Mittwoch März 16, 2005

"Microsoft & Sun: What is the Right XML Strategy for Information Interchange?"
"Participating in this debate are Tim Bray, Director of Web Technologies for Sun, Jean Paoli, Senior Director, XML Architecture at Microsoft, and Jon Udell, Lead Analyst at InfoWorld."
( Mrz 16 2005, 03:44:59 PM CET ) Permalink

Just switch! - Open Standards make the Difference
StarOffice 8 introduces a new key feature of which most people underestimate its importance. StarOffice 8 together with its sibling OpenOffice.org are the first office suites to support the OASIS OpenDocument XML file format as the default file format. The file format was developed based on the former OpenOffice.org/StarOffice file format by the OASIS technical committee.

A while ago the European Commission evaluated different document file formats and invited different vendors to reply to the EC's recommendation. Interestingly, Microsoft admits publicly and in written form that the Microsoft XML file formats had not been designed to be implementation and vendor independent, but that they were derived from the structure of the existing Microsoft Office applications. As a consequence, it seems logical that these file formats cannot represent an open standard. Here is a quote from Microsoft's letter to the European Commission:

"The Office XML reference schemas describe in XML the basic data structures that have been in use in Microsoft products for over a decade. A significant part of the usefulness of the schemas comes from the fact that they enable backward compatibility with documents using older Microsoft Office formats and thereby enable customers to transform their existing documents to XML. In other words, we did not start creating the Office XML schemas from a blank state."
http://europa.eu.int/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=18036

This (creating a file format from a blank state) is more or less what OpenOffice.org did. The OpenOffice.org XML file format, used and deployed since version 1.0 of OpenOffice.org and version 6 of the StarOffice software, was designed from scratch with the goal to create a format that can be adopted by multiple vendors. In addition, the format leveraged existing open standards wherever it made sense. There is a StarOffice white paper that explains the advantes of the file format. Additional information can be found on the OpenOffice.org XML project website.

That the Sun supported OpenOffice.org project apparently did a good job in creating an open and implementation independent file format becomes obvious in the fact that the OASIS technical committee members chose the file format as the basis for their file format. Now a number of office suites have started to support the OASIS OpenDocument XML file format. Just read the following quotes:

KOffice
"Up to KOffice 1.3, the XML tags used by KOffice's applications are private to KOffice. From KOffice 1.4 on, we plan to switch to OpenOffice.org compatible file formats."
http://www.koffice.org/faq/

TextMaker
"Now they tell us, when our OpenOffice/OASIS/OpenDocument filters for our TextMaker word processor [softmaker.de] are pretty much completed... ;-)

In earnest, is anyone using Microsoft Office XML for anything?

Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH"
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/15/1420205

AbiWord
"We have import and export filters for the OpenOffice document format which is the same."
http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-user/2005/Jan/0082.html

IBM
"Indeed, we already offer products (IBM Workplace Client Technology) which conform with the current draft specifications developed within the OASIS TC."
http://europa.eu.int/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=18035

I'm looking forward to the day when Microsoft and Corel will announce their support for the OASIS OpenDocument XML file format. The more people ask for it (the OpenDocument support), the sooner this day will be.
( Mrz 16 2005, 02:23:03 PM CET ) Permalink

Fighting for independence vs. waiting for independence
Yesterday at CeBIT I had a long conversation with someone who seemed to work in the public sector. He said that many city councils and ministries are reluctant to switch to new alternative technologies, because the alternatives do not provide exactly the same functionality. If the alternatives guaranteed one hundred percent compatibility, people would migrate.

From my point of view OpenOffice.org and StarOffice are doing everything possible to be as compatible, but obviously the "competitors" are not making it easy for us to integrate in an open and fair way. Thus, it will be difficult for a project like OpenOffice.org to provide exactly the same level of functionality as a multi-billion dollar company that is funded by the high margins of their products.

People have to make a choice if they want to fight for independence or if they want to hope and wait for independence. The more people switch to open standards based products, the higher the pressure will be for proprietary companies to open up.

It is like people who have installed proprietary 5-pin electricity sockets at home (I hope 5-pin sockets don't exist in any country) for which only VCR's, TV's, DVD player's, dish washers, etc. are available from one brand. If this brand provides the best price performance throughout the product line, it is no issue to rely on this proprietary company for all the different electrical and electronic devices. However, if this company goes out of business, increases prices dramatically or ships crappy products, one is screwed.

I like being creative and therefore I designed a poster for OpenOffice.org a while ago, just for the fun of it. The poster uses the plug idea that I just mentioned. Here is a picture:



If people are fine with relying on the proprietary 5-pin sockets, they don't have to switch to a different technology. However, if they think the dependence on the proprietary 5-pin socket is not such a good idea, they should fight and not wait for independence, even if the migration process is a bit painful for the first people who go through it.
( Mrz 16 2005, 10:41:51 AM CET ) Permalink Kommentare [1]

Apparently Microsoft lost a longtime friend
"Intel starts big reseller desktop Linux push"
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21863
( Mrz 16 2005, 09:56:22 AM CET ) Permalink