I don’t personally believe that people should be adopting ISO standards just because they’re ISO standards, otherwise we’d all be running on X.400 right now… and as I’ve said previously, I don’t believe any large IT company can claim to be whiter than white in the standards game. As for Sun and IBM’s tactics with OpenOffice, does anyone really believe they are doing it for altruistic and not commercial reasons? Can we expect to see Open Sourcing of DB2, WebSphere and Tivoli next? Of course not.

There is a problem in general when one has to join a membership-only industrial standardization organization (ECMA) to get documentation one might need to work on. Adding to this point is the fact that OOXML is positioned in a way such that only MS can make changes to OOXML (whenever and whatver they like). So straight off the bat, OOXML is closed, as apposed to ODF, which is developed by a large group of Institutions, businesses and individuals through OASIS, which MS is a member of. Microsoft is still more than welcomed to join in and help develop future versions of ODF. It is open to all. And let us not forget MS portfolio of patents and their vague pledges not to sue…

Then I have a concern that GNOME as a FOSS foundation would choose to participate in a process plagued by Shenanigans of all types (from buying off votes, e.g. in Sweden to stuffing National Boards and other unethical behaviors and basically jamming a format threw the standard process, one which does not belong to just one and might only be one because they have omnipresent power to do so.) I personally HATE seeing GNOME giving credibility to this process which is damaging Open Standards and associating themselves with it. You do not seem to have a problem with that.

You state that “ISO Certification of OOXML would be a significant blow to ODF” I would somewhat agree with that. A lot of people, however, will see OOXML as a “fake standard” and will still move ahead with ODF adoption. But the other side of that statement is that “IF OOXML fails ISO Certification it would be a significant boast to ODF”. Increased ODF adoptions is good for free software, adoption of free software and innovation is good for the Free Desktop. So GNOME participating, whether intentionally or not is giving some arguments for, the “perception of
support” for MS to SPIN to help them with ISO which based on many of your comments is not the best thing. Not only is it “I think it’s misguided at best and inappropriate at worst.” but a strategic mistake for the free desktop and the community at this time. ODF can simply be the biggest event in FOSS history to help FOSS deployments. Playing with this potential gain for the community at this time, in my mind is plainly stupid.

I do not wish to elaborate on all the ways Gnome is “supporting” OOXML, or at least not at this time.

We have lived without .docx for our whole lives. We still don’t receive any and can wait a few more months to worry about the few free desktop user who might need OOXML support. In the mean time they can ask for people to resend any documents in .doc or better yet the ISO approved standard ODF.

Lastly, Mr. O’Grady, I have communicated with you personally and stated that the “Open Letter” was not the best move and this whole thing could have been handled more tactfully. However, seeing GNOME’s statement, I am not sure that would have resulted in a different outcome. But where I have a problem with your entry is I also asked YOU for ideas on how one can bridge this divide and handle problems like this in the future with the community, the “smelling faintly of almonds”. I suggested a “FOSS Community Resolution Forum” and a “FOSS strategic alliance”. Yet you do not answer those question but post an entry which only can add to the “smell of those almonds.” Not very helpful, Sir.

FOSS is strongest when communities collaborate, acting diametric to the complete community at large can only make it weaker. That is why my letter asked for “It is time to unite the community behind the standard, universal format for office suites and distance themselves from Ecma TC45 and DIS 29500.”

Without the work of developers like Jody, who is to say that Microsoft’s format – which is documented by north of 6,000 pages – would be implementable within projects like GNOME?

Your words seem to imply that “with the work of developers like Jody OOXML will be implementable”.

I am sure you may think that, but Jody’s work ended in July, and the documentation I read of OOXML as my duties under portuguese TC-173 is that it is impossible for it to be implemented.

There are hundreds of clauses that Microsoft says are absolutely essential for backwards compatibility, and at the same time says are not required for implementors when faced with critics for their lack of information.

It’s like saying “A” and “NOT A” at the same time. Did you study logic? You know what A and NOT A mean, right? A FALSE statement.

People: you have to stop trying to think of Microsoft as an honest person. They’re not. They’re an amoral entity with only one duty: increase shareholder value.

Anything that hurts the advancement of open standards when faced with their faked standards increase their value.

Stop giving them the benefit of doubpt, not even courts do it, right now (US and EU already considered them guilty of predatory behaviour).

Firstly, it is well known that Microsoft engaged in a number of, at best, unethical tactics to try to get OOXML approved at all costs. Namely by ballot stuffing. Now, as alluded to in the post IBM, sun and others are completely capable of unsavory acts behind the scenes, but no such acts seems to be necessary to get ODF approved by the ISO. Perhaps this is not a big deal to you, but it certainly is to me. As a result the ISO has a bunch of dead wood P-level members that don’t plan on showing up to conduct the “normal” business of the ISO. They were simply “incentivized” to show up to “help” get OOXML through. It didn’t happen. This is all well documented by Andy Updegrove and is an absolute shame.

Secondly,

RE: I’m not sure Microsoft “invented” a file format in order to lock people in

The first of the “Halloween documents” was the document that exposed the “embrace, extend, extinguish” plan on the world. I can’t find the documents at the moment, but there are numerous quotes from them all over the net including much detail in Wikipedia.

Some of the stuff can be found here with analysis:

http://www.michaelrobertson.com/archive.php?minute_id=65

Thirdly, Microsoft has no obligation to conform to OOXML now or in the future. Not only that but it is also well documented that the specification documents are deliberately incomplete and do not cover already proprietary extensions already in use. In other words trailing behind the OOXML standardization process is a fools errand ALREADY. Not to mention that Microsoft has not given assurances about what kind of patent protection is going to be part of the, incomplete, OOXML specification. Like the “settlement” with the EU anti-trust affair Microsoft simply needs the feather in it’s cap of having the ISO standards, after that all bets are off and you can bet that “licensing” of future OOXML will be discriminatory against FLOSS, just like the EU settlement. So, after all is said and done GNOME gets everyone all in a tizz over its paticipation, even though it is trying to do the “right thing”, only for the FLOSS world to wind up back at square one reverse-engineering MS file formats because Microsoft has no interest in playing the “open” card.

Finally, Microsoft has within its power an EASY way to show a sign of good faith participation in dealing with “open standards”: they could EASILY implement an ODF reader/writer in their office suite and inter-operate with ODF compliant software instead of forcing the world to chase them. How ’bout it Microsoft?

The history of standards is dogged with true stories of how companies want their products to be adopted by ISO/ECMA/etc because it’ll put them in a stronger position. With ODF/OOXML we see Microsoft reacting to a Sun and IBM led initiative to undermine Microsoft’s incumbent place in the desktop market, aided and abetted by the wider community. The reasons for the big companies to be involved are commercial, not altruistic – though of course there will always be a feel-good factor. C/f the green IT initiatives springing from the hardware vendors right now – if they were so keen, why did they not kick such things off decades ago?

One of the impressions one can get from the high level view is that open source and Microsoft are, and indeed should be arch-enemies. Microsoft hasn’t helped itself at all in this regard, but is waking up to the fact that we’re not going to see Windows everywhere. Or indeed, has already woken – but some vestiges of this attitude remain. That’s just tough on Microsoft, and thank goodness, because to be honest the thought of waking up with an alarm tone created in Redmond, and with an animated paperclip telling me, “you appear to be hung over. Would you like to:…” would have me running, screaming to the door. Meanwhile however, we are seeing Linux everywhere – in places that would have Bill and Steve’s eyes misting over – at home, we have Linux phones (the Motorola RAZR – who knew?), my D-Link router and Intel RAID box (the shame! What happened to Wintel!), and my soon-to-be-purchased hard disk video recorder. In the real world, and on a number of counts, Linux has already won, and there’s not a wizard to be seen.

But this isn’t about increasing acceptance of open source; rather, undermining the commercials of a company with what happens to be a well-accepted, good product. If it were up to me, to do this ODF thing right I would not be painting Microsoft as the bad guy, though they are by no means perfect. Instead, I would be putting my head, shoulders and back into making OpenOffice a world class word processing, spreadsheet and presentation platform – which, frankly, right now it most certainly isn’t (its not bad, but its about 3 years behind). I would give it features and functions Microsoft could only dream of, make it the most stable, expansible platform on the market. I would also make it a publishing platform that offered true wysiwyg – something that continues to elude the boys in Redmond. All of this and I would enable it to read and write OOXML natively, so that it offered a transparent, direct transfer between the two platforms. Going back to my WordPerfect days, we would then have something a bit closer to a fair fight based on functionality, rather than this standards debacle.

Jon

http://daveshields.wordpress.com/2007/11/26/xo-laptop-thinking-cap-on-the-xo-laptop-and-microsofts-ooxml-standard/

thanks,dave