Well, whoever said that standards were boring needs to really reevaluate that perspective: things are getting downright crazy in the battle of Office productivity standards. Sun’s Tim Bray weighed in on the topic yesterday, and Microsoft’s Obasanjo and Scoble angrily fired back. Sun’s Simon Phipps then went on to examine Microsoft’s covenant in more detail, and like Andy, had a few concerns – and Sun itself actually fired off a letter about some of these concerns to Governor Romney and his staff. Meanwhile, David Berlind reports that Larry Rosen – one lawyer who definitely gets open source – is giving the covenant at least a provisional thumbs up.
What’s my opinion on the covenant and submission to Ecma? Well, not materially different from what I said last week. As I told two different vendors this morning and one of the major Boston dailies this afternoon, I don’t know if the covenant ensures that the format is open yet, and I’m fairly confident no one else does either. People will say they do, but they can’t. The reason is that legal documents – IMO – have much in common with code: they’re complicated, prone to unexpected errors/loopholes, and should be subject to a great deal of scrutiny before they’re accepted. We’ve already seen this with the ODF: some of you might recall that after examining the format in detail, Microsoft’s Brian Jones expressed some concerns with Sun’s IP rights within the format, which led to this. I have neither a favorable nor unfavorable view of Microsoft’s covenant, because better minds than mine have not had sufficient time to go over it in detail. Whether or not you believe that Microsoft would intentionally cripple the covenant is besides the point (I think they’d be foolish to try, given the scrutiny it’ll be under): loopholes can make their way into such documents regardless of intent, just as bugs appear in code. So my take is: let’s wait and see. The stakes here are too important to be giving anyone the benefit of the doubt.
Two other important notes from two Friends of RedMonk, who I assume would rather I did not name:
- In last week’s note, I asked for feedback on the formats themselves, and one respondent – who, for context, works for an organization with little appreciation for Microsoft – submitted the following comment [redacted to protect the individuals involved]:
Talk to any Office suite developer and they’ll tell you that the MS Office XML formats are substantially better than their ODF counterparts. When I was in XXX recently, I caught up with XXX who had very colourful words to say about the ODF spreadsheet stuff. According to XXX, the formats weren’t designed by people who really understood the issues facing users of each document format (ie. developers building applications on the format).
As I told one ODF oriented vendor this morning, I make no claims to the truth of these claims, but I do think they merit discussion. Given that many ODF advocates frequent this space, I wanted to solicit that feedback: what do you think of these comments?
- On the other hand, another respondent pointed out the following interesting Ecma tidbits. If you head over to Ecma’s site, and flip through the charts here to page 20, you’ll discover the following on a slide entitled “What is Ecmas’s value?”:
- Balances Technical Quality and Business Value:
- Quality of a standard is pivotal, but the balance between timeliness and quality as well: Better a good standard today than a perfect one tomorrow!
- Offers a path which will minimise risk of changes to input specs
- A safe haven for IPR
While I’m fully in agreement that standards should not be polished to a sliver – held out in hopes of some mythical perfection – if I were an ISV hoping to contribute or work with Microsoft I’d be somewhat concerned about the second bullet.
- Balances Technical Quality and Business Value:
Whatever happens, it’s clear that the coming weeks and months should be very interesting to follow from an office productivity standards perspective.
