I think this from my "Big Picture" buddy is worth forwarding. It's
certainly a Linux topic at the strategic level.
---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: standardization
From: "Jim Ferstle" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thu, December 7, 2006 8:19 am
To: "Lan Barnes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Microsoft's document gambit moves ahead
Martin LaMonica, for News.com
A battle is being fought in the arcane world of international standards,
with piles of money and long-term access to digital documents at stake.
Years of work to bring XML-based documents to Microsoft Office will
culminate on Thursday, when Ecma International is expected to certify
Microsoft Office formats as international standards.
While the anticipated approval is significant, notably to government
customers in Europe, Microsoft's foray into documents standards in many
ways has just begun.
The company has dominated the desktop productivity market for well over a
decade. But another document standard, called OpenDocument Format, or ODF,
has emerged as a viable alternative and has garnered interest from a
growing number of governments and technology vendors .
These document format standards matter a great deal financially, because
they can influence which software products companies choose to buy.
Microsoft Office Open XML is the default document format for its Office
2007 suite, which was recently released to businesses and is set for
consumer availability on January 30. Alternative OpenDocument is the
default for the open-source suite OpenOffice.org and the preference of
Microsoft rivals IBM, Novell and Sun Microsystems.
The emergence of dueling standards has ratcheted up the competition in
Microsoft's home turf--a situation that should benefit end users who care
about accessing documents in the future, said Andrew Updegrove, an
attorney at Gesmer Updegrove and author of a blog that follows
international standards.
"This is important. What's at stake is that a technology-based society is
coming to grips with aspects of technology that they have foolishly
ignored to date," said Updegrove, who is also the attorney for OASIS, the
standards body behind OpenDocument.
Andrew Updegrove
The emergence of parallel document standards--with another being formed
for China--casts light on the intertwined nature of technology standards
and politics. Much like parties taking sides on a hot-button political
issue, factions with aligning interests have emerged.
"ODF and Linux represent the first chinks in Microsoft's armor in a long
time. And just like the way Microsoft is going to do everything it can to
protect (its desktop software business), others are going to do all they
can to exploit that weakness," Updegrove said.
High emotions and back-room politics While discussions of international
standards typically appeal to a small number of technocrats, the ongoing
debate over document standards can be a highly emotional issue.
Novell on Monday announced that it will work with Microsoft to support
Office Open XML formats in its distribution of OpenOffice. It also said it
will submit that "translator" code to the OpenOffice open-source project.
That decision prompted Groklaw blog author Pamela Jones, who tracks legal
news in the technology industry, to accuse Novell of "forking" OpenOffice.
("Forks" come when groups have different ideas about how code should
progress and take it from a single point along divergent paths.) Novell's
open-source vice president, Miguel de Icaza, defended the company in a
spirited response posted to his blog.
"The reality is that people react emotionally--it's Microsoft," said
Justin Steinman, Novell's director of marketing for Linux and
open-platform solutions. "If people can step away from the emotion and
look at this objectively, they can see this (document interoperability) as
goodness for the end customer."
State of play
The State of Massachusetts drew international attention last year when it
decided to mandate the use in its agencies of software that worked with
standard "open formats." At the time, that technology did not include
Microsoft Office.
That Massachusetts initiative is still in effect, despite being challenged
by state politicians and despite the resignation of two chief information
officers from the state post. In addition, Microsoft and its supporters
have criticized the policy as "exclusionary" and as unfairly favoring
non-Microsoft products.
The high-profile case has involved intense behind-the-scenes lobbying. A
Microsoft employee pushed for a bill amendment that would have taken
technology decision-making power away from the state's chief information
officer, according to an account published in Computerworld this week.
Similarly, rival IBM has been endorsing OpenDocument around the world with
government customers.
IBM has been distinctly cool to Microsoft's Open XML standard effort. It
decided not to participate in the Ecma technical committee around Open
XML, calling it a "rubber stamp" process. It also said the specification
is redundant, given the existence of OpenDocument.
To further its goal of spreading OpenDocument to national governments, IBM
is using its representatives in other international standards groups, said
Alan Yates, the general manager of Microsoft's information worker
business.
Big Blue has influenced the governments of Brazil, India and Italy, which
this week recognized OpenDocument as standard, through the company's
participation in the International Organization for Standards (ISO), he
said.
"Those are instances where the ISO process, and IBM's influence on the ISO
process, put (ODF) on national standards lists," Yates said.
In response to Yates' comments, an IBM representative said that the
company is "proud of its long-standing reputation within standards
communities around the world as a respected and open consensus builder,
innovation partner, leader, contributor and facilitator."
Yates said that Microsoft chose to lobby in Massachusetts to combat a
government lobbying strategy taken up by IBM and Sun Microsystems.
Jeff Kaplan, the founder and director of Open ePolicy Group, which
advocates for the use of "open technologies" in government, said that
governments are seizing upon Microsoft alternatives out of self-interest.
"Governments are leading to move to ODF because they want control over
data and to break their data lock-in. They see it as a matter of
sovereignty, and they are uncomfortable with continued dependency on one
company," Kaplan said. He added that the expected Ecma standard
certification of Office Open XML will increase confusion in the
marketplace.
Putting a face on XML In addition to voting on Office Open XML as a
standard, the Ecma general assembly will decide, when it meets in Zurich
on Thursday, whether to send it to ISO for certification. That ISO process
could be completed within nine months, Microsoft said. Earlier this month,
OpenDocument was passed as an ISO standard--a certification that has far
more significance to government customers worldwide than Ecma approval,
Updegrove said.
Yet Microsoft views its standardization efforts as more than a simple
attempt to make its software appealing to governments that favor
standards-certified products.
Jean Paoli
Having the document formats based on XML (extensible markup language)
opens up possibilities for many different types of applications, which
"put a face on XML," said Jean Paoli, senior director of XML architecture
at Microsoft and one of the creators of the original XML standard.
For example, content management systems or workflow applications will be
able to take the billions of Office documents in existence and exchange
them with disparate back-end systems, he said.
"We developed the format in order to enable those scenarios which are
precisely integration with other systems," Paoli said. "By definition, we
needed technology to be stable, and that's why we went to a standards
body."
During the year-long Ecma process, Microsoft and other participants, which
included representatives from Novell and Apple Computer, made changes the
initial Office Open XML specification to make Office documents work with
different operating systems, Paoli said.
Novell, for example, will allow customers with systems running OpenOffice
on Linux to read and save documents created in Microsoft Office by next
year.
However, because Office has more advanced features than OpenOffice, making
conversions of sophisticated Office spreadsheet and presentation documents
will not be perfect, Novell's Steinman said.
Microsoft is sponsoring an open-source project to create converters that
will allow Office users to read OpenDocument files. That project was done
specifically in response to government customer requests, Yates said.
These converters are expected to be completed by the middle of next year.
A plug-in to translate Word files to OpenDocument is slated for completion
in January.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has released Office Open XML file converters for
older versions of Office. But it indicated on Wednesday that Mac
translation tools won't be ready until March or April of next year.
The race is on Whether and how document format standardization will
ultimately benefit Microsoft is still unclear. But opinions aren't
lacking.
If the Office Open XML standard is used in very few products outside
Microsoft Office, customers may migrate to OpenDocument because they have
limited choices, argued Stephen Walli, a technology executive and former
Microsoft employee involved in standards and open source.
Conversely, if Office Open XML becomes a common feature in products like
OpenOffice, then Microsoft runs the risk of commoditizing its Office
applications, he said.
"I think that Microsoft has exposed itself on Office 12" (the code-name
for Office 2007), he said.
A recent survey by IDC of IT executives in Nordic countries found high
interest in standards-based documents, with public sector respondents
showing an affinity for OpenDocument and private industry respondents
favoring Office Open XML.
"Although ODF is claiming a large number of supporting vendors and
products, the footprint in the market of office products like StarOffice,
Openoffice.org, IBM Workplace and Google Docs is still not substantial.
Microsoft Office is having a very large market share, and this will help
driving Open XML into the market as a document standard," the research
firm's report said.
Not surprisingly, Microsoft executives see clear benefits to
standardization of documents--one of the company's several initiatives to
improve interoperability. The software maker already supports multiple
formats, and standards certifications will make that easier, noted
Microsoft's Yates.
"In some ways, (after the expected standardization) things will get back
to normal," he said. "People already share documents through PDF, HTML and
.doc. But now, they'll use XML--that's the difference."
--
Lan Barnes
SCM Analyst Linux Guy
Tcl/Tk Enthusiast Biodiesel Brewer
--
[email protected]
http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
