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Shuttleworth: Emerging consensus in favour of a unified document format standard?
Mark Shuttleworth writes at length about the upcoming vote on Microsoft's OpenXML format as an ISO standard. "A vote of 'no OpenXML' is vote against multiple incompatible standards, and hence a vote in favour of unity.If the ISO vote is 'no', then there is every reason to expect that Microsoft will adopt ODF, and help to make that a better standard for everybody including themselves."
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Shuttleworth: Emerging consensus in favour of a unified document format standard? Posted Aug 14, 2007 16:39 UTC (Tue) by cpm (guest, #3554) [Link] "If the ISO vote is 'no', then there is every reason to expect that Microsoft will adopt ODF,"
Not likely.
I think the history of MS is pretty clear on such issues, if at first they
Shuttleworth: Emerging consensus in favour of a unified document format standard? Posted Aug 14, 2007 17:03 UTC (Tue) by mbottrell (guest, #43008) [Link] Microsoft adopt ODF... very unlikely.
Microsoft is used to controlling their fleet, handing over 'control' of their filetype to a 3rd party just doesn't suit their current business model.
It also drops their biggest reason users remain with MS-Office... vendor lock-in.
If you can write the same document (file spec wise) in MS-Office or OpenOffice/StarOffice... one would question why you would remain with MS-Office.
Sad .. but true.
Shuttleworth: Emerging consensus in favour of a unified document format standard? Posted Aug 14, 2007 17:42 UTC (Tue) by rgmoore (subscriber, #75) [Link] I think the history of MS is pretty clear on such issues, if at first they don't succeed in getting their way, they just manipulate the process until they do get their way. -Or- they retreat from the field and try again another day. Or the may do something similar to what happened with HTML. They'll claim that they're adopting ODF, but they'll add a ton of undocumented proprietary extensions without going through the normal process for updating the standard. When challenged, they'll claim the extensions are needed to add features from Office that the standard doesn't support, and argue that they had to add them that way because the official change process can't keep up with the pace of development.
Shuttleworth: Emerging consensus in favour of a unified document format standard? Posted Aug 15, 2007 21:50 UTC (Wed) by horen (subscriber, #2514) [Link] Or the may do something similar to what happened with HTML. They'll claim that they're adopting ODF, but they'll add a ton of undocumented proprietary extensions without going through the normal process for updating the standard. When challenged, they'll claim the extensions are needed to add features from Office that the standard doesn't support, and argue that they had to add them that way because the official change process can't keep up with the pace of development.+1 What's more, this is exactly what Micro$oft did with their competitors, back in the early days of Windows (late-1980s/early-to-mid-1990s). "Undocumented proprietary extensions" and/or undocumented system-calls, etc., were what prevented many ISVs from successfully selling their MS Windows-based software, and then Micro$oft would buy-'em-out for a song.
Shuttleworth: Emerging consensus in favour of a unified document format standard? Posted Aug 15, 2007 0:06 UTC (Wed) by bojan (subscriber, #14302) [Link] I agree. If Microsoft really wanted to adopt ODF, they could have done so by now. Or at least they could have said so.
If their own format ("Word memory dump in XML" :-) doesn't get through ISO, they'll just keep using it anyway. Last thing they want is to have a format which enables _anyone_ to switch to an alternative office suite seamlessly.
Shuttleworth: Emerging consensus in favour of a unified document format standard? Posted Aug 15, 2007 0:55 UTC (Wed) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link] It depends what you mean by "support". Sure OOXML might remain as Office's native format but ODF will need to be able to be imported and exported easily and with good fidelity if Microsoft want to win some government's business.
Is this is a joke ? Posted Aug 15, 2007 6:34 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Remember POSIX support in Windows NT ? It was requirement for "government's business". What Microsoft did ? It added support - but make it unusable (totally independent POSIX subsystem without ability to use most of Windows NT capabilities). Looks familiar ? Yup: that's exactly how Microsoft already did ODF: support is there, but it's more-or-less unusable. Enough to win contracts, not enough to actually use. Still - it'll create opportunity for other players (unlike 1980th when POSIX players bickered and Microsoft was able to overcame them with something cheap and "easy" today most ODF-players actually care about interoperability and one is free as in speech while "bigger cousin" is free as in beer... May be it'll be beginning-of-the-end for Microsoft... So it's easy to answer what happens if ISO will vote "no". The question is what will happen if ISO will vote "yes". My guess is that will be serious blow to ISO's authority (what good are standards if any big corporation can push it's own version) and it'll be beginning-of-the-end for ISO...
Shuttleworth: Emerging consensus in favour of a unified document format standard? Posted Aug 15, 2007 7:38 UTC (Wed) by mbottrell (guest, #43008) [Link] And hence the rationale for Sun to release their 'Sun ODF Plug in 1.0 for Microsoft Office'
It is likely to become the defacto standard, even for those using Microsoft Office if they want true compatibility.
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