Microsoft to make an open source ODF translator [LWN.net]

Microsoft has announced that it has started the "Open XML Translator Project," which "will create tools to build a technical bridge between the Microsoft Office Open XML Formats and the OpenDocument Format (ODF)." The result will be released under the BSD license.

The OpenOffice.org project has sent out a release of its own expressing its pleasure that "Microsoft has bowed to pressure from the marketplace."

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Microsoft to make an open source ODF translator

Posted Jul 6, 2006 15:33 UTC (Thu) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link]

From the press release: "The Open XML formats are unique in their compatibility and fidelity to billions of Office documents, helping protect customers' intellectual investments."

Considering how each generation of Office documents has been relatively mutually incompatible, this strikes me as kind of hilarious. (Not to mention the phrase "intellectual investments"--they can't just say "data", can they? Oh, no...not them. They are compelled to be *innovative* with their press release language.)

Microsoft to make an open source ODF translator

Posted Jul 6, 2006 18:35 UTC (Thu) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]

Further, the "intellectual investments" of which Microsoft speaks are their own, not their customers. Having one's data opaquely entangled within a proprietary file format isn't much of an investment from a customer's perspective, but it's been a real revenue generator for Microsoft.

Microsoft to make an open source ODF translator

Posted Jul 7, 2006 0:43 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

One might describe it as a genuine advantage for MS.

for the sake of accuracy

Posted Jul 9, 2006 12:14 UTC (Sun) by pkturner (subscriber, #2809) [Link]

The MS press release says,

helping protect customers' intellectual investments

for the sake of accuracy

Posted Jul 10, 2006 15:17 UTC (Mon) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]

The MS press release says,
helping protect customers' intellectual investments

Yes it does, but that's just spin.

Microsoft to make an open source ODF translator

Posted Jul 6, 2006 16:49 UTC (Thu) by arcticwolf (guest, #8341) [Link]

How much do you want to bet that the BSD license they'll use will be the one *with* the advertising clause, the one that's incompatible with the GPL?

Microsoft to make an open source ODF translator

Posted Jul 6, 2006 17:07 UTC (Thu) by georgm (guest, #19574) [Link]

I don't think so.
AFAIK Sourceforge only hosts projects with OSI compliant license and the BSD license with advertising clause is no OSI license.

Microsoft to make an open source ODF translator

Posted Jul 6, 2006 19:44 UTC (Thu) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

0 dollars 0 cents

Microsoft is a bit more "subtle". The converter requires .NET framework 2.0 and Word 2007 beta 2. Only conversion from ODF to MS Word is currently supported.

If you want your secretary with a modest Pentium MMX-166 and WinWord 6 to open ODF documents, you'll need to rewrite the whole thing.

Microsoft to make an open source ODF translator

Posted Sep 14, 2006 10:38 UTC (Thu) by rovfrukt (guest, #6353) [Link]

Don't you scorn the power of MMX!

is it only me

Posted Jul 6, 2006 17:43 UTC (Thu) by ccyoung (subscriber, #16340) [Link]

or is Microsoft capable of doing this without subverting the ODF (or any open) standard?

I will be anyone even money that:

in many cases the same ODF document will not render the same on Open Office as on MS Word
many instances of formatting an internal information will be dropped or incorrectly converted from .doc to ODF
in order to save to ODF, there will be some sort of disclaimer "Information will be irrevocably lost if you chose to save your document in this format."

is it only me

Posted Jul 6, 2006 18:02 UTC (Thu) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link]

That may be true, but if the already-in-progress plugin from the OpenDocument Foundation does a better job, then Microsoft would have to answer questions about why it did so poorly, especially when they have all the crown jewels when it comes to the Office format. Competition is a good thing...at keeping people honest. That's one reason why dishonest people love to have monopolies.

is it only me

Posted Jul 6, 2006 18:04 UTC (Thu) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link]

No, it's just enough to have it as an "open source, ouside project" they can (rightly!) blame when things go south (they won't have the inside information to get it right in each nook and crany, will they?), being able to claim that they are "Open Source too", all whilst being able to say that even open source competition has enough access to their stuff to build compatible software.

A brilliant PR move, if you ask me. Won't be much else, for sure.

Microsoft to make an open source ODF translator

Posted Jul 6, 2006 20:42 UTC (Thu) by dwheeler (subscriber, #1216) [Link]

From the press release:

"In addition to being made available as free, downloadable add-ins for several older versions of the Microsoft Office system, the translation tools will be developed and licensed as open source software." Don't know how far back they'll go, but it will be available for older versions of Office.

"By developing the bidirectional translation tools through an open source project, the technical decisions and tradeoffs necessary will be transparent to everyone -- Open XML and ODF advocates alike." So it'll be bidirectional.

Here's an ominous sign: "certain compromises and customer disclosures will be a necessary part of translating between the two formats." In other words, it might not be a good translation. That's frankly to be expected anyway; as I noted months ago, Microsoft is just starting (while others have had multiple years' head start), so Microsoft's support for ODF is likely be bad at first EVEN IF they intend to produce a good one. (Windows 1.0 and 2.0 were lousy, too.) On the other hand, they won't be the only ones with translators; if it's really bad, you could just use an alternative instead, until they get theirs up to speed.

Microsoft to make an open source ODF translator

Posted Jul 7, 2006 6:14 UTC (Fri) by jonabbey (subscriber, #2736) [Link]

It'll be a pretty unusable solution if Word 2007 users need to manually convert ODF documents to OpenXML and back.

smart move

Posted Jul 7, 2006 13:18 UTC (Fri) by althetechie (subscriber, #5353) [Link]

So this destroys one of the Unique Selling Points to convince Corporates to move to OpenOffice* (*other OSS office packages are available :-)
The USPs used to be:
- OO costs no money (who cares ? - MS Office is "cheap")
- OO is Open Source (who cares ? - show me the business case)
- With MS, your data is stuck in a proprietary format (oh. that's bad for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance)

Are there any worthwhile USPs left to convince corporates to move to OO ?

With having ODF as one of the formats, it gives MS-heads in any business an excuse to avoid moving away from MS.

From the Press Release: "In addition to the default Open XML file formats, the 2007 Microsoft Office system will include a new menu option that points users to add-ins for PDF and XML-based formats..."

So: no change. MS proprietary format is still the default, but, if you want to jump through hoops, you can export as ODF. Expect lots of PR with "ODF compliant" in big letters, and OO to lose market share...
--
Al

smart move

Posted Jul 9, 2006 5:00 UTC (Sun) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

if you want to jump through hoops, you can export as ODF

Not even close: currently you can only import ODF, not export it. Yes, exporting functionaly is "in the works" - but you can be pretty sure it'll be crappy and pretty much unusable. Pure marketing. Brilliant PR move (even if dirty - but then Microsoft always playing dirty, so it's no surprise).