperability frameworks also submitted by Novell in February of 2007). There is simply no other way for OpenOffice to implement OOXML with the needed fidelity.

      ~ge~
  • One of new scenarios enabled by the “custom xml parts” (again, if you read their blogs, you must have heard of this stuff) is the ability to bind xml sources and a control+layout so that it enables the equivalent of data queries (we’ve had in Excel for many years already), just with a source which is part of the package, contrary to the typical external data source connection. Well this stuff, besides the declaration (which includes, big surprise, GUIDs and stuff like that) requires the actual Office 2007 run-time to work. So whenever MS says this stuff is interoperable, they cannot mean you can take this stuff away in another application. Because you can’t. This binding is more or less the same than the embedding of VBA macros. It’s all application-specific, and only Microsoft’s own suite knows how to instantiate this stuff.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 19 Aug 07
       
      Stephan whacks this one out of the park! Smart Documents will replace VBa scripts, macros and OLE functionality going forward. It's also the data binding - workflow and metadata model of the future. And it's all proprietary!

      It's the combination of OOXML plus the MSOffice- Vista Stack specific Smart Documents that will lock end users into the Vista Stack for years to come.

      Watch out Google!

      ~ge~
  • Has Microsoft published the .doc spec publicly? Then why should ODF worry about the past? It’s not ODF’s concern to worry about Microsoft’s past formats. (Understand that the .doc format alone changed six times in the last eight versions of Office!) That’s Microsoft’s legacy problem, not ODF’s.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 19 Aug 07
       
      There really is no need to access the secret binary blueprints. The ACME 376 plug-in demonstration proves this conclusively. The only thing the ACME 376 demo lacks is that we didn't throw the switch on the magic key to release all VBa scripts, macros and OLE bindings to ACME. But that can be done if someone is serious about converting the whole shebang of documents, applications and processes.

      The real problem is that although ACME 376 proves we can hit the high fidelity required, it is impossible to effectively capture that fidelity in ODF without the iX interoperability enhancements. The world expects ODF interoperability. But as long as Sun opposes iX, we can't pipe from ACME 376 to ODF.

      ~ge~
  • I put it to Paoli that OOXML is hard to implement because of all its legacy support, some of which is currently not well documented. “I don’t believe that at all. It’s actually the opposite,” he says. He make the point that third parties like Corel, which have previously implemented support for binary formats like .doc and .xls, should find it easy to transition to OOXML. “We believe Open XML adoption by vendors like Corel will be very easy because they have already been doing 90% of the work, doing the binary formats. The features are already there.”
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 20 Aug 07
       
      WordPerfect does an excellent import of MSWord .doc documents. But there is no conversion! It's a read only rendering. Once you start editing the document in WP, all kinds of funny things happen, and the perfect fidelity melts away like the wicked witch of west in a bucket full of water.
  • Gary Edwards on 24 Apr 07
     
    Tim Anderson interviews Microsoft's Jean Paoli about MOOXML and ODF.    Jean Paoli of course has the predictable set of answers.  But Tim anderson provides us with some interesting insights and comments of his own.  There is also a gem of a comment from Stephane Rodriquez, the reknown spreadsheet expert.

    The bottom line for Microsoft has not changed.  MOOXML exists because of the need for an XML file format compatible with the legacy of existing MSOffic ebinary documents.  He claims that ODF is not compatible, and offers the "page borders" issue as an example.

    Page borders?  What's that got to do with the ODF file format?   These are application specific, application bound proprietary graphics that can not be ported to any other application - like OpenOffice.  The reason has nothign whatsoever to do with ODF and everything to do with the fact that the page border library is bound to MSOffice and not available to other applications like OpenOffice. 

    So here is an application specific feature tha tJean Paoli claims can not be expressed in ODF, but can in MOOXML.  But when are running the da Vinci ODF plugin in MSWord, there is no problem whatsoever in capturing the page borders in ODF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  No problem!!!!!!!!!!

    The problem is opening up that same da Vinci MSWord document in OpenOffice.  That's where the page borders are dropped.  The issue is based entirely on the fact that OpenOffice is unable to render these MSWord specific graphics bound to an MSOffice only library.

    If however we take that same page border loaded da Vinci MSWord document, and send it half way across the world to another MSWord desktop running da Vinci, the da Vinci plugin easily loads the ODF document into MSWord where it is perfectly rendered, page borders and all!!!!!!!!

    Now i will admit that this is one very difficult issue to understand.  If not f
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Aug 07
     
    Great interview. Tim can obviously run circles around poor Jean Paoli.
Gary Edwards

Government - Focus for an OS Desktop - 0 views

advice.cio.com/...rnment_focus_for_an_os_desktop

davinci government msoffice odf oss procurement

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 May 07 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 29 May 07
     
    Government, to include Federal, State and Local, should be the prime focus for increasing open source desktop market share by vendors such as Novell, Redhat and Ubuntu. Why, because government is required to procure all product and services through an open, transparent and competitive process. As of today, few if any government organizations have complied with this requirement when it comes to purchases of desktop operating systems or productivity tools. In fact, until just recently there have not been competitive alternatives, but now there are.
  • Gary Edwards on 29 May 07
     
    Government, to include Federal, State and Local, should be the prime focus for increasing open source desktop market share by vendors such as Novell, Redhat and Ubuntu. Why, because government is required to procure all product and services through an open, transparent and competitive process. As of today, few if any government organizations have complied with this requirement when it comes to purchases of desktop operating systems or productivity tools. In fact, until just recently there have not been competitive alternatives, but now there are.
Gary Edwards

Slashdot | Pro-ODF Legislation Loses In Six States - 0 views

it.slashdot.org/article.pl

shared by Gary Edwards on 04 Jun 07 - Cached
  • If this is the case then it greatly increases the scope of the bill from being a simple switch from MS Office to OpenOffice to a massive effort involving the definition of many new XML schemata, developing, testing and debugging software to handle the new schemata, creation of documentation, deployment of and training for the new software, etc., etc.
  • Another document format is not needed. This was already obvious before blogs took off, but to be promoting now is unforgivably stupid and irresponsible. Try and explain to an average person why all the typing they just did cannot even be viewed in a Web browser, they will not get it. Saving the user's typing as DOC or ODF is a con. The storage of text, styled text, graphics, photos, even movies (MPEG-4 H.264-AAC) has been solved. Your document format is ready it is HTML 4.01 Strict, CSS 2.1, and JS 1.5, there is nothing in the 1980's technology of MS Word that cannot be stored this way.
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

Commercial Software Will Include Open Source, Gartner Says - Flock - 0 views

www.eweek.com/...0,1895,2185384,00.asp

floss interoperability

shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Sep 07 - Cached
  • According to Driver, open-source software is now in its third wave, which is a phase of leverage as it is really good enough to use, provides alternatives throughout the stack, and is becoming far more pragmatic than idealistic. "Open source is not being hijacked; it is evolving along with the rest of the software industry," he said.
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Sep 07
     
    Gartner report on OSS - now in the "third wave".  Comment posted
Gary Edwards

Did the W3C acknowledge CDF's potential as an office format (vs ODF) in newly public e-... - 0 views

blogs.zdnet.com/Berlind

berlind cdf foundation heintzman odf ooxml opendocument schepers w3c zdnet

shared by Gary Edwards on 11 Dec 07 - Cached
  • Along the way, both sides know that there is little margin for error. All it takes is for one slip-up in messaging, one missed appointment, one mistake or one technical snafu to create a hole that the other side will gladly drive a Mack truck through. The stakes are so high that both sides have done a remarkable if not awe-inspiring (though not always commendable) job in executing their global full court presses. For the ODF community, it’s relatively minor to have a few dissenters like Edwards and Hiser break ranks. But, should the W3C concur with Edwards and Hiser that CDF is the more sensible candidate (than ODF) to be the world’s international open standard for universal document interop and portability, solidarity around ODF could weaken. And any weakening of solidarity around ODF is exactly the sort of hole that Microsoft would look to drive a truck through. If an indicator from the W3C that CDF is better-suited for ODF’s job than ODF could lead to such a hole, a similar indicator from IBM would be disastrous for the ODF community. Although it’s nothing more than a wild guess on my behalf, I’m willing to bet that IBM is probably responsible for more than 40 percent of the global resources being brought to bear on ODF’s behalf, if not 50 or 60 (percent). Microsoft wouldn’t need a Mack truck to take advantage of an IBM insinuation that ODF is non-strategic (or, “transitional” as Edwards said to me in an e-mail). Global support for ODF would very likely unravel because of how many people from governments to businesses to the ISO would feel betrayed and Microsoft’s OOXML would be left as the only format standing. The ODF coalition might live to see another day and another battle with CDF as their savior, but the damage would very likely be irreversible given the long memories of most of those who were betrayed.
  • Whereas the W3C has very little riding on ODF (Format), IBM has everything riding on it. Alright, not everything. IBM is involved in plenty of other businesses. But, after investing so much in ODF and now being so close to its best shot at seeking the aforementioned revenge, the last thing Big Blue can afford is a material breakdown in the world’s interest in ODF.
  • The question now is whether that moment has arrived for Gary Edwards and Sam Hiser in whole or in part, or maybe not at all. In response to my post, Doug Schepers, the primary contact at the W3C for CDF commented that in his eyes, it was simply an “honest misunderstanding on their part, and perhaps overenthusiasm.” Edwards, who over the weekend, disclosed to me the exact content of his e-mails with Schepers clearly had enough and simply published those e-mails here on ZDNet under the heading An Honest Misunderstanding? Hardly! Play the tape!. You can read the e-mails yourself. But, if there’s any text in them that vindicates Edwards and Hiser, it’s the part where Schepers wrote the following to them (I’ve boldfaced the most salient point):
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • So, what do you think? Do Edwards and Hiser have more credibility now that this e-mail has come to light?
Gary Edwards

ODF and differences of opinion - thread - 0 views

talkback.zdnet.com/5206-11048-0.html

cdf odf ooxml w3c

shared by Gary Edwards on 04 Nov 07 - Cached
  • Just because we are garage challenged doesn't mean we can't find the back door to the big house :) The larger issue at stake here is not whether or not we have a garage, or what our contribution to ODF has been over the course of five years as active members of OASIS ODF. What it really comes down to is the implementation of ODF in the real world. The chickens came home to roost when Massachusetts started a year long pilot study regarding the implementation of ODF. The study began shortly after the OASIS approval of ODf 1.0, and ended in May of 2006. The results were nothing short of a disaster for ODF.
Gary Edwards

BetaNews | Course Change for OpenDocument Developers Seen as Emerging Rift - Scott Fulton - 0 views

www.betanews.com/...1

cdf odf ooxml w3c

shared by Gary Edwards on 04 Nov 07 - Cached
  • A presentation made two weeks ago by two members of OASIS' OpenDocument technical committee, and founding members of the OpenDocument Foundation, made it clear that the foundation would be turning its attention away from developing the ODF format and translators for it. Instead, in a course change instigated as far back as last May, the Foundation is steering back toward a project launched in 1995 by the World Wide Web Consortium, in hopes of recapturing the momentum toward document interoperability for all existing word processor users.
Gary Edwards

Jason Brooks - Bumps on the Road to Document Exchange Nirvana - Flock - 0 views

blogs.eweek.com/...e_opendocument_foundation.html

cdf odf ooxml w3c

shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Nov 07 - Cached
  • The OpenDocument Foundation has announced its plans to sever itself from participation in or further advocacy of its namesake office document format in favor of the World Wide Web Consortium's XHTML (Extensible HTML)-based Compound Document Format. Although the OpenDocument Foundation is a fairly small organization, the group sports a certain cachet that stems from the ODF-to-MS Office plug-in that the group announced--but did not release publicly--about a year and a half ago. At the heart of the rift between the Foundation and the rest of the ODF backers--led by Sun and IBM--lies a dispute over the proper strategy for achieving round-trip document fidelity between Microsoft Office and ODF-consuming applications, such as Sun's OpenOffice.org or IBM's Lotus Symphony.
Gary Edwards

OpenDocument Foundation Slams Namesake Format And Calls For True Interoperability | Wir... - 0 views

blog.wired.com/...opendocument-fo.html

cdf odf ooxml w3c

shared by Gary Edwards on 06 Nov 07 - Cached
  • There’s some weight to that accusation when you consider how the applications behind each format operate. For instance, Microsoft Office more or less sucks at handling ODF documents and OpenOffice sucks at opening OOXML files — but why? OpenOffice has largely refused to implement any of the proprietary elements of Microsoft’s Office and Microsoft has made only a passing effort at supporting ODF. The two sides may argue about which is the better file format, but in reality what they’re saying is “our software works better than yours.” From an end user point of view software remains the critical issue — far moreso than the document format itself. But the OpenDocument Foundation would like that to change, they believe that interoperability is the whole point of having a universal format.
  • But it is nice to see that at least some part of office document debate is actually on the real-world user’s side. After all, most of us really don’t care what format our documents are in as long as all our applications can open them. And right now that sort of cross-application compatibility is little more than a pipe dream.
  • Gary Edwards on 06 Nov 07
     
    Wow.  Add another name to the ODF Jihadist list of fatwah targets, "Scott Gilbertson".
Gary Edwards

Open Document Foundation Dumps ODF for CDF - Open for Business - Lora Bentley - 0 views

www.itbusinessedge.com/...osb

cdf odf ooxml w3c

shared by Gary Edwards on 06 Nov 07 - Cached
  • Five years after it was formed specifically to promote OpenDocument Format as an alternative to Microsoft Office formats, those behind the Open Document Foundation are abandoning the OASIS- and ISO-approved document standard in favor of the World Wide Web Consortium’s Compound Document Format.
Gary Edwards

The City of Heerenveen turns OpenOffice.org into a Web 2.0 enterprise environment. - Flock - 0 views

www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp

odf

shared by Gary Edwards on 01 Dec 07 - Cached
  • “By migrating from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org we had to take our productivity environment to a higher level, so that the migration would not be perceived as a mere replacement but as a genuine improvement. The OpenOffice.org user doesn’t need to leave the OpenOffice.org application or start another application. This effectively eliminates the borders between template management and document collaboration for teams, projects and departments. We are focused on the user and on the usability of the applications we use. With O3Spaces Workplace we’ve found a fully integrated document management, collaboration environment that till now couldn’t be found on the market”, says Hiemstra.
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