Saturday June 12, 2004 Intermingled Arguments
You may not be aware of this, but the European Commission recently issued a statement explaining its desires concerning the document format standard to be used by office productivity tools in EU governments. The statement is very carefully worded and leaves plenty of room for the two market leaders to continue to compete, as Joe Wilcox hints. I'm told by EU-watchers that the message between the lines is (a) that the EU now considers the OASIS Open Office XML Format crucial and (b) that the 'advice' to Microsoft to stop acting superior and join the standards effort is a strong warning.
The consequence has been a discussion between some of the participants. Tim Bray describes the points he made when he gave evidence and Jean Paoli of Microsoft (or his PR ghostwriter) has published an official response.
I've been fascinated by this discussion for quite some time - back in 2002 I participated in a discussion on Sam's site. Being a non-expert of the topic I tend to get trashed by some of the combatants when I fail to grasp all the minutuae, but it seems to me that the argument made by the OpenOffice.org community and the argument made by Microsoft are actually different discussions, analagous to the old distinction of XML users as being either document-headed or data-headed.
The OO.o people argue that users of office productivity tools deserve freedom of choice for the tools they use and longevity for the documents they create, and on this basis argue that what's needed is a standardised XML dialect for creating documents. Tim Bray writes:
It’s your intellectual capital and you worked hard to produce it for your citizens. Sun doesn’t own it, Microsoft doesn’t own it, you own it, and that means it should be living in a nice, long-lived, non-proprietary data format that isn’t anyone’s competitive weapon.
The Microsoft people argue that the freedom to create a business-specific XML schema is key and are (justly) proud of the theoretical ability to read any XML format. Dare Obasanjo writes:
Office 2003 is a great step forward in enabling businesses and end users harness the power of XML in typical document interchange scenarios. Arguments about whether you should use Sun's XML format or Microsoft's XML format aren't the point. The point is which tools allow you to use your XML format with the most ease.
Both are valid freedoms to encourage for their context; it's just that the latter freedom is of no use to me or to the millions of ordinary office productivity suite users who just want to be productive now and still be able to use their documents in 3, 5, 10 years time when they have their new 3D-holographic-tablet-mobile-communicator-device thing. Intermingling the two arguments may make for great marketing but it doesn't help. To paraphrase Dare, the point is which tools allow you to use a standard XML format with the most ease.
Robert thinks end-users don't want standards but I know plenty of people who worry about not being able to exchange word-processing files with each other, and I have spoken to several countries national librarians who worry greatly that using arbitrary data formats (even published ones) is guaranteed Alzheimers for the national memory. As Danny O'Brien comments, without any better standard we all just use plain-text files.
The Blogging Experience
As well as being amused and stung by UserFriendly this week, I've been enjoying the comments John Clingan has been making about the blogging experience. His concern, which I share, is that speaking with an authentic voice means taking the risk of one's comments being used elsewhere unwisely or even maliciously. More than once I have posted things which are my view and seen them cited as "the view of Sun's Chief Evangelist" and thereafter with the words "Sun says..." - circumstances under which, sadly, non-authentic marketing cuts in. John says:
I think being paranoid about these things defeats the value of blogging and can quickly become an inhibiter. I will, while blogging, do my best to get things right and leave it at that. Let common sense rule. Just keep in mind that, while I work for Sun Microsystems, my blogs are my own and represent my opinions, and that, well, I am only human.
John also writes on a topic I've been considering recently, the subject of anonymous postings. He's right on the nail in his discussion but I can hear in my memory the arguments of those who say that anonymous posting is essential to allow free discussion. That may be true, but I agree with John when he says:
Anonymity unfortunately encourages posts that are so chock full of opinion with baseless claims that you wonder if the poster was really a computer program that generated random words.
and that's why on my webmink blog I have set house rules requesting people posting anonymously to advise me of their identity or risk removal of their remarks.
But the problem is deeper than that. Pseudonymous posting is much more sinister. The recent debacle on TheServerSide was caused not by anonymous posting by by pseudonymous posting, with assumed identities being filled out over time and used to rubbish the critics of those controlling them in a way that would not be respected if the true identities were known. While we can invent ways to mitigate the problem, ultimately all blogging - in fact, all reportage - should be taken with a pinch of salt and trust only placed in it to the extent one's relationship with the speaker permits and the authenticity of the voice supports. To be otherwise is to be a techno-utopian.
