A couple of points. “There are thus two similarly-specified but incompatible formats in existence.” It’s not clear to me that this is a problem. There are actually a lot more than 2 — Word 2003 has by my count 10 different types on the Save As dialog and 16 on the Open menu. Whether that goes up by one or it goes up by two in Office 12 doesn’t seem terribly significant for users. (Assuming for the sake of argument that Office 12 supports OASIS O/D as a non-default file type.)

Simon Phipps and several others as for a detailed technical rationale for why MS did not participate in the OASIS effort to ensured that Office’s requirements were met: First, I wasn’t an MS employee at the time and I don’t work for the Office group, so my opinions are more or less irrelevant to them and my information is sketchy. All I can say is that I do know what some program manager would have to do to make the case for joining the OASIS TC, and for what it’s worth (not having any real inside information about Office) I would not have a clue what arguments to make. Why *should* all office software share the same native file format? From what I know in general, it seems that would add a lot of constraint on the MS Office developer’s ability to add features, improve performance, etc. We already have HTML+CSS and PDF as common display formats, XSLT as a transformation mechanism, and presumably a lot of 3rd parties who will be happy to fill in any gaps in the N x N format translation matrix. It’s probably overly simplistic so say “another office format, another set of stylesheets to write”, but that’s my basic response for what to do about incompatible data formats. In short, it’s just not clear to me what the business or technical case for a One Size Fits All office uber-format is. If there is one, OO will just have to make the case on their own and prove it to the world.

Finally,the folks creating the MS Office formats are accountable to managers, customers, stockholders, government agencies, etc. and all of them are rather demanding overseers. MS makes a very expensive long term support commitment and takes a large exposure when it ships, changes, or kills off a technology. OASIS or OpenOffice.org can far more easily bury their mistakes without real accountability than MS can, so I hope others don’t fall for that “stable hands of OASIS, unnacountable hands of MS” soundbite.

There are thus two similarly-specified but incompatible formats in existence. One is in the stable hands of OASIS, the other in the unaccountable hands of Microsoft. It may be feasible to construct 100% accurate transforms after the fact but I wish Mike’s views about format diversity and Jean’s views about support for legacy had been expressed in the OASIS working group instead of being saved for now.

People who think this is a no-brainer that Microsoft slimed out of need to step up to the plate and find out what the problems really are.

That’s a conveniently vague non-answer. And a far cry from Jaime’s call for “an honest answer [that states] what can’t be done because of all the legacy users.”

What does MS XML do that can’t be done with OpenDocument and is necessary for legacy users?

Cheers,
Daniel.

That *is* the MS Office people’s basic answer. See http://www.betanews.com/article/Microsoft_Opens_Office_File_Formats/1117692086
‘”We have legacy here,” Jean Paoli, Senior Microsoft XML Architect, told BetaNews. “It is our responsibility to our users to provide a full fidelity format. We didn’t see any alternative; believe me we thought about it. Without backward compatibility we would have other problems.”‘

I find it remarkable that no one seems to be very concerned that the licensing conditions are almost identical! In particular, Sun makes an “Essential Claims” royalty-free limited patent license in the way that is usual for this kind of community-developed specification (e.g., the W3C ones that have similar constraints, like SOAP). Certain kinds of derivative works are permitted for OpenDocument, but that doesn’t appear to include derivative works of the schema and specification as part of some repurposing or extension activity.

I’ve begun a too-long piece on the Microsoft license at http://orcmid.com/blog/2005/06/office-xmls-ip-infringement-specter-i.asp and I’ll continue when not impaired by the pain-killers following a day surgery that I went through today.

I note that the OASIS document is 700 pages long and is not yet fully implemented. Arranging a couple of independent interoperable implementations may take a while. The specification uses Relax-NG to present the schema, which may excite some but it doesn’t work so well as the Microsoft use of XSD for people who want to do schema assessment with widely available tools.

Avoiding OpenDocument and choosing to develop specific XML schemas optimized for the three principle Microsoft Office formats and their legacies was maybe not so arbitrary nor capricious on Microsoft’s part. This may be a long evolutionary march, building on the work that has already been invested in Office XML formats.

I think the thoughtful discussion that is happening well in advance of Office 12 presents quite an opportunity to maximize the utility of Microsoft’s move. It will be interesting to watch, especially as we can move from speculations to genuine trial use and testing (of both approaches and the ability to make document-fidelity-preserving conversions across schemas).

The implications of a “de facto standard” and how it relates to an open environment ultimately comes down to dollars and how an organization can visualize creating value and therefore revenue.

As an example, Adobe has been building it’s strength as an organization and in doing so gaining huge control over a market segment that most people just aren’t watching (that’s another discussion). But to get there they made parts of their PDF format available to market. Why, to gain market acceptance and in doing so they become the “de facto standard”. Therefore if I want to publish and share in this networked world, using PDF is a standard that ALL application players can choose to support and many do. Sun has native support for PDF in its open office product, why not Microsoft?

The simple answer to above is because Adobe has been a good partner for Microsoft to drive sales of Adobe’s products and for Microsoft’s, but Adobe hasn’t done it to the exclusion of the rest of the industry and platforms, Microsoft has.

In real life this translates into potential and ultimately how I will spend my IT budget on office and related tool sets.

Today if I want to share a document with you, I will use Word to create it because it is the “de facto standard”, and then convert to PDF (Not necessarily using one of Adobe’s products but their licensed technology). Why, could be many reasons from protecting my original document or digital signature I put on that document, to reduce file size when sharing it, to creating a more secure document that my readers will have faith in that it is a secure document. As I look to open office and it’s variants, I can eliminate that step and create PDF natively from the toolset, that is worth investing in.

This is a bit of a leap but as I see it, just because I want to consider alternative’s such as Linux desktop, doesn’t mean I am not prepared to or want to use MS office. It could just as easily be Apple Mac, but they built support for that.

The answer of course is to support an alternative takes money from one pocket and moves it to another, i.e.: windows to office. The underlying answer here is that I believe Microsoft believes that Windows OS is the “de facto standard” worth dying for and they can’t do anything to mess with that. Reality is the market is going around them because they fail to see the market need. Perhaps if the anti-trust solutions had broken them up the office group would be willing to play with more partners and the OS division would have to rationalize why they are relevant to my business. That isn’t the case and that is why this discussion and adoption by MS is a mute point.

Imagine if you will if Sun, IBM, and others adopt an open standard that becomes an emerging “de facto standard”, then all the potential leverage that MS had could begin to crumble. It is not because Word was bad, it’s because we suddenly had choice.

In closing please consider this, today as “de facto standards”, MS products are that because the market lacked good choice that was viable. Ever since my early days with Dos 1.0 (I date myself) MS emerged as a leader because when Visi Calc was the “de facto standard” for spreadsheets and Lotus was emerging with 1-2-3, Microsoft gave us a choice. As more and more people came on board, the product got better because that is what the market demanded. Now we get what we are given because one company makes that decision for us to benefit their pocket book. Choice is emerging once again and by many accounts it appears to be viable, time will tell. You can either watch the bus go by or get on and help set it’s course, Microsoft appears to want to keep making it’s own bus and therefore put at risk sharing the title of “de facto standard” with emerging standards.

Thanks for listening…