PLEASE NOTE: I made a mistake. After careful reanalysis, I now believe the original analysis I made regarding Tim Bray’s blog entries that I added later and labeled an “Update” contains innaccuracies that require that I remove the content from this entry, annotate a new file with proper information stating this was an error that I can no longer stand comfortably behind as the author and have made this publicly available to ensure proper derefrencing can be made.
No one asked me, or even suggested to me that I remove these comments. I did this on my own accord based on my own decision that this was something I could no longer stand behind, but yet must take full responsibilty for the innaccurate content in a public manner to ensure that this information can be properly propogated.
I also owe Tim an apology. This was not his mistake, and instead mine.
Tim, my apologies. I took things too far out of context, without applying enough care to ensure that my final evaluation was, in fact, something I could continue to stand behind with any level of integrity. I couldn’t. It was not a deliberate mistake, but a mistake none-the-less.
Again, my apologies.
The rest of this entry (which was the original post before the additions mentioned were made) I both can, and do stand behind, as I believe that it contains accurate, well researched information. Obviously there are some references that a few folks may not be all that happy about, including Tim. But the content I have now dereferenced was not something that belonged here anymore… I hope you can understand my reasoning for both removing it, annotating it, and making this publically available to ensure that the innaccuracies can be properly referenced and propogated as necessary.
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[Original Post]
Consortiuminfo.org - On the Art (?) of Disinformation: telling the Big Lie
The offense of the Big Lie on the personal level is its assumption that, “I can lie to you and you won’t catch me.” Taken to the marketplace, and included in letters to government agencies, the effect is pernicious. As a result, exposing the Big Lies is both important and necessary - and hence the reason for blog entries such as this.
This is becoming silly. We no longer live in a world where software is compared on a feature-by-feature basis, and instead debates from one blog to the next by folks who are dissecting legal documents attempting to find “fraudulent” statements to extend the idea that, in fact, the real pioneers, the real hero’s, and real men and women fighting for the rights of the common man and common women who, if Microsoft had their way, would be left shoe-less, shirtless, penny-less, and servants to the Almighty Micro-God, bowing down to their every demand just because “thats what we’re supposed to do…. The GREAT ONE has spoken, and told it to be so.”
First off…
Bullshit.
Second off…. lets gets some facts out the way first, and then move forward from there. No more dissecting of legal terms, and instead the straight forward facts.
Let’s start with this statement from the same linked document above:
Here’s another example of the same, this time taken from Microsoft’s FAQ on it’s submission of its XML Open to Ecma:
Q. Why is Microsoft offering a new standard, rather than simply supporting the file format for the Open Office product (sometimes called ODF)?
A. Sun submitted the OpenOffice formats to a small committee in the OASIS organization. The record shows that there were almost no material changes to the OpenOffice specification from the time it was submitted to the time it was approved by the working group at OASIS. Sun timed the release of the OpenDocument standard in conjunction with the OpenOffice 2.0 release. The OASIS committee did not focus on the requirements, constraints, and experiences of Microsoft customers.
I debunked that one in detail back on December 13 of last year. Every characterization, and most of the facts, are untrue.
Ooooohhh… As luck would have it I debunked the attempted debunk two weeks prior… (Update: It seems my effort to spellcheck a bit more carefully has gotten the best of me. “dont_reinvent_t.html” was renamed “don’t_reinvent_t.html”. This is now fixed, pointing to the correct (and available) URI) Here’s a word-for-word copy of the same document that speaks directly to:
Q. Why is Microsoft offering a new standard, rather than simply supporting the file format for the Open Office product (sometimes called ODF)?
November 29, 2005
Don’t Reinvent The Basics? Since When Did Sun Have Anything To Do With “Inventing” The Office Software Basics?Turning to the office-document space: right now the world has exactly one finished, delivered, standardized, totally-unencumbered, multiply-implemented XML-based office document format. You are the guys who want to introduce another, incompatible one. And I think that’s OK; but restrict your invention to the specialized Microsoft stuff that ODF can’t do, and don’t re-invent the basics. Why is this controversial?
So I admire Tim Bray probably more than I admire most anybody else on this planet, so I am leaving room for the fact that I could simply be misinterpreting this part of the above statement:
You are the guys who want to introduce another, incompatible one. And I think that’s OK; but restrict your invention to the specialized Microsoft stuff that ODF can’t do, and don’t re-invent the basics.
First off:
You are the guys who want to introduce another, incompatible one.
I’m quickly running a historical regression test through my brain to see just where it was that things began to break as far as introducing new formats into the already crowded office document types namespace. While MS Office wasn’t the first Word Processor, which, if I have my facts correct, the first GUI-based word processor was Bravo, which was followed by Gypsy. Both of these were created, in part, by Charles Simonyi who would later take a position with Microsoft and would eventually drive the development of Microsoft Word and Excel and who until recently(a few years back) continued as Microsoft’s Chief Architect. Of course the market for commercial desktop applications didn’t become possible until there was a solid base of desktop computers to sell licenses to use such software. With this in mind, it was the early 80’s that Wordstar, WordPerfect, and MS Word would hit the market, I believe Word being the last of the three in 1983.
I will concede that who beat who to market at this stage in desktop computings history would make a great question for Trivial Pursuit, But it would make a horrible basis for any sort of argument against Microsoft’s “Pioneer” status in the office document processing software business.
On the other hand, while StarOffice historically has its roots in the mid to late 80’s, it wasn’t until 1999 that Sun purchased the rights to StarOffice, so to claim that they had ANYTHING to do with the development of any sort of major office-type software developments anytime before 1999 simply means you haven’t done your historical homework.
Now, even if Tim is not so much referring to Sun and instead to Oasis and their efforts to develop the XML Open Document format, this only makes the gap even smaller as the Oasis effort didn’t, from what I remember, start until the 2002 time frame, and the first draft wasn’t made available until the first part of 2004.
So I guess my question with this is:
Just who’s re-inventing the basics, and why?
Sounds a lot more like politics and a lot less like a legitimate argument in favor of the obvious late comer to the game looking for any possible way to seem like the good guy (referring to Sun, not Tim… Tim is a good guy :) when in fact they are the ones responsible for confusing matters more so than anyone else. Thats not to suggest that the OASIS Open Document Format is confusing. In fact, just the opposite! But the mere fact that theres no legacy document formats to support is exactly the reason for the “agile” appearance and has nothing to do with Microsoft being slow. They just have 100’s of millions of customer to worry about supporting and OpenOffice/StarOffice… well, definitely not 100’s of millions, and even further no real concern for breaking compatibility between document versions… well, this does break compatibility, but when theres only a handful of people to worry about (of which are all anxious supporters of the new format anyway) theres certainly not a whole lot to lose, now is there.
Now, can we all move on to something more interesting and exciting… Like compound document formats? ;)
Folks…. I like OpenOffice.org and the ODF format. Some of the people (like Tim Bray given his comment was the basis of this particular rant) who have been a part of its development and promotion are people I hold in the highest regard. In fact, I hold very few people in higher regard than Bruce D’Arcus when it comes to truly understanding all there is to know in regards to the importance of both Oo.o/ODF as well as Microsoft Office/OpenXML. Is Bruce critical of Microsoft. Sometimes. But the thing about Bruce that I have come to respect more than anything is his pragmatic approach to the overall Office software landscape.
Is Office going to disappear anytime soon?
No! Bruce understands this and as such continues to make efforts to push forward with gaining direct MS Office support for various projects that extend from CiteProc (His OSS citation software project) and with the extended integration of various tools and utilities.
Does this mean he puts on a MS cheerleading outfit and chants MS fight songs during his lunch break?
That, I don’t know… ;)
But I can probably guess, and I think we can safely assume that each of us know what the answer is.
I’ve learned a lot from watching Bruce’s approach to all of this. He gets people involved, is the best OSS project manager I’ve ever worked with (even though we never did do all that much work together, from day one I knew Bruce knew exactly how to handle herding cats… He was, and is, a natural…) and he understands that the best way to “win” the battle is to keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
That said, I don’t believe that Bruce sees MS as the enemy, but I also won’t put words into his mouth, and instead simply suggest that maybe instead of pouring resources into fighting the battle on the battlefields of the blogosphere, the classic media/press, the U.S. legal systems, etc… why not instead focus on making the absolute best of what can be made in the here and now, and then fight the next stage of this battle in the marketplace?
If this doesn’t happen, and instead we continue to try and squeeze every drop of advantage that we possibly can from the above mentioned mediums, we will be setting the precedence for a future where instead of fighting for market share with features, we will instead be fighting with favors to politicians, lobbyists, and/or any other source of so called advantage we think we can possibly gain through the legal channels, spending all of our development resources on these same mentioned channels, instead of putting that money into the development of the products themselves.
Whether anyone on the ODF side is willing to admit it or not, this isn’t about document formats.
Is the current .doc binary format open? No. But its ubiquitous, with available reader, reader/writer combinations for free on EVERY major OS/Architecture. If I create a Word document in Word, I can quite easily move that file to a completely different machine running a completely different OS, open it, edit it, save it, and return back to the original machine it was created on, or any other machine with a copy of Word, OpenOffice, Wordperfect, and so forth and be able to access the contents of that document, edit it, and so forth.
Does that make it an open format? Of course not… its a closed, proprietary binary format. But when was the last time this was an issue of significance? 1996? 95?
Moving to OpenXML — Is it really “open”? Arguably yes, arguably no. Does the fact that we can already take a proprietary, binary document format and edit it on any machine at any time, and never pay a single dime to Microsoft suggest that the areas of dispute between what is open and what is not are a waste of resources that could be spent on making a better Oo.org Office Suite?
I can’t answer for you… But I can answer for me based on my own opinions….
You’re not only wasting your own time and money, but you’re wasting ours to, as its the tax payers who are having to take the burden of the Massachusetts situation, and anything that stems from this. ARe the people of Massachusetts going to get something back in return that is equal to or greater than that in which they spent on this process?
If fewer features and slower software is something that is considered a good thing, then maybe its time to give up this hacking gig and take up something where I feel I can make a difference.
Maybe I could sell tie-died shirts on EBay, and spread the “Peace” that way…
What “Peace” that would be?
Who knows… but it certainly seems to have a brighter future than one that’s filled with legal battles over document formats that gain no tangible benefits other than the apparent freedom from something we already have, but are unwilling to accept because of the “FEAR” that MS might turn on us and sue us all for infringing upon its copyrights.
Folks, every business in the US and abroad has copyrights, and many of them have patents. Something I learned from a comment from Mike Champion from a while back is that much of the reasoning behind obtaining patents has nothing to do with taking control of an idea, and everything to do with protecting themselves from being sued by the “competition” who has made it common practice to file patent after patent and make every attempt at using those patents to then settle with big companies like MS, IBM, etc… because they know that its cheaper for MS, IBM, etc… to settle, than it is to fight it. They’re called patent trolls and we all know they exist, so lets not try and pretend that they don’t.
Is this the only reason MS and IBM, etc… file patents? No. But if we live our lives in fear based on the notion thats its possible that MS could turn around and sue us all for using their copyrighted document format, when we know beyond any reasonable doubt that the likelihood of this both happening, and a court in the United States and/or abroad actually letting such a process take place in their courts, is ZERO, then we might as well just forget about the notion of technological progress all together. Somewhere, someone has a patent that is designed to do what it is that we want to do.
As such, why even get out of bed in the morning? There’s a very good chance that there is something we will do that will infringe upon someones copyright, or patent, and as such, it just ain’t worth the risk, right?
Obviously we all know the answer… But this is where we seem to be building the foundation of our future.
Why?
Folks, this is about features. This is about enabling people to be MORE productive, not less. If you honestly believe that its the Oasis Document Format that is the true provider of freedom from all things “Vendor Lock-Down Evil” then I guess we’re at odds, as a specification is just that, a specification. The power in and of itself doesn’t exist in a specification, although it does hold the potential…
However, the potential will make itself known, and therefore the real power and freedom exists in the software that uses this specification and/or ANY other specification that is designed to make better, more enabling, and productive software.
Is ODF more capable of producing better, more reliable software than is OpenXML? I don’t think so… but I would certainly like to find out for sure by actually building the software to find out, instead of tie-dieing and selling t-shirts to “Save The Planet!”
Folks, we’re not going to “Save The Planet” by spending our resources pleading our cases in court rooms… We’re going to save it by putting our resources into enabling the people (thats us!) to be more productive, more capable, more connected, more dis-connected for that matter, more reliable, better organized, and a million more things that will eventually lead to what “Open” and “Free” is all about…
The freedom to open our minds, and free up our lives for things that allow us to truly be free in the first place.
Supposed freedom from document formats isn’t the kind of freedom I believe in. I believe in freedom that allows me to be what I want to be, and be with who I want to be with, and share with these same, as well as any other person on this planet the things that help bring a smile to my face.
Document formats are not the source of the freedom we seek, although the ability to freely exchange information is definitely one of those sources. As such, I believe that the Oasis Open Document Format is an important specification to build software against, just as I believe OpenXML to be an important document format to build software against.
As such, can we PLEASE put the focus back on building this software, instead of building mountains of legal paperwork leading to yet another Government mandate that does the same thing all Government mandates are designed to do, which is…
Put into place limitations.
Limitations take away from our freedoms, they don’t add to them. So why in the name of freedom are we attempting to put in place more limitations?
David - I'm not sure that Tim's statements at the top of the post are contradictory. Last year's response to Jason would be similar to my response - in fact most of Microsoft's Office customers would be more than adequately served by OO.o/StarOffice - most people barely scratch the surface of Office functionality, and a less-featured tool would be "good enough" for them. I also don't see that ODF is restricted to what OO.o/SO can do - they just happen to be the most common use of ODF ATM.
Having said that, there ARE some things that MS Office can do that the others can't, and these are probably very important features for the folks that use them - so let's not deny MS the opportunity to service the high-end user.
That's what I think Tim was saying ...
Hi David, thanks for the thoughts. I'd say you characterize my position right. OTOH, I do think open file formats are crucial, and my test of openness is fairly broad. It means that third party developers can actually make contributions that alter the possibilities of the file format. That happened when I worked with an engineer at Sun to provide state of art citation support. I have asked Microsoft to add this to their formats as well, so that we can raise the bar across file formats and applications. Thusfar I have seen no movement.
THAT is the difference with really open file formats, and why I favor ODF. Nothing religous about it.
Hi Ric,
Thanks for this... Makes perfect sense.
I really should clarify... If there is a person on this planet more real, genuine, and honest than Tim Bray, then my guess is they're probably related... I have always held Tim in the highest regard and this doesn't change that.
Actually, soon after I posted the update, I realized that 6 or so months back I caught myself in a web of hypocrisy (not meaning to infer this word upon Tim... just upon myself and the situation) where in one article I was condemning Java and in another praising .NET, and yet the condemnation for Java was for the same general area of concern as the praise I was applying to .NET. As soon as I realized the mistake, I pulled it out and made public note of it such that if it ever came back to bite me I could showcase the fact that I was both aware and ashamed of my two-faced ideals.
That said, I don't believe Tim is guilty of two-faced ideals... The more I thought about it the more I realized six months is actually a pretty spread out space in time, and to take two quotes out of their original context to then compare them and use this as a test to determine validity of one or the other (or both/neither) is not necessarily the most accurate approach to make any sort of real determination.
I think I owe Tim an apology :)
Hey Bruce,
I'm glad to see that my characterization was fairly accurate, although anybody who has worked with you would know as well as I that your overall attitude towards ODF/MS doc formats is one of acceptance towards anything that will help make a person more productive and more capable in their specific areas of need/use.
re: >> I do think open file formats are crucial, and my test of openness is fairly broad. It means that third party developers can actually make contributions that alter the possibilities of the file format. That happened when I worked with an engineer at Sun to provide state of art citation support. I have asked Microsoft to add this to their formats as well, so that we can raise the bar across file formats and applications. Thusfar I have seen no movement.
Well, that was easier than I realized. Apparently no pressure was necessary.
http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2006/05/12/596657.aspx#596977
http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2006/05/12/596657.aspx#597365
Exciting times ahead of us, for sure :)
Let's talk a little bit about what exactly an open standard is/means. Open Standards are not necessarily ubiquitous, though they are freely available and royalty free. By this light, SVG was not an open standard until after it moved out from being under a RAND license in 2002, even though it was produced by a "standards body", the W3C. This was a significant impediment to adoption, as there was fear on the part of the developer community that after a product was developed by another vendor, Adobe (who held a number of patents for SVG-precedent technologies) could come back and claim prior ownership, effectively forcing a license adoption after the fact.
They are also not generally first to market. In general, proprietary standards can move much faster than open ones can, in great part because there ARE not alternative discussion involved. It's also worth noting that the ODF format here was different from the original Star Office/Open Office format; it is in fact a fairly new specification, though one influenced heavily by the drawbacks and benefits that come from the original specification.
Open standards by their very nature tend to be somewhat regressive in nature, though the good ones provide extension mechanisms to be able to facilitate richer systems. Chances are that there will be some functionality that won't be recordable by an ODF format that's part of Microsoft ... or for that matter Open Office. The question ultimately is whether this information is critical to the integrity of the document, or only to the application.
With the ODF format, I could use it in my own editor application, without fear that Microsoft will change its stance and demand, after the fact, that the format is under a RAND license and I therefore owe what they would see as being a "reasonable" fee but that I may not. They may also choose to change the format at any time, making alterations that would render my editor incompatible with the new format, and while they may eventually publish the new format, the lag between the change time and the publish time could have a significant impact upon my ability to profit from my word processor.
This is a danger that anyone who has used any Microsoft format has faced until now - unless they had specifically licensed the technology from Microsoft, the possibility of a lawsuit could significantly deter development of non-licensed MS filters (indeed, if the ODF filter described in my blog from last week turns out to be more than vaporware, then I suspect that a lawsuit would likely be Microsoft's next recourse).
Consider that you're now seeing the proliferation of reasonably powerful AJAX word processors. (Check out AJAXWrite at http://ajaxwrite.com/ for a fairly basic example.) These will almost certainly end up migrating to an ODF format over time, precisely because of the liability issues. They won't have ALL of the features of an MS Office, but I suspect that the higher end ones may come surprisingly close. Given that, how long will it be before the choice of format becomes largely moot, so long as you see a convergence on one? Given the nature of such apps, ultimately it comes down to which transformation is used in the background (since you are in fact probably mapping from an enhanced XHTML to begin with anyway).
Finally, I think there's an interesting point not stated here. That same transformational logic applies just as readily to docx et al being transformed to odf. It would be realistic to assume that there will of course be MS-XML input and output formats in Open Office, and most other platforms, but this in turn means that for most other word processors out there you'll see support for both as well, as one can effectively bridge to the other. I see this strengthening ODF over time, especially outside the United States (and within US and state governmental entities).
Finally, a comment on your initial post:
As such, can we PLEASE put the focus back on building this software, instead of building mountains of legal paperwork leading to yet another Government mandate that does the same thing all Government mandates are designed to do, which is...
Put into place limitations.
Limitations take away from our freedoms, they don't add to them. So why in the name of freedom are we attempting to put in place more limitations?
One reason why the ongoing issue with Massachusetts is so important is the fact that up until now there HAS been a limitation there - because of the large legacy of Word and Excel files that the state government there had, they were essentially in a situation where they had to regular license the various upgrades that Microsoft "offered" for Office because new documents from outside couldn't be opened up in older versions of Office. That cost was significant - several millions of dollars a year in license fees. That money came from state taxes, in most cases taxes on business. In other words, Massachusetts business were subsidizing Microsoft, even those that may have been competing with them.
The move to open standards basically was made to make the landscape more competitive, in order to reduce costs for the government of Massachusetts. A migration to Open Office may or may not be cost competitive in comparison to keeping with the existing MS infrastructure (though I suspect it probably would be), but even with the Microsoft "Office Open" standards, the state would still have to updgrade to the next version of Office to gain that benefit - so at least for one more generation the issue is largely moot ... it WOULD be cheaper, especially as it allows other vendors beyond OO.o get into the game.
Finally, there is no specific mandate upon you, or even upon businesses or private individuals in Massachusetts, to switch from MS Office. There is no loss of freedom here. If anything, you're moving away from a monopolistic situation to one where for the first time in more than a decade you have something resembling a free market again. If MS agreed to support ODF, then there's even a good chance that nobody in MA government would have to change word processors or spreadsheets.
The only mandate that's being placed here is that if a company wishes to compete in its particular market, there are requirements that they need to satisfy ... as it is, any other office suite manufacturer (such as WordPerfect) currently would need to support Microsoft's formats, which are requirements that are placed upon everyone who is NOT Microsoft to be able to play in most markets. Given that Massachusetts role here is as a customer with a set of requirements rather than a government passing specific laws, I fail to see where the onerous mandate is.
Also, a quick apology on the generally bad grammar in the last post - I've been up since way too early working on a chapter, and I think my brain's signalling that it's time to come up for air.
Hey Kurt,
Of course, its not surprising to discover that our views in this area are quite a bit different. But thats what tends to make our conversations so interesting (at least to me, anyway ;)) in the first place. :)
I don't have the necessary time to properly respond right at the moment, but as soon as a window opens up, I will definitely take the time to properly respond to your comments.
Ping me a bit later on IM if you happen to be around, although from the sound of it, it seems you may be trying to get some rest in between parenting and work-related duties. Let me know if you need help with anything... If necessary, I can adapt my current workload to help whereever needed.
Enjoy your sleep! (If you can afford to get some, that is :))
Hey Kurt,
I've held back from commenting on this until now as I felt that I needed to give myself some distance from this post as to get far enough past the obvious emotional side to this, allowing for a more reasonable approach and subsequent response.
Two things:
1) Similar to the respect I have for Tim, the respect I have for you is at the very top of my "respect meter" if such a thing actually existed.
2) Just as it was necessary to provide an apology and public remmittance for my "Update:" comments to Tim, I feel I at very least should provide enough respect as to allow for the fact that my opinions are simply less important than is showing you due respect; a respect that is well deserved and worthy of me simply backing down and lettings things be.
Thanks for taking the time to follow-up! I am probably one of the few people who have a fairly intimate understanding of how much responsibility sits atop those capable shoulders of yours, and how few precious moments you actually have to yourself, which for all intents and purposes simply doesn't exist.
As such, thanks for giving your time to the writing of this follow-up. I can only assume that with the amount of time you spent writing this, the feelings and sentiments are of significant value, based on information that I simply do not have the same level of access to as you.
Chat withya' on the flip-side :)
Even though I agree with the conclusion, I think a lot of this blog is pretty confused.
At one stage, it appears to say that a new format from the Word people has legitimacy because one of the original developers of Word worked on the early Star WYSIWYG word processors. However, markup for word processing predates WYSIWYG: indeed, UNIX was originally invented to allow multitasking operation for word processing operators. Indeed, due to the historical antipathy of WYSIWYG and markup, the lineage would speak *against* legitimacy if anything. But of course, the whole legitimacy idea is silly.
A standard involves agreement. Not everyone will always agree. Indeed, a rich software ecosystem demands that not everyone agree, even though this may reduce the network effect benefits that a monoculture might bring. Microsoft clearly has the agreement of a lot of other companies and potential users, certainly enough to warrant standardization at some level.
But I think people should not be too excited either by ODF or Open XML. Neither of them are rich markup. They are both highly format oriented. They provide much nicer access to boring information.
Charles Goldfarb (who once told me that he had expected standard generalized markup to take over in the mid 80s, only to be stymied by WYSIWYG, but not forever) always emphasizes the value of *rigourous* markup: where your data meets certain required quality objectives for consistency and richness. ODF and Open XML don't play in that space, they just represent word processor developers doing what they should have done ten, fifteen or twenty years ago. We don't need to thank someone for stopping abusing us.