LWN: Comments on "When Is a Standard Truly Open? - When It's Universal, Reflections on Massachusetts and Microsoft's XML"

Interoperability - nope, it's right on point

pjgrok — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 03:16:59 +0000

Hi,

I love you too, but it isn't just a bandwidth-type of problem. Different systems were also a problem, which you can verify by reading a Berkman Center white paper (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/epolicy/roadmap.pdf) and this Washington Post article.

I knew about it because a Groklaw member who is an expert in the field told me. He was in discussions about the interoperability problem with FEMA before the hurricane hit. They were asking him about open standards and Open Source, but unfortunately the storm hit before everything could get fixed and ready. The same problem showed up in the Tsunami disaster and on 9/11, something I knew because I was in that state when it happened, and it is something you never forget. Here is a snip from the Berkman paper, quoted in a news article, on how communications broke down there in the tsunami crisis:

A thirty-foot-high wall of water - a tsunami - slams into the famed resort islands off Thailand's southern coast. In one tragic moment, thousands of lives are lost, and thousands more are missing. In the race to identify victims and assist survivors, Thailand's government hits its own wall.
"Responding agencies and non-governmental groups are unable to share information vital to the rescue effort. Each uses different data and document formats. Relief is slowed; coordination is complicated. The need for common, open standards for disaster management was never more stark or compelling. The Royal Thai Government responded by creating a common website for registering missing persons and making open file formats in particular an immediate national priority."
This quote, taken from the opening of the white paper, "Roadmap for Open ICT Systems" by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School shows how open systems affect more than the business world ...

The issue you raise is a problem too. But the analogy is based on reality.

When Is a Standard Truly Open? - When It's Universal, Reflections on Massachusetts and Microsoft's XML

wolfrider — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 13:49:05 +0000

This is the best front page news I've seen on LWN. :) Good article.

odf as a format

pimlott — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 20:43:16 +0000

Let me get this straight: You conclude which is a better spreadsheet format, from a comparison which, you acknowledge, doesn't address spreadsheet requirements, but rather focuses on superficial matters such as stylistic conventions and affinity to other standards? And you poo-poo the statements of actual developers of office software? That makes no sense.

Both MS Office and OpenOffice are gigantic, hyper-featureful systems with over a decade of history. It's hardly surprising that their document formats, even newer XML-based formats, reflect their labyrinthine internal structures. It's going to take some hard study to determine which is a better "open" office format, or whether neither is really suitable.

Why is it that as soon as XML enters the picture, complex and difficult issues of representation and semantics suddently evaporate, and all we have to argue about is whether or not they used mixed-content?

Microsoft Extensions

kevinbsmith — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 13:39:37 +0000

My understanding is that there is a non-proprietary XML-based document format named "Open Document Format", used by several office apps (word processors, spreadsheets, etc). Microsoft has their own similar (but proprietary) format named "Microsoft Office Open XML". Apparently MS is proposing turning their format into an ECMA standard, but they would still have proprietary extensions (presumably schema extensions, with new tags or new meanings for existing tags) that could only be reliably written and read by their own products.

Any product that reads or writes office documents is affected by this. And of course if MS wins this battle, it will be harder for anyone to push for governments to use other open formats like OGG or non-proprietary calendaring. This is an important decision, and it will have broad effects throughout the US and elsewhere, whether MS wins or loses.

But, to my knowlege, in the context of the Massachusetts/Open Document Format debate, MS is not saying they will mangle XML itself (the underlying rules of tags, attributes, etc) in any way that would have a technical effect on any XML format or app outside the office suite domain. So XHTML, the XML format used by all modern web pages, seems unlikely to be affected by the outcome of this battle. Likewise, web service XML formats, including blog feeds and SOAP transactions should be safe from harm here.

EU vs US

kleptog — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 10:10:53 +0000

This reminds me of a news segment on here on Dutch TV where they were talking about EU lobbyists and what they should and shouldn't do and whether they should be registered. They were interviewing one of the firms that did lobbying and he was asked "What's the difference between lobbying in US vs in the EU?".

His answer was along the lines of: Well, the annoying thing is that you don't get anywhere near as far with money because the whole campaign financing angle simply doesn't exist".

The presenter asked surprised: How so, annoying?

He said: Well, you know, you have to put more work in to get the same result. You have to convince them with arguments.

To which my only thought was: Good! You should work for your money.

Pity I can't find the reference anywhere or his name, but I'll remember the conversation for a long time.

"The language of the internet"

giraffedata — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 23:21:57 +0000

kevinbsmith's point is that nobody is talking about Microsoft extensions to XML; the article is flawed. They're talking about Microsoft extending something else. I would like to know what that is, and if it is a standard that has a name.

XML is not a language for writing documents, like HTML is. But I see a lot of people use the term "XML" as if it is. I suppose it's the same kind of mistake that leads people to use "IDE" (the technology of packaging a disk controller with the disk drive) as if it were a protocol for attaching a disk device to a computer. (In particular, they're thinking of the protocol called "ATA", one of many protocols that are implemented by IDE disk devices).

So does anyone know: Is there some XML-based document standard that Massachusetts is considering adopting? Does it have a name? Is there a Microsoft alternative, and does it have name?

When Is a Standard Truly Open? - When It's Universal, Reflections on Massachusetts and Microsoft's XML

N0NB — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 15:57:10 +0000

Beware the Vapor!

Based on some of the pronouncements comin out of MA during the past week it appears the vapors are having their intoxicating effects. MS is now "welcomed" and "thanked" by high government officials. Meanwhile, those that have championed true competition in MA are now suddenly subjected to audits and other investigations.

Politics has always been a dirty vocation, but there is no question that American politics has become especially nasty over the past quarter century. There is no doubt that MS sees not only much money but much perceived prestige on the line in MA and they are fighting like a junkyard dog--to the death if need be. They know that they cannot allow MA to mandate ODF as it seals their doom.

We are fighting MS with logic and reason which is often no match for the nuclear weapon MS wields--money--lots of money. Money is being funneled into the appropriate accounts, back pockets, and palms of politicians and IT pundits. This is a full-on frontal assault. MS is playing for keeps. Are we?

Interoperability - a bad analogy

Baylink — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 15:40:27 +0000

While I love Pam to death,

> Catch that? "On different communication systems."

is evidence of a lack of understanding of interagency emergency communications; it's not a good analogy for the situation at hand, in most current cases.

The em-comms issue is one of assigned and provisioned communications frequencies. Field em-comm equipment is *not* frequency-agile; it's channelised to match the municipality's license.

So, even though most of those radios are narrow-band FM (APCO 25 digital is up and coming, but not there yet that *I* know of, and besides, it, too, is standard for precisely this reason), they still can't talk to each other, unless it's pre-planned and agreed.

But the reasons are administrative.

The *real* reason is that while interagency channels and coordination plans do exist, none of them were designed for a disaster on the wide scale of Kat/rita. Ad, frankly, most of those people who need to talk on them have only the most basic instruction on how to handle a communications net with that many people on it.

This, on the other hand, is why we train and licence hams... though the integration of those hams into the emergency response plan was also, I gather, somewhat catch-as-catch-can. Hams *do* train for precisely that sort of situation (traffic triage; 1000 people on the same frequency, etc).

I'm sure we haven't heard all the stories yet.

"The language of the internet"

pjgrok — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 14:39:54 +0000

I think it will have the same type of effect that MS's
proprietary extensions to HTML had, because of its
dominance.

"The language of the internet"

kevinbsmith — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 14:18:44 +0000

This is mostly a good article, with some interesting ways of looking at the issue. However, I wasn't impressed with the last section, where somehow the XML format (roughly speaking, a schema) used for office documents gets confused with the XML "schemas" used for web pages and web services.

It's not a perfect analogy, but XML is more like an alphabet than a language. Imagine that all the world's human languages shared a single writing script, such as the Latin letters used in English. Microsoft might control the English language (office doc schema) that is built with these letters, but that has no direct impact on the French or Thai languages (other XML schemas) built with the same letters. There are thousands of uses of XML that have nothing to do with the office doc XML schema.

Unless Microsoft is planning to modify the rules of XML itself (the alphabet), this debate really is only about office docs. The outcome will *indirectly* affect similar discussions in other domains, but would have no direct technical effect.

odf as a format

nathan — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 11:31:27 +0000

Whilst no specificly addressing spreadsheet requirements, this Format comparison between ODF and MS XML shows fairly clearly to me which format is better.

odf as a format

wingo — Thu, 01 Dec 2005 09:55:22 +0000

From what I've heard from some developers of Abiword and Gnumeric, the ODF formats end up being reflections of openoffice.org's internal structure rather than well-designed formats. One even said that Microsoft's spreadsheet format was better designed (licensing issues aside of course).

While Jones is correct in her assessment of the viability of MS' XML, the ODF grassroots appear to me to be made of OO.o astroturf.

Corrections welcome of course -- I'm pretty ignorant about the topic.