OpenDocument

Short slide deck of Barbara Held's February 28th, 2007 EU IDABC presentation. She introduces ODEF, the "Open Document Exchange Format" which is designed to replace both ODF and OpenOfficeXML. ComputerWorld recently ran a story about the end of ODF, as they covered the failure of six "legislative" initiatives designed to mandate ODF as the official file format. While the political treachery surrounding these initiatives is a story in and of itself, the larger story, the one that has world wide reverberations, wasn't mentioned. The larger ODF story is that ODF vendors are losing the political battles because they are unable to provide government CIO's with real world solutions. Here are three quotes from the California discussion that really say it all: "Interoperability isn't just a feature. It's the basic requirement for getting your XML file format and applications considered"..... "The challenge is that of migrating our existing documents and business processes to XML. The question is which XML? OpenDocument or OpenXML?" ....... "Under those conditions, is it even possible to implement OpenDocument?" ....... Bill Welty, CIO California Air Resource Board wondering if there was a way to support California legislative proposal AB-1668. This is hardly the first time the compatibility-interoperability issue has challenged ODf. Massachusetts spent a full year on a pilot study testing the top tier of ODF solutions: OpenOffice, StarOffice, Novell Office and IBM's WorkPlace (prototype). The results were a disaster for ODF. So much so that the 300 page pilot study report and accompanying comments wiki have never seen the light of day. In response to the disastrous pilot study, Massachusetts issued their now infamous RFi; a "request for information" about whether it's possible or not to write an ODF plugin for MSOffice applications. The OpenDocument Foundation responded to the RFi with our da Vinci plugin. The quick descriptio

The Knowledge Base description and history of OpenDocuemnt

The TikiWiki HTML <> Wiki Converter page

The August 28th, 2006 article about Massachusetts decision to use addon plugins.  ComputerWorld - Caarol Sliwa

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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. 

This commentary, based on Tim Bray's "Life is Complicated" blog and comment section, was published by Lxer.  Well worth the examination.

Whoa, Wiki Ricki is right.  This is a great article!  A must read interview with Louis Gutierrez.  I wonder though, since it was ComputerWorld and the Boston Globe that filed the August 2006 Freedom of Information Act invocation to get all the Massachusetts conversations and meetings, no doubt they were carryign some heavy ammunition into this interview.  Up until this interview it's been next to impossible for the public or press to get truthful information.  This is a good start, and i for one wonder just how far Massachusetts execs are willing to go with their public disclosures?

Finally, someone in Massachusetts is talking and it's the master, Louis Gutierrez.  Wiki Ricki has some nice comments about the ComputerWorld interview with Louis.  As have become his custom though, Rick once again carries the flag (or should i say water) for Microsoft.  Rick's expertise in XML used to be the draw for his column.  Now you have to parse through his comments, separating the nuggets of truth from the torren of bias.  Paid bias.  It's too bad.  Rick was one of the best. 

Incredible cut to the heart of the matter

Incredible cut to the heart of the matter

Incredible cut to the heart of the matter

Eventually i suspect the truth will come out concerning ODF and the events in Massachusetts.  Migration is difficult and our friends in Redmond are not about to lend a hand.  The problem is the starting point, the MSOffice desktop productivity environment.  A starting point owned and controlled entirely by Microsoft.  The challenge is to get from the overwhelming dominance of proprietary Microsoft binary documents and into an open XML universal file format that any application, running on any platform can interactively read, render and write to.

Microsoft has decided to keep secret the blueprint to these billions of binary documents, reserving exclusively for themselves the right to convert then to XML.  Of course, the only version of XML Microsoft will convert them to is the wholly owned and controlled OOXML file format. 

Microsoft refuses to cooperate in any way with the conversion of these legacy binary documents to the only truly open XML universal file format, OASIS OpenDocument.  Which leaves the world with a near insolvable problem; how to get from where we are today, with the boot of a ruthless monopolist on the neck of our information and information processes, to where we really desire to be -  with our digital civilization in the hands of open standards, and out of the control of proprietary applications and platform vendors.

This document describes what the OpenDocument Foundation learned in Massachusetts about the challenge of migrating to ODF. 

Excellent discussion of XML languages, how they are created, and what needs to be considered for a language to be successful

Excellent discussion of XML languages, how they are created, and what needs to be considered for a language to be successful

Excellent discussion of XML languages, how they are created, and what needs to be considered for a language to be successful