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False dichotomyFalse dichotomyPosted Oct 30, 2007 17:24 UTC (Tue) by stevenj (guest, #421)Parent article: GNOME and OOXML
Is it just me, or is there a false dichotomy floating around here? There is no fundamental contradiction between wanting to interoperate and pressing Microsoft to publish and improve documentation for whatever formats are in their latest products, and at the same time opposing the idea that this redundant mishmash of in-house formats should be blessed as an official ISO standard. Yes, press MS to clarify as much as possible. Yes interoperate as much as possible in order to provide a viable FLOSS escape route from MS Office. And then turn around and vote no on the ISO standard: there is no benefit to users or industry in having a second office-productivity format (not to mention one with two of its own incompatible vector-graphics formats, a new equation format, and other disregard for existing standards [the Gregorian calendar, anyone?]). If you think that annointing whatever MS deigns to document as an ISO standard is the only way to get them to document their formats, no matter how redundant or incomplete or badly engineered it may be, then the price is too high—we are better off reverse-engineering, as was done with the binary format. (And will have to be done anyway, most likely, as there is no indication that MS will limit themselves to following the ECMA/ISO version of their format.)
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False dichotomy Posted Oct 30, 2007 17:56 UTC (Tue) by ajross (subscriber, #4563) [Link] Agreed. No one would bat an eye if GNOME announced a project to write a library that abstracted the (reverse-engineered) binary .doc format for applications. But try working with the vendor on an *actual* standard (however flawed it might be) and they get flamed? Sigh.
False dichotomy Posted Oct 30, 2007 18:40 UTC (Tue) by sayler (subscriber, #3164) [Link] http://www.itwire.com/content/view/15089/1091/1/1/ Speaking of trolls :P Maybe I'm just a corporate shill, but working on *two* fronts, as opposed to just one seems like a good idea to me.
False dichotomy Posted Oct 30, 2007 22:10 UTC (Tue) by stevenj (guest, #421) [Link] Actually, I was thinking of the other side. People who are opposed to ISO standardization are accused of not caring about interoperating with MS Office or of not wanting documentation for MS formats. And some GNOME personalities (*cough* Miguel) seem to think that helping ISO bless OOXML is the only way to get documentation out of MS (and is worth the cost of having two incompatible ISO standards).
False dichotomy Posted Oct 30, 2007 19:00 UTC (Tue) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] Unfortunately, OOXML standardization is not a technical process but a battle of influence right now and Microsoft is spinning every FLOSS actor contribution to the ECMA process to "prove" to good-willing but FLOSS-ignorant national standard bodies there is strong support for ISO OOXML standardization FLOSS-side. That includes spinning quotes from personalities very aware of this political game and eager to help (Miguel), and spinning quotes from people like Jody Goldberg that claim they want to ignore the political aspects of OOXML/ODF ands thus plays right into Microsoft hands (Microsoft just needs to get its numerous parters repeat and amplify the positive things written about OOXML and ignore the others, and no one's the wiser). Also: 1. Some people have no clue how ISO standardization will be used by vendors and feel that if the price to get Microsoft format documentation is to get it rubber-stamped at ISO that's something acceptable. 2. For someone involved in an application that needs to parse Microsoft formats there is this strong temptation to play along with Microsoft to get access to good documentation on its formats, while turning a blind eye to how Microsoft uses this involvement to lend credibility to its ISO target. 3. It's very difficult for a FLOSS hacker (even if this hacker worked for an editor like Novell) if he has not spend some time in a big corporation to understand how Microsoft is positioning OOXML. Microsoft is not asking to standardize a word processor or spreadsheat format. It's asking to standardize data containers that can talk to server apps, be consumed and generated by them (and yes the MS formats are woefully inadequate for the task but no that hasn't stopped people from doing it with .doc and .xls and now MS is asking ISO to bless OOXML for this). That's written black on white in the OOXML spec preamble. That's something Gnumeric never participated in. That's something Jody is woefully unprepared to evaluate. ODF is genuinely better than OOXML for this use case, and when Jody complains of ODF XML-isms it just shows he has not the slightest idea of what SUN, IBM & Microsoft are battling for. The money is not in the office suite. It's getting commodized. The money is in the expensive corporate server apps, and how the client can be used to force (Microsoft) or preserve (Sun, IBM) particular software stacks on the servers. Needless to say there is little room for FLOSS or Linux servers if they need to talk to rich office clients in OOXML-lingua, process Microsoft-dates, parse EMF schemas, etc. That's internet round 2: Microsoft missed the HTML boat, let Apache establish itself, now it wants Office not the browser to provide access to enterprise infrastructure, and root as many non-MS stuff server-side as possible in the process. Adding office components to the browser as activex was a failure. Now the game is adding browser/MUA aspects to office suites (and let them drown the W3C open bits). IBM plays the same game with its Notes+OpenOffice.org welding. And no one cares what non-enterprise users get as office suite or network client, as they don't pay any licenses anyway. Unfortunately entities like the GNOME Fundation seem not to have the slightest clue what the game is and what the costs of letting individuals create the impression of its support to OOXML will be. Delegating desktop people like Jody to evaluate OOXML when the prize is server-side, shows a profound lack of market understanding.
False dichotomy Posted Oct 30, 2007 22:26 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] The money is not in the office suite. It's getting commodized [sic]. The money is in the expensive corporate server apps [...].I have to disagree. The money is in a lot of places, including the office suite, the corporate apps and whatever you can sell for a profit. This kind of reasoning is indeed a false dichotomy: you don't have to choose between suite and server applications, or corporate vs home user. And Microsoft goes for all of them at once. That is their true virtue.
False dichotomy Posted Oct 31, 2007 0:48 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] The money is all over the place, definately. I'd have to agree with both of you guys. Very smart stuff. Now the fundamental problem is.. OOXML is going to win. More then likely. Everybody already uses Microsoft Desktop, Microsoft Server, and Microsoft Office. Even if, through a work of nature, all of the standardization folks just stand up and turn their backs completely on Microsoft and OOXML then it's still going to be much cheaper and easier for 80-90% of the market to just keep on using the same software they are using right now. Trying to stop OOXML is going to be something like standing in front of a 500 pound wrecking ball hurtling towards a building. Your probably not going to have much luck stopping it. However if you time it right you might have a pretty good chance of steering it.. Is this container format anything like media container formats? Like with Quicktime or Ogg you can have all sorts of different types ecodings inside them; Mpeg4 variations, Vorbis, Flac, Speex, AAC, etc etc I don't understand all of this, but if it's like media stuff... if you have all sorts of software on the server side to handle OOXML then would it be easier to just swap out the internal format for a more favorable one rather then try to replace OOXML entirely? (assuming that OOXML gets widely established)
False dichotomy Posted Nov 2, 2007 13:35 UTC (Fri) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link] Now the fundamental problem is.. OOXML is going to win. More then likely. Everybody already uses Microsoft Desktop, Microsoft Server, and Microsoft Office. Even if, through a work of nature, all of the standardization folks just stand up and turn their backs completely on Microsoft and OOXML then it's still going to be much cheaper and easier for 80-90% of the market to just keep on using the same software they are using right now. But this isn't the same software, it is a whole new set of formats! Sure, MSFT has a grip over (and includes) the legacy formats in OOXML, but this is more a battle for establishing the new format from both sides.
False dichotomy Posted Oct 31, 2007 20:31 UTC (Wed) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] > I have to disagree. The money is in a lot of places, including the office > suite, the corporate apps and whatever you can sell for a profit. However you can't sell for profit Office suites as tools to create standalone documents anymore (at least not to informed users, as corporate purchasers are). Their market value has not reached that of the browser yet, but it's getting close fast (thanks in part to OpenOffice.org) Nowadays Office workers do not complain their office-document-producers are not good enough, they complain they're drowning in mail and web apps and can please someone integrate all this so they don't have to retype the same info all over the place or open scores of web pages to work. They don't create office documents from scratch on the desktop anymore, they format data created or extracted on the server or sometimes just put the finishing touches to documents partially pre-generated on the server. Remember: When the internet exploded, Microsoft tried very hard to neuter it. Pushed exchange and created a Notes/Outlook duopoly (very successful in getting IMAP nowhere). Used IE to kill Netscape, and then stopped investing in IE to freeze the browser at a safe level. "Sabotaged" SUN applet plans. Bill's original vision was a PC for everyone, with the processing done on the PC, and an end to specialized computers or big centralized mainframes. Crippling the web client would keep added value desktop-side, where Microsoft was well positioned to harvest it. Yet as soon as it become clear the desktop was Microsoft-owned, other editors stopped bringing new innovative applications there, and focused on the server-side (where you could introduce new lucrative enterprise apps without an inconvenient partner eating all your profits). Despite the crippling of the network interface, J2EE thrived. Added value and corporate budgets started leaving the desktop. History showed the browser was not crippled enough, and with Firefox ready to replace IE Microsoft can not put this particular genie in the bottle. So Microsoft had to abandon its historical vision to continue growing. Forget PCs for everyone, welcome to the "computing cloud". Computer cloud being the same things everyone else is doing, except not in SUN/IBM/BEA/Oracle/Apache/SAP J2EE over *nix, but in .C# over windows, not using W3C standard formats, but Office XML customized lingua, not accessed through the browser, but through a network-enabled Office. The money in this kind of configuration is: 1. server-side 2. in the tools users need to access server-side processing The nice thing for Microsoft is that even if a dumb IE didn't stop server-side processing growth, a large IE userbase is very effective in hampering Google+Mozilla+W3C efforts to make the browser a satisfying server application entry point. IBM realized it too, but it will take some time before in manages to make OpenOffice.org + Notes + Java + Eclipse lean enough to be a no-brainer alternative. On the other hand Microsoft Office already has all the nice data presentation, data input and data persistence capabilities needed, and has its own bloat hidden by vertue of being massively pre-loaded in memory. So while competitors are stuck, adding server application entry point capabilities to Office: 1. de-commodizes Office as a product (get this OpenOffice.org) 2. adds a nice coupling between Windows-as-a-desktop and Windows-as-a-client (get this J2EE + *nix) 3. opens the possibility to get part of Microsoft networking conventions officially standards-blessed, by including them in the "Office" format sent to ISO (get this W3C+Mozilla+Google) If you take a look at what the French NB asked to remove from OOXML, you'll see everything not legacy-related is there to help MS Office talk to MS server apps. And that Microsoft is fighting tooth and nail to keep this stuff not traditionnaly associated with Office suites in the same standard (otherwise customers my take one but not the other)
False dichotomy Posted Oct 31, 2007 22:19 UTC (Wed) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] However you can't sell for profit Office suites as tools to create standalone documents anymore (at least not to informed users, as corporate purchasers are).What? You tell that to Microsoft's Office division, which beat records (20% up) again this year. Seriously, you can play the strategist and think that the future lies elsewhere. But Microsoft's profits are firmly entrenched in the present, which is operating systems and office suites. While they use existing monopolies as footholds to enter other markets, it is hard to catch them off-guard in their home turf. Their market value has not reached that of the browser yet, but it's getting close fast (thanks in part to OpenOffice.org)You make it look as if browsers costed huge quantities of money in the past, and then lost their value. That is not true. Browsers never cost anything since the early days of the internet (Mosaic, then Netscape, then IE, then Mozilla; only Netscape attempted to extort corporate users, and failed miserably). No, browsers were "commoditized" from the beginning. Yet as soon as it become clear the desktop was Microsoft-owned, other editors stopped bringing new innovative applications there, and focused on the server-side (where you could introduce new lucrative enterprise apps without an inconvenient partner eating all your profits).This is too simplistic. Other players (Adobe, Quicken) are making lots of money on the desktop. So while competitors are stuck, adding server application entry point capabilities to Office: 1. de-commodizes Office as a product (get this OpenOffice.org)That is interesting and may be true, but the basic reasons still rule IMHO: Microsoft wants to make OOXML an ISO standard basically not to lose existing customers, which may want to switch to something not so blatantly proprietary. As to server integration, Microsoft has tried this kind of thing in the past and failed miserably. For one thing their web server sucks big time; for another (not unrelated) aspect, security is a huge deal in server infrastructure and Microsoft's record there is quite poor. But they are also famous for trying many times before getting things right, so maybe this time they will succeed. Let's hope not.
False dichotomy Posted Oct 31, 2007 22:52 UTC (Wed) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] >> However you can't sell for profit Office suites as tools to create >> standalone documents anymore (at least not to informed users, as corporate >> purchasers are). > What? You tell that to Microsoft's Office division, which beat records > (20% up) again this year. Because the Office division is not selling tools focused on creating standalone documents anymore. They sell VBA automation. They sell desktop-to-server solutions. Strip this and you won't find a lot of entities ready to pay the price Microsoft asks just for the capability to create .doc and .xls documents (with no macros, no data feeds in and no data feeds out) > This is too simplistic. Other players (Adobe, Quicken) are making lots of > money on the desktop. And they got there when? Before Microsoft consolidated its desktop hold. Had they started later they wouldn't have targeted the desktop. Sure there are interesting things to do server-side, but that's not the reason why no one is trying to do new desktop apps anymore. > But they are also famous for trying many times before getting things > right, so maybe this time they will succeed. Going XML and modern programming language is helping them a lot. Sun and IBM would not be so agitated otherwise. Their pure Office suite revenue is minimal
False dichotomy Posted Nov 1, 2007 20:29 UTC (Thu) by Los__D (subscriber, #15263) [Link] As to server integration, Microsoft has tried this kind of thing in the past and failed miserably. For one thing their web server sucks big time; for another (not unrelated) aspect, security is a huge deal in server infrastructure and Microsoft's record there is quite poor. But they are also famous for trying many times before getting things right, so maybe this time they will succeed. Let's hope not. MS is very much succeeding in this strategy (It's almost impossible to sell any kind of business software without being met with a demand for SharePoint integration), and they'll definately mainly use Office as a way to create a new lock-in.
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