| [811] | 1 | <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
|
|---|
| 2 | <html><head>
|
|---|
| 3 | <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><title>Why OpenDocument Won (and Microsoft Office Open XML Didn’t)</title>
|
|---|
| 4 |
|
|---|
| 5 | <meta name="description" content="Why OpenDocument appears to have won the office format standards war">
|
|---|
| 6 | <meta name="keywords" content="OpenDocument, Office, XML, David, Wheeler, David A. Wheeler, David Wheeler, open source, open source software, free software, software">
|
|---|
| 7 | <meta name="generator" content="vim">
|
|---|
| 8 | <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="why-opendocument-won_files/paper.css"></head>
|
|---|
| 9 |
|
|---|
| 10 | <body bgcolor="#ffffff">
|
|---|
| 11 |
|
|---|
| 12 | <h1 class="title">Why OpenDocument Won (and Microsoft Office Open XML Didn’t)</h1>
|
|---|
| 13 | <h2 class="author">David A. Wheeler</h2>
|
|---|
| 14 | <h2 class="date">September 2, 2005 (updated September 15, 2005)</h2>
|
|---|
| 15 |
|
|---|
| 16 | <p>
|
|---|
| 17 | As noted in <a href="http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050831202118904">Groklaw</a>,
|
|---|
| 18 | <a href="http://news.ft.com/cms/s/80033a76-1a71-11da-b7f5-00000e2511c8.html">
|
|---|
| 19 | FT.com</a>,
|
|---|
| 20 | <a href="http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/other/0,39020682,39216101,00.htm">ZDNet</a>,
|
|---|
| 21 | and other places,
|
|---|
| 22 | the State of Massachusetts is backing the <i>OpenDocument</i> standard
|
|---|
| 23 | as the standard format for office applications, text documents, spreadsheets,
|
|---|
| 24 | charts and graphical documents like drawings and presentations.
|
|---|
| 25 | All Massachusetts agencies are expected to migrate by January 1, 2007.
|
|---|
| 26 | This is <i>instead</i> of Microsoft’s new Office XML format
|
|---|
| 27 | (aka Microsoft Office Open XML File format).
|
|---|
| 28 |
|
|---|
| 29 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 30 | This is big news.
|
|---|
| 31 | Currently most people exchange office documents using Microsoft’s binary
|
|---|
| 32 | formats (known as .doc, .ppt, and .xls), but now that the XML technologies are
|
|---|
| 33 | available and more mature, many people want to switch to an
|
|---|
| 34 | XML-based approach.
|
|---|
| 35 | There’s general acceptance in the information technology community
|
|---|
| 36 | that for office documents
|
|---|
| 37 | some XML format will eventually replace the obsolete binary formats.
|
|---|
| 38 | Most people, a few years ago, expected that
|
|---|
| 39 | whatever XML format Microsoft created would win.
|
|---|
| 40 | Yet Microsoft appears to have lost the war, due to
|
|---|
| 41 | its own poor decisions.
|
|---|
| 42 |
|
|---|
| 43 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 44 | Microsoft is predictably howling about this news,
|
|---|
| 45 | <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2005/08/31/458879.aspx">
|
|---|
| 46 | saying they are a
|
|---|
| 47 | “bit stunned” and that the results were “unnecessarily exclusive”.</a>
|
|---|
| 48 | Microsoft better be prepared to be more stunned.
|
|---|
| 49 | Government officials in Massachusetts, Europe, and elsewhere,
|
|---|
| 50 | have been repeatedly telling Microsoft to
|
|---|
| 51 | stop posturing and actually meet their customers’ needs for complete
|
|---|
| 52 | interoperability, with no restrictions.
|
|---|
| 53 | Yet Microsoft has steadfastly refused to meet their customers’ needs, and
|
|---|
| 54 | they’ve done it so long that customers have abandoned their format.
|
|---|
| 55 | (Microsoft says they're open, but people who have independently
|
|---|
| 56 | evaluated the situation have determined that it's not true.)
|
|---|
| 57 | I suspect Massachusetts is only the first of many; governments around
|
|---|
| 58 | the world are working out their standards, preparing for the leap
|
|---|
| 59 | to XML-based office formats.
|
|---|
| 60 | The rest of industry is likely to follow suit, because they have many of
|
|---|
| 61 | the same needs and desires for long-lived documents and competitive suppliers.
|
|---|
| 62 | The best information
|
|---|
| 63 | available suggests that <i>everyone</i> is switching to OpenDocument,
|
|---|
| 64 | for all the same reasons,
|
|---|
| 65 | leaving Microsoft with a proprietary format no one wants to use.
|
|---|
| 66 | </p><blockquote>
|
|---|
| 67 | UPDATE: Almost immediately after I wrote this paragraph,
|
|---|
| 68 | <a href="http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS3370503002.html">
|
|---|
| 69 | Indonesia's Ministry of Research and Technology announced that
|
|---|
| 70 | it will implement Java Desktop System (JDS) on Linux as a
|
|---|
| 71 | national-standard desktop</a>. It plans to install it across Indonesia,
|
|---|
| 72 | <i>beginning</i> with its government-affiliated offices.
|
|---|
| 73 | JDS includes StarOffice, which is expected to soon release its OpenDocument
|
|---|
| 74 | implementation as its default file format.
|
|---|
| 75 | It sure doesn't take long for the steamroller to get moving, and the
|
|---|
| 76 | big kicker will probably be the European Union.
|
|---|
| 77 | <!-- September 15, 2005 -->
|
|---|
| 78 | </blockquote>
|
|---|
| 79 |
|
|---|
| 80 | <p>
|
|---|
| 81 | This article explains why things currently look so grim for
|
|---|
| 82 | Microsoft’s proprietary XML format, and so bright for OpenDocument.
|
|---|
| 83 | In some sense, a declaration that OpenDocument “won” on September 2005
|
|---|
| 84 | is very early; who knows what will happen?
|
|---|
| 85 | But this is more than a snappy title;
|
|---|
| 86 | the tea leaves are looking really bad right now for Microsoft’s dreams to
|
|---|
| 87 | solely control the format used by all future office documents.
|
|---|
| 88 | In fact, if they don’t hurry, Microsoft could conceivably find their
|
|---|
| 89 | Office suite slowly moving into the dumpster
|
|---|
| 90 | with WordStar, VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3, dBase, and other former office leaders.
|
|---|
| 91 | That would be mind-boggling, but it’s occurred many times before --
|
|---|
| 92 | who would have thought that any of those predecessors would stumble?
|
|---|
| 93 | I don’t think that’ll happen in this case, at least not so
|
|---|
| 94 | quickly, but it’s certainly a risk unless Microsoft changes direction.
|
|---|
| 95 | That would be horrific for them; Office is 40% of their revenue, and one
|
|---|
| 96 | of the primary reasons people use their operating system (which accounts for
|
|---|
| 97 | most of the rest of their non-investment income).
|
|---|
| 98 |
|
|---|
| 99 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 100 | I’m more hopeful; Microsoft has historically changed direction
|
|---|
| 101 | when it needed to embrace a standard, and they can easily do it in this case.
|
|---|
| 102 | For example, around 1995 it suddenly and finally embraced the
|
|---|
| 103 | Internet standards, dropping its own networking standards that no one wanted.
|
|---|
| 104 | I think (and hope)
|
|---|
| 105 | that good sense will prevail on Microsoft in this case too -- in other words,
|
|---|
| 106 | that they’ll embrace OpenDocument and continue to sell products.
|
|---|
| 107 | If you can only read one other piece on this topic, take a look at
|
|---|
| 108 | <a href="http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/other/0,39020682,39216101,00.htm">
|
|---|
| 109 | ZDNet's "Microsoft must drop its Office politics"</a>, which is a good article.
|
|---|
| 110 | ZDNet concludes "Microsoft has a very simple path open to it ... include
|
|---|
| 111 | OpenDocument compatibility in its software. ...
|
|---|
| 112 | it either adopts the industry standard or gets locked out.
|
|---|
| 113 | It may not like this -- it prefers to use this logic to cow its competitors --
|
|---|
| 114 | but it should have no reason to avoid a level playing field."
|
|---|
| 115 |
|
|---|
| 116 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 117 | It looks like Microsoft gambled, and lost. Let’s see why, by looking
|
|---|
| 118 | at what governments are looking for... and why Microsoft chose to not compete.
|
|---|
| 119 |
|
|---|
| 120 |
|
|---|
| 121 | </p><h1>Why Would a Government Choose OpenDocument?</h1>
|
|---|
| 122 |
|
|---|
| 123 | <p>
|
|---|
| 124 | In many ways this decision was fairly obvious.
|
|---|
| 125 | OpenDocument appears, at
|
|---|
| 126 | this point, to be <b>the</b> way to go, with no realistic alternative,
|
|---|
| 127 | for any government.
|
|---|
| 128 | The only real contenders were:
|
|---|
| 129 | </p><ol>
|
|---|
| 130 | <li>Microsoft Office binary format, the current common interchange format.
|
|---|
| 131 | But this is being abandoned by Microsoft,
|
|---|
| 132 | fails to exploit the newer XML technologies (thus giving
|
|---|
| 133 | up their advantages), and because it’s undocumented it’s causing continuous
|
|---|
| 134 | information loss. Just try to read Office documents from 10 years ago --
|
|---|
| 135 | you’ll often fail.
|
|---|
| 136 | Now remember that governments need them in future centuries.
|
|---|
| 137 | They’re not meeting the need, so an alternative is needed.
|
|---|
| 138 | </li><li>Going with Microsoft Office XML, which as shown below, doesn’t meet
|
|---|
| 139 | government minimum requirements such as allowing any supplier to
|
|---|
| 140 | implement it. And implementations aren’t even available yet, though
|
|---|
| 141 | at this point that probably doesn’t matter any more.
|
|---|
| 142 | </li><li>OpenDocument, the only official standard. It’s already implemented
|
|---|
| 143 | by multiple vendors (including some at no cost), and it’s the only one
|
|---|
| 144 | that really meets government needs... and with a massive lead time to boot.
|
|---|
| 145 | </li></ol>
|
|---|
| 146 | <p>
|
|---|
| 147 | Other formats aren’t really competitive.
|
|---|
| 148 | PDF is a very useful display format, but it has a different purpose --
|
|---|
| 149 | while it’s great at preserving formatting, it doesn’t let you
|
|---|
| 150 | <i>edit</i> the data meaningfully.
|
|---|
| 151 | HTML is great for web pages, or short documents, but it’s
|
|---|
| 152 | just not capable enough for these kinds of tasks.
|
|---|
| 153 | And so on.
|
|---|
| 154 | Both HTML and PDF will continue to be used, but they cannot be used as
|
|---|
| 155 | a complete replacement; people need what OpenDocument (or its
|
|---|
| 156 | Microsoft competitor) provides.
|
|---|
| 157 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 158 | So let’s examine in more detail to see why OpenDocument is such an
|
|---|
| 159 | obvious success, by first looking at the requirements governments have.
|
|---|
| 160 | Governments
|
|---|
| 161 | don’t create office documents so that they can be tossed in the shredder. They
|
|---|
| 162 | often have to be accessible decades or centuries later, and many of them have to
|
|---|
| 163 | be accessible to <i>any</i> citizen, regardless of what equipment they use or
|
|---|
| 164 | will use.
|
|---|
| 165 | Let’s look at the kinds of issues governments (like Massachusetts)
|
|---|
| 166 | finds itself confronted with, by looking at their
|
|---|
| 167 | typical requirements for a modern office format:
|
|---|
| 168 | </p><ol>
|
|---|
| 169 | <li><b>An XML-based format</b>. Now that XML is available, governments
|
|---|
| 170 | want a single format that uses XML for its many advantages
|
|---|
| 171 | (e.g., easy standard processing, flexibility,
|
|---|
| 172 | easy growth
|
|---|
| 173 | to arbitrary sizes, ease of repair/recovery, and interoperability).
|
|---|
| 174 | Binary formats have real trouble with extensibility, for example;
|
|---|
| 175 | if they assign
|
|---|
| 176 | one byte to a value, and later discover that they need more than one byte, it’s
|
|---|
| 177 | difficult to change anything, while in XML you just write the larger number.
|
|---|
| 178 | Repair is hard too; in XML, if some data is scrambled, you can recover the rest,
|
|---|
| 179 | but a scrambled binary file is often unrecoverable.
|
|---|
| 180 | (Compressed XML files like OpenDocument have the disadvantage that
|
|---|
| 181 | recovering <i>after</i> the scrambled point is often very difficult,
|
|---|
| 182 | but you can typically recover the data <i>before</i> scrambled section,
|
|---|
| 183 | and sometimes you can do much better. Unspecified binary formats
|
|---|
| 184 | are worse -- if the program says “failed to load” there may be nothing
|
|---|
| 185 | you can do, even if there’s some recoverable data before the scrambled point.)
|
|---|
| 186 | <p>
|
|---|
| 187 | But the biggest reason for XML is to make it extremely easy for <i>anyone</i>
|
|---|
| 188 | to quickly make tools that can read, write, and manipulate the data.
|
|---|
| 189 | If you only use one program, ever, to read a format, it’s livable if
|
|---|
| 190 | the format is bizarre (like Microsoft’s current binary format is).
|
|---|
| 191 | But now that everything is networked, people want to quickly take pieces
|
|---|
| 192 | of data from many sources and combine them in new ways, and that demands
|
|---|
| 193 | a data format that’s much more flexible and accessible to any tool.
|
|---|
| 194 | XML was designed to do just this, so people want some kind of
|
|---|
| 195 | XML format.
|
|---|
| 196 | For office data,
|
|---|
| 197 | the choice is either OpenDocument or Microsoft’s XML format.
|
|---|
| 198 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 199 | </p></li><li><b>A specification</b>.
|
|---|
| 200 | In the long term, all formats disappear. WordStar was once
|
|---|
| 201 | what <i>everyone</i> used as their word processor; now, no one even has a filter
|
|---|
| 202 | to read the format. Luckily, WordStar format is similar to ASCII and is thus
|
|---|
| 203 | mostly recoverable. Today, I can’t read some important PowerPoint 4 files in
|
|---|
| 204 | today’s PowerPoint - unacceptable to me, and governments think in terms of
|
|---|
| 205 | decades and centuries. Yet it happens, because there’s still no specification
|
|---|
| 206 | for the (now obsolete) Microsoft Office format. If there’s no spec, there’s no
|
|---|
| 207 | standard.
|
|---|
| 208 | <p>
|
|---|
| 209 | An aside: Microsoft program manager Adam Barr has suggested
|
|---|
| 210 | <a href="http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/09/an_open_letter.html">
|
|---|
| 211 | releasing a specification for the older Microsoft office binary formats.</a>
|
|---|
| 212 | That would go a <i>long</i> way to improving interoperability, and if they
|
|---|
| 213 | did that (in a way that allowed any competitor to implement them)
|
|---|
| 214 | I’d be delighted.
|
|---|
| 215 | This would certainly be a big help to many
|
|---|
| 216 | as long as arbitrary competitors could use the format
|
|---|
| 217 | (as opposed to the current license for the Microsoft XML format).
|
|---|
| 218 | It’s not even clear that Microsoft <i>could</i> really limit the license,
|
|---|
| 219 | since you’re not supposed to be able to patent things that already exist
|
|---|
| 220 | in the public for more than a year.
|
|---|
| 221 | That would not provide the benefits of XML, obviously, but it might mean
|
|---|
| 222 | that a transition to XML could happen in a slower manner (since there would
|
|---|
| 223 | be less concern about data loss, a serious concern today).
|
|---|
| 224 | I have not seen any evidence that Microsoft will do that, unfortunately.
|
|---|
| 225 |
|
|---|
| 226 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 227 | </p></li><li><b>Neutral specification maintainer, preferably a respected
|
|---|
| 228 | pre-existing standards body</b>. OpenDocument has been developed and is
|
|---|
| 229 | maintained by a vendor-neutral body (OASIS); OASIS is even authorized to submit
|
|---|
| 230 | its specifications straight to ISO. Heck, Microsoft is even a member
|
|---|
| 231 | of OASIS; they certainly can’t claim ignorance of OpenDocument.
|
|---|
| 232 | Microsoft hasn’t even <i>begun</i> a
|
|---|
| 233 | standards process for its format.
|
|---|
| 234 | In May 2004 the European Union specifically told Microsoft to get involved
|
|---|
| 235 | with the OpenDocument standards effort, and that they considered the "winner"
|
|---|
| 236 | to be the one that became an international standard.
|
|---|
| 237 | At this point they’re too late -- the
|
|---|
| 238 | standards train already left the station, and arrived at the destination called
|
|---|
| 239 | OpenDocument.
|
|---|
| 240 | Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS, noted that
|
|---|
| 241 | <a href="http://www.govtech.net/news/news.php?id=96645">
|
|---|
| 242 | "many European governments are considering similar policies
|
|---|
| 243 | [to require OpenDocument, like Massachusetts]"</a>, and it will be
|
|---|
| 244 | a topic of discussion at OASIS' European Adoption Forum in London,
|
|---|
| 245 | 17 October 2005.
|
|---|
| 246 | <p>
|
|---|
| 247 | </p></li><li><b>Multi-vendor/customer development</b>.
|
|---|
| 248 | The only way to make
|
|---|
| 249 | sure that all critical user needs and supplier issues are addressed is to get
|
|---|
| 250 | many different organizations to co-develop the specification, along with
|
|---|
| 251 | public feedback.
|
|---|
| 252 | Microsoft’s XML format didn’t; its development was
|
|---|
| 253 | completely controlled by Microsoft.
|
|---|
| 254 | That’s a terrible misstep for something that is supposed to be
|
|---|
| 255 | used worldwide, in perpetuity, for trillions of dollars worth
|
|---|
| 256 | of documents.
|
|---|
| 257 | Though first draft
|
|---|
| 258 | specifications are often created by a single person or small group,
|
|---|
| 259 | you <i>have</i> to get widespread review to get a good final result.
|
|---|
| 260 |
|
|---|
| 261 | <p>
|
|---|
| 262 | </p></li><li><b>Multiple implementations.</b> There are now
|
|---|
| 263 | multiple implementations of OpenDocument, with probably more to be announced
|
|---|
| 264 | soon. Governments don’t want to be locked into a single vendor, nor to force
|
|---|
| 265 | their citizens to do so. The costs go sky-high, and support vanishes, when
|
|---|
| 266 | there’s no competition. Only one vendor really supports the Microsoft XML
|
|---|
| 267 | format.
|
|---|
| 268 | Note that having multiple implementations is the best way to ensure that
|
|---|
| 269 | specification actually provides interoperability; the IETF even requires this
|
|---|
| 270 | for its standards because of this.
|
|---|
| 271 | Microsoft has mouthed nonsense such as claiming OpenDocument is only
|
|---|
| 272 | designed for OpenOffice.org, but multiple implementations show it false.
|
|---|
| 273 | <p>
|
|---|
| 274 | </p></li><li><b>Anyone can implement the specification</b>.
|
|---|
| 275 | Anyone can implement OpenDocument, and that’s <i>not</i> true for
|
|---|
| 276 | Microsoft’s format.
|
|---|
| 277 | Today, there are too many
|
|---|
| 278 | people and too many programs that need access to the data in office
|
|---|
| 279 | documents.
|
|---|
| 280 | Thus, it’s critical that anyone be able to implement an office format,
|
|---|
| 281 | especially since it’s the whole point of using XML.
|
|---|
| 282 | <p>
|
|---|
| 283 | This point seems to be the hardest for some people to understand, so
|
|---|
| 284 | here’s more detail.
|
|---|
| 285 | The bottom line: Microsoft licenses this format in a way
|
|---|
| 286 | that says, “you can use it freely,
|
|---|
| 287 | unless you’re a competitor”.
|
|---|
| 288 | And that’s a poison pill for any format like this, because governments
|
|---|
| 289 | <i>want</i> competition.
|
|---|
| 290 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 291 | <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2005/08/31/458879.aspx">
|
|---|
| 292 | Microsoft itself acknowledges the need</a> for an open format, saying that
|
|---|
| 293 | “Moving to document formats that are open, documented,
|
|---|
| 294 | and royalty-free is actually really valuable....
|
|---|
| 295 | [because it makes your files] totally belong to you [so] you
|
|---|
| 296 | have control over them.”
|
|---|
| 297 | Good words!
|
|---|
| 298 | But there are words, and there are actions; governments are not always stupid.
|
|---|
| 299 | To meet such requirements, any such format
|
|---|
| 300 | has to be implementable by <i>any</i> proprietary program and by
|
|---|
| 301 | <i>any</i> open source software, <i>at least</i>
|
|---|
| 302 | using the licenses typical for each.
|
|---|
| 303 | Fifteen years ago it was easy to ignore open source software, but now
|
|---|
| 304 | the market has all sorts of open source software.
|
|---|
| 305 | Nowadays, governments cannot in fairness mandate a standard
|
|---|
| 306 | that forbids implementations that use the most popular licenses
|
|---|
| 307 | for open source software;
|
|---|
| 308 | blatantly discriminatory regulations like that
|
|---|
| 309 | can bring officials into court.
|
|---|
| 310 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 311 | And let’s be blunt:
|
|---|
| 312 | <a href="http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/gpl-compatible.html">the
|
|---|
| 313 | most common license for open source software is the GNU GPL version 2</a>,
|
|---|
| 314 | so any office format must be implementable
|
|---|
| 315 | by a program released under the GNU GPL.
|
|---|
| 316 | <a href="http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/gpl-compatible.html">See here
|
|---|
| 317 | for GPL stats</a>. I looked up the data again on September 1, 2005; <a href="http://freshmeat.net/stats/">Freshmeat’s statistics</a> report that 67.41%
|
|---|
| 318 | of branches used the GPL, with the next-closest being LGPL (6.06%) and original
|
|---|
| 319 | BSD (3.34%). Even if you pretended that all non-GPL licenses were identical,
|
|---|
| 320 | when combined they’re still the minority. Not all backers of open source
|
|---|
| 321 | software like or use the GPL, but making it illegal to use such a widely-used
|
|---|
| 322 | license, for no good reason in public policy, is lunacy.
|
|---|
| 323 |
|
|---|
| 324 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 325 | Microsoft hasn’t been willing to license its products
|
|---|
| 326 | for absolutely anyone to use, so it’s been unwilling to release
|
|---|
| 327 | a specification that’s appropriate for government use.
|
|---|
| 328 | Instead, Microsoft has
|
|---|
| 329 | only been willing to release a
|
|---|
| 330 | specification as long as it can’t be used by some of Microsoft’s
|
|---|
| 331 | primary competition, by creating weird legal licensing clauses that prevent
|
|---|
| 332 | interoperation and competition.
|
|---|
| 333 | <a href="http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1829728,00.asp">
|
|---|
| 334 | Microsoft’s XML format cannot be implemented by programs
|
|---|
| 335 | licensed under the GNU GPL</a>, for example.
|
|---|
| 336 | Under U.S. law, Microsoft is allowed to write specifications that exclude
|
|---|
| 337 | competitors, but it shouldn’t be surprised if people choose to not use them.
|
|---|
| 338 | Especially since there are current office suite products that use licenses
|
|---|
| 339 | that appear to be excluded by Microsoft's terms
|
|---|
| 340 | (Gnumeric and AbiWord at least use the GPL; OpenOffice.org uses the
|
|---|
| 341 | related LGPL, and it's not clear they can use it either).
|
|---|
| 342 | There's no reason to lock out these market players.
|
|---|
| 343 | Remember, the whole point of the XML formats is to let <i>anyone</i>
|
|---|
| 344 | read and write them, if they choose.
|
|---|
| 345 |
|
|---|
| 346 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 347 | In contrast, the OpenDocument specification can be implemented by anyone
|
|---|
| 348 | who uses any license, proprietary or open source -- including
|
|---|
| 349 | the GNU GPL license and Microsoft’s current Office license.
|
|---|
| 350 | So OpenDocument is open for anyone to implement, including Microsoft... while
|
|---|
| 351 | Microsoft’s XML format isn’t.
|
|---|
| 352 | <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2005/08/31/458879.aspx">
|
|---|
| 353 | Microsoft’s claim that OpenDocument is “unnecessarily
|
|---|
| 354 | exclusive” is nonsense</a>; the shoe is on the other foot.
|
|---|
| 355 | I’d say this reason,
|
|---|
| 356 | by itself, is sufficient to disqualify Microsoft’s XML format from any
|
|---|
| 357 | government consideration, no matter what its capabilities, because it fails to
|
|---|
| 358 | give users the option of choosing what program or system they can use.
|
|---|
| 359 | Microsoft is just trying to prevent competition here.
|
|---|
| 360 | The
|
|---|
| 361 | <a href="http://europa.eu.int/idabc/en/document/2592/5588">European Union</a>,
|
|---|
| 362 | <a href="http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/dw_blog_comments.jspa?blog=384&entry=83074">IBM's Bob Sutor</a>
|
|---|
| 363 | and many others all warn against this.
|
|---|
| 364 | Other countries are even less likely to accept Microsoft’s XML format;
|
|---|
| 365 | while Massachusetts sees Microsoft as a domestic
|
|---|
| 366 | company, other countries will see Microsoft as a foreign company and be
|
|---|
| 367 | <i>very uninterested</i> in forbidding competition against a foreign company.
|
|---|
| 368 |
|
|---|
| 369 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 370 | Massachusetts’ Kriss emphasized that Massachusetts is not moving
|
|---|
| 371 | to open standards for economic reasons, but to protect the right
|
|---|
| 372 | of the public to open and free access to public documents, permanently.
|
|---|
| 373 | “What we’ve backed away from at this point is the use of a
|
|---|
| 374 | proprietary standard and we want standards that are published
|
|---|
| 375 | and free of legal encumbrances, and we don’t want two standards.”
|
|---|
| 376 |
|
|---|
| 377 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 378 | Perhaps an analogy would help explain this.
|
|---|
| 379 | I expect
|
|---|
| 380 | that Microsoft would be unhappy if Massachusetts mandated that only GPL’ed
|
|---|
| 381 | software could be used by Massachusetts. Yet if Massachusetts did that, they
|
|---|
| 382 | could at least argue the advantages of doing so in terms of transparency of the
|
|---|
| 383 | code. (No, I’m not arguing that Massachusetts <i>should</i> do that, I’m just
|
|---|
| 384 | trying to make a point.) In contrast, Microsoft wants Massachusetts to mandate
|
|---|
| 385 | that GPL’ed software be <i>forbidden</i> for use in office suites. There’s no
|
|---|
| 386 | good public policy reason to do that, and lots of competitive reasons to avoid
|
|---|
| 387 | doing so. Especially when there’s a ready alternative -- an international
|
|---|
| 388 | standard, already implemented multiple times, including some high-quality
|
|---|
| 389 | freely-available implementations (giving them a range of options). I get the
|
|---|
| 390 | impression that Massachusetts worked really hard with Microsoft to get them to
|
|---|
| 391 | change the license to something more reasonable, so that Microsoft wouldn’t so
|
|---|
| 392 | obviously disqualify its work. Yet Microsoft continues to try to promulgate a
|
|---|
| 393 | specification license that forbids competition. Expecting any government to
|
|---|
| 394 | perpetually forbid the use of competing office suites is rediculous,
|
|---|
| 395 | and Microsoft should have known better.
|
|---|
| 396 | I think they did know better, and hoped no one would notice.
|
|---|
| 397 |
|
|---|
| 398 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 399 | </p></li><li><b>Low-cost implementations</b>.
|
|---|
| 400 | Not everyone is made of money.
|
|---|
| 401 | Governments have to interact with people who have little money, and governments
|
|---|
| 402 | are often strapped themselves.
|
|---|
| 403 | For OpenDocument, this is a no-brainer.
|
|---|
| 404 | Some OpenDocument implementations are available at no cost
|
|---|
| 405 | (particularly OpenOffice.org and KDE KOffice) and have a
|
|---|
| 406 | licensing structure that allows that to continue that way indefinitely.
|
|---|
| 407 | And these are good programs, not poor quality demos.
|
|---|
| 408 | Even if you choose to use a non-free implementation (say StarOffice
|
|---|
| 409 | or Microsoft Office with an OpenDocument plug-in), this is obviously a big
|
|---|
| 410 | advantage to you, because it constrains the office suite prices.
|
|---|
| 411 | No such luck with Microsoft’s XML format;
|
|---|
| 412 | Microsoft XML is only available in the latest version of Office.
|
|---|
| 413 | Indeed, their licensing is carefully designed to prevent the most likely
|
|---|
| 414 | kinds of competition (it’s “free” as long as you’re not a real competitor).
|
|---|
| 415 | So to get Microsoft’s XML, you’d have to upgrade
|
|---|
| 416 | huge groups of people at a corresponding huge cost.
|
|---|
| 417 | There really isn’t even a competition between these two formats.
|
|---|
| 418 | And it gets worse; since no one else is supporting Microsoft XML,
|
|---|
| 419 | Microsoft XML will probably stay expensive to deploy, due to a
|
|---|
| 420 | lack of competition, especially if more people try to use it.
|
|---|
| 421 | This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; if more people try to use it,
|
|---|
| 422 | Microsoft will have incentive to raise the price (to get more money out of
|
|---|
| 423 | it), which in the long term will cause people to stop using it.
|
|---|
| 424 |
|
|---|
| 425 | <p>
|
|---|
| 426 | </p></li><li><b>Support is already available for OpenDocument.</b>
|
|---|
| 427 | OpenDocument is already out, and already getting used, so that lowers the risk.
|
|---|
| 428 | In fact, OpenDocument was developed based on lessons learned from the
|
|---|
| 429 | older OpenOffice.org format (they aren’t the same, but they’re similar,
|
|---|
| 430 | and the changes were made based on widespread review.)
|
|---|
| 431 | Microsoft’s full XML format still hasn’t even been fielded
|
|---|
| 432 | (it’s coming soon); it’s based on previous Office 2003 work, but
|
|---|
| 433 | that was never used as Office’s primary format, didn’t support critical
|
|---|
| 434 | components like PowerPoint, and the older version didn’t support all the
|
|---|
| 435 | functionality of the product.
|
|---|
| 436 | OpenDocument support is already out, and it appears more mature, especially
|
|---|
| 437 | if you consider multivendor support.
|
|---|
| 438 | As of yet I’ve seen no evidence of
|
|---|
| 439 | significant multivendor office suite support for Microsoft’s XML format.
|
|---|
| 440 | </li></ol>
|
|---|
| 441 |
|
|---|
| 442 | <p>
|
|---|
| 443 | The story here seems clear.
|
|---|
| 444 | Microsoft gambled that, because most current office users use their
|
|---|
| 445 | Office program, customers would choose
|
|---|
| 446 | Microsoft’s XML format <i>even though
|
|---|
| 447 | Microsoft’s format did not meet their requirements</i>.
|
|---|
| 448 | It appears that they hoped that, by creating subtle license traps,
|
|---|
| 449 | they would foreclose future competition, but make it look good enough
|
|---|
| 450 | that government officials wouldn’t understand the issues.
|
|---|
| 451 | Perhaps they expected that people wouldn’t examine
|
|---|
| 452 | their options carefully;
|
|---|
| 453 | an odd assumption, since so much money and data is at stake.
|
|---|
| 454 | Government folks are often overworked, yes, but there are a lot of
|
|---|
| 455 | smart people in government.
|
|---|
| 456 |
|
|---|
| 457 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 458 | Government people can act especially smartly when they get
|
|---|
| 459 | good tips from others.
|
|---|
| 460 | A few years ago, secret Microsoft documents now named
|
|---|
| 461 | <a href="http://www.opensource.org/halloween/halloween1.html">Halloween I</a>
|
|---|
| 462 | and
|
|---|
| 463 | <a href="http://www.opensource.org/halloween/halloween2.html">Halloween II</a>
|
|---|
| 464 | were exposed to the world.
|
|---|
| 465 | These documents were developed in collaboration with key people in Microsoft.
|
|---|
| 466 | Their bottom line was a recommendation that
|
|---|
| 467 | Microsoft suppress competition by “de-commoditizing” protocols
|
|---|
| 468 | (creating proprietary formats that could not be used by others)
|
|---|
| 469 | and by attacking competitors through patent lawsuits.
|
|---|
| 470 | Since that time, people have been watching carefully and
|
|---|
| 471 | <a href="http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1829728,00.asp">warning
|
|---|
| 472 | when Microsoft tries to “release” formats whose conditions inhibit
|
|---|
| 473 | competition</a>.
|
|---|
| 474 |
|
|---|
| 475 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 476 | <a href="http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/other/0,39020682,39216101,00.htm">
|
|---|
| 477 | ZDNet came to a similar conclusion</a>, saying,
|
|---|
| 478 | "[when] open standards exist which are capable of supporting
|
|---|
| 479 | the work the state does, this should be an unexceptional decision;
|
|---|
| 480 | accessibility for as broad a range of citizens and organisations
|
|---|
| 481 | as possible is a primary responsibility for any government."
|
|---|
| 482 | <a href="http://europa.eu.int/idabc/en/document/2592/5588">The
|
|---|
| 483 | European Union said, similarly,</a>
|
|---|
| 484 | "Because of its specific role in society, the public sector must
|
|---|
| 485 | avoid that a specific product is forced on anyone interacting
|
|---|
| 486 | with it electronically. Conversely, any document format
|
|---|
| 487 | that does not discriminate against market actors and that
|
|---|
| 488 | can be implemented across platforms should be encouraged.
|
|---|
| 489 | Likewise, the public sector should avoid any format that
|
|---|
| 490 | does not safeguard equal opportunities to market actors to implement
|
|---|
| 491 | format-processing applications, especially where this might
|
|---|
| 492 | impose product selection on the side of citizens or businesses.
|
|---|
| 493 | In this respect standardisation initiatives will ensure not only a
|
|---|
| 494 | fair and competitive market but will also help safeguard the
|
|---|
| 495 | interoperability of implementing solutions whilst preserving
|
|---|
| 496 | competition and innovation."
|
|---|
| 497 |
|
|---|
| 498 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 499 | Customers, in this case governments, didn’t just accept whatever
|
|---|
| 500 | terms Microsoft gave them.
|
|---|
| 501 | That makes sense; few people just sign a blank check!
|
|---|
| 502 | Instead, they
|
|---|
| 503 | looked at the alternatives, found one that actually met their requirements, and
|
|---|
| 504 | chose that alternative instead.
|
|---|
| 505 | Now governments are starting to
|
|---|
| 506 | formally state their requirements, in terms of industry specifications,
|
|---|
| 507 | so that any supplier meet their needs.
|
|---|
| 508 | Suppliers can now choose to implement the
|
|---|
| 509 | specification and compete on cost, functionality, flexibility, consistency with
|
|---|
| 510 | public policy, and so on... or they can choose to not compete, and
|
|---|
| 511 | automatically lose.
|
|---|
| 512 | In other words, governments can do what governments
|
|---|
| 513 | usually do -- they can set a fair requirement that anyone can meet, clearly
|
|---|
| 514 | justified by their needs, and then use whichever suppliers
|
|---|
| 515 | best meets their requirements (in this case, for an interoperable format).
|
|---|
| 516 | This is not anti-Microsoft; governments have been specifically asking
|
|---|
| 517 | Microsoft for years to co-develop formats anyone can use, and Microsoft
|
|---|
| 518 | can implement the resulting industry standard, OpenDocument.
|
|---|
| 519 |
|
|---|
| 520 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 521 | While the rest of industry doesn’t have the same needs as government,
|
|---|
| 522 | they have to <i>work</i> with governments, so government decisions sometimes
|
|---|
| 523 | have a trickle-down effect.
|
|---|
| 524 | Also, industry also has documents that need to be retrievable in the
|
|---|
| 525 | future, and the certainly want the lower costs and higher quality that
|
|---|
| 526 | tend to come from competition.
|
|---|
| 527 | So, as governments start making and announcing decisions in this direction,
|
|---|
| 528 | it’s reasonable to expect in this specific area that much of industry
|
|---|
| 529 | will follow.
|
|---|
| 530 | It’s true that Massachusetts all by itself cannot change the world, but
|
|---|
| 531 | Massachusetts has the same problems of many large governments, and it’s
|
|---|
| 532 | reasonable to think that if Massachusetts makes this selection, other
|
|---|
| 533 | governments will too.
|
|---|
| 534 |
|
|---|
| 535 | </p><h1>So is OpenDocument any Good?</h1>
|
|---|
| 536 | <p>
|
|---|
| 537 | Is OpenDocument any good?
|
|---|
| 538 | Yes. In short, OpenDocument is a really good specification.
|
|---|
| 539 | <a href="http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050130002908154">
|
|---|
| 540 | The Future Is Open: What OpenDocument Is And Why You Should Care by Daniel Carrera</a> gives some information on the advantages of OpenDocument.
|
|---|
| 541 | <a href="http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/09/24/SmartEC">Tim Bray also makes some interesting comments</a>.
|
|---|
| 542 | <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument">Wikipedia’s OpenDocument article</a> has some interesting information.
|
|---|
| 543 |
|
|---|
| 544 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 545 | You can sometimes learn a lot about something by seeing how it was
|
|---|
| 546 | created, and by who -- and that’s true here.
|
|---|
| 547 | OpenDocument was developed by many office suite developers, including
|
|---|
| 548 | those who develop <a href="http://www.openoffice.org/">OpenOffice.org</a>,
|
|---|
| 549 | StarOffice, KDE’s KOffice, and Word Perfect (Corel).
|
|---|
| 550 | But some major users were involved, too, to make sure that their needs
|
|---|
| 551 | were met.
|
|---|
| 552 | Boeing was there; they have large, complicated documents, so
|
|---|
| 553 | their participation helped make sure that complex documents could be
|
|---|
| 554 | handled well.
|
|---|
| 555 | A Bible translation group also participated; they have lots of complex
|
|---|
| 556 | language needs, including multi-language documents and unusual languages;
|
|---|
| 557 | as a result,
|
|---|
| 558 | OpenDocument generally handles internationalization issues in a stellar way.
|
|---|
| 559 | They also allowed review by the public;
|
|---|
| 560 | I took that opportunity and voluntarily sent in comments, as did others.
|
|---|
| 561 | And they used as a basis an existing XML format (OpenOffice’s);
|
|---|
| 562 | this gave them a big leg up on Microsoft, whose previous XML work for
|
|---|
| 563 | Office documents did not cover key areas (Powerpoint, for example).
|
|---|
| 564 | This is how you get a good specification lasts a long time;
|
|---|
| 565 | you start with pre-existing work, and get many participants with different
|
|---|
| 566 | needs to work out any of its problems.
|
|---|
| 567 |
|
|---|
| 568 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 569 | Contrast OpenDocument with Microsoft’s XML format.
|
|---|
| 570 | Last I saw, perfectly normal office-only documents
|
|---|
| 571 | can contain binary objects that depend on MS Office and
|
|---|
| 572 | Windows (e.g., OLE) and those lack complete documentation.
|
|---|
| 573 | But most importantly, its license essentially disqualifies it.
|
|---|
| 574 |
|
|---|
| 575 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 576 | Though I wasn't on the committee that developed it, during their public
|
|---|
| 577 | comment period I read it myself and sent in a few comments.
|
|---|
| 578 | I was generally pleased with it after I reviewed it;
|
|---|
| 579 | there’s a lot of good to say about it.
|
|---|
| 580 | It’s actually quite clear to read, as these things go.
|
|---|
| 581 | And the careful crafting, and review by many, shows in the result.
|
|---|
| 582 | It's smaller than it might otherwise be, because they reused pre-existing
|
|---|
| 583 | standards instead of rolling their own
|
|---|
| 584 | (which is also a good idea in most cases).
|
|---|
| 585 | Now, OpenDocument isn’t perfect; no human product is.
|
|---|
| 586 | In particular, it underspecifies formulas in spreadsheets.
|
|---|
| 587 | It <i>covers</i> spreadsheets, including formatting, pivot tables, data,
|
|---|
| 588 | and lots of other issues, and gives examples of correct formulas,
|
|---|
| 589 | but doesn’t define in
|
|---|
| 590 | enough rigor the actual format for calculated formulas in spreadsheets.
|
|---|
| 591 | But the problem is underspecification, not that the specification that's there
|
|---|
| 592 | is bad, and for simple spreadsheets the material that's available is
|
|---|
| 593 | enough to get started.
|
|---|
| 594 | I found that to be a weakness, so I voluntarily developed a document called
|
|---|
| 595 | <a href="http://www.dwheeler.com/openformula">OpenFormula</a> to try
|
|---|
| 596 | to address this.
|
|---|
| 597 | In any case, this turns out to be relatively easy to address;
|
|---|
| 598 | it’s certainly easier to address than
|
|---|
| 599 | the mess Microsoft has created for itself.
|
|---|
| 600 | And since there are multiple implementations of OpenDocument today, these
|
|---|
| 601 | sorts of weaknesses have already been identified and are being addressed.
|
|---|
| 602 | In contrast, Microsoft’s constraining licenses have restrained the kind of
|
|---|
| 603 | multi-vendor testing that is needed for good, long-lasting standards.
|
|---|
| 604 |
|
|---|
| 605 |
|
|---|
| 606 | </p><h1>What Can Microsoft Do?</h1>
|
|---|
| 607 |
|
|---|
| 608 | <p>
|
|---|
| 609 | Now Microsoft’s in a minor bind. The world is
|
|---|
| 610 | already switching to OpenDocument, and now that all the other suppliers have
|
|---|
| 611 | invested in OpenDocument and have it working, there’s really no real incentive
|
|---|
| 612 | to use an alternative.
|
|---|
| 613 |
|
|---|
| 614 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 615 | If Microsoft wanted to suddenly get their work
|
|---|
| 616 | standardized now, they would have many problems doing so.
|
|---|
| 617 | Since it wasn’t developed in a large
|
|---|
| 618 | multi-vendor community, it will probably take years to really
|
|---|
| 619 | vet it and fix the inevitable problems that creep in when you work
|
|---|
| 620 | in isolation,
|
|---|
| 621 | years it doesn’t have because
|
|---|
| 622 | OpenDocument is already here and has <i>had</i> those years of experience
|
|---|
| 623 | and vetting.
|
|---|
| 624 | They could hire a bunch of people and do a pretend “independent” analysis
|
|---|
| 625 | by many people all paid by the same vendor, but the results are not likely
|
|---|
| 626 | to result in good work.
|
|---|
| 627 | I doubt Microsoft will even get much interest in the
|
|---|
| 628 | standards community; they already have a standard, so
|
|---|
| 629 | there’s no need to do the work twice.
|
|---|
| 630 | And that assumes Microsoft fixes its
|
|---|
| 631 | licensing problems, which appears unlikely.
|
|---|
| 632 | It can be done, but they’ve delayed entry into the standards process for
|
|---|
| 633 | so long that it’s not clear if anyone cares about standardizing
|
|---|
| 634 | on their format any more.
|
|---|
| 635 | In particular, it’s hard to imagine other office suite vendors being
|
|---|
| 636 | very interested, because they’ve already invested years in a perfectly
|
|---|
| 637 | good standard.
|
|---|
| 638 | Vendors will probably give Microsoft’s XML format a Monty Python-like
|
|---|
| 639 | response --
|
|---|
| 640 | <a href="http://www.redmonk.com/sogrady/archives/000732.html">
|
|---|
| 641 | “It’s very nice-a, but we already got one.”</a>
|
|---|
| 642 | And without participation from multiple vendors who <i>implement</i>
|
|---|
| 643 | office suites, the standardization would just be viewed (correctly)
|
|---|
| 644 | as a sham.
|
|---|
| 645 |
|
|---|
| 646 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 647 | Microsoft can go ahead and use only
|
|---|
| 648 | Microsoft XML, but since nobody else can read it (including many
|
|---|
| 649 | current deployments of Office), and people are standardizing
|
|---|
| 650 | on OpenDocument instead, customers may find that they just don’t want
|
|---|
| 651 | the latest version of Office unless Microsoft hurries up and
|
|---|
| 652 | implements the standard.
|
|---|
| 653 | Strong pressure might cause abandonment of the latest version of
|
|---|
| 654 | Microsoft Office, intead of getting people to switch to the product.
|
|---|
| 655 |
|
|---|
| 656 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 657 | One major use for Microsoft’s XML format might be as a starting point
|
|---|
| 658 | for a separate program that converts their format into OpenDocument.
|
|---|
| 659 | If an office suite built that in, but uses licenses like the GPL that
|
|---|
| 660 | Microsoft disapproves of, then Microsoft could exploit that
|
|---|
| 661 | through its license and shut the office suite down.
|
|---|
| 662 | But if it’s a separate program, it’s not clear what Microsoft would do.
|
|---|
| 663 | They could shut down the converter, but that wouldn’t stop competitors, and
|
|---|
| 664 | it would expose their licensing conditions as anti-competitive without
|
|---|
| 665 | actually harming the office suite suppliers.
|
|---|
| 666 | (Exposing conditions as anti-competitive makes sense from a business
|
|---|
| 667 | perspective if you can drive your competitors out of business before the law
|
|---|
| 668 | can do anything, but it makes no sense if it only exposes you to liability
|
|---|
| 669 | without harming your competitors.)
|
|---|
| 670 | If they do not shut down the converter, it could help people to
|
|---|
| 671 | move away from Office even more rapidly.
|
|---|
| 672 |
|
|---|
| 673 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 674 | I feel really sorry for people like
|
|---|
| 675 | <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/">Microsoft’s Brian Jones</a>;
|
|---|
| 676 | they’ve poured part of their lives into getting an XML format into
|
|---|
| 677 | Microsoft Office, and tried to get it at least partly open.
|
|---|
| 678 | Yet Microsoft’s decision-makers appear to have
|
|---|
| 679 | shot themselves in the foot.
|
|---|
| 680 | I doubt very much that people like Brian Jones made the legal decisions that
|
|---|
| 681 | appear to have made Microsoft XML lose; he does not deserve
|
|---|
| 682 | condemnation for those decisions.
|
|---|
| 683 |
|
|---|
| 684 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 685 | But really, this needn’t hurt Microsoft at all.
|
|---|
| 686 | Anyone can implement OpenDocument, so Microsoft
|
|---|
| 687 | can easily add code to Microsoft Office so that
|
|---|
| 688 | they fully support OpenDocument too.
|
|---|
| 689 | It’s easy, but will they swallow their pride enough to make their
|
|---|
| 690 | customers happy? I hope so.
|
|---|
| 691 | Someone will do it; OpenOffice.org itself could be
|
|---|
| 692 | used as a filter, if nothing else.
|
|---|
| 693 | There are XML-to-XML tools (like XSLT) that should make it easy to do.
|
|---|
| 694 | I suspect if Microsoft added good OpenDocument interfaces to
|
|---|
| 695 | Office, a lot of people would buy it.
|
|---|
| 696 | On the other hand, if people end up having
|
|---|
| 697 | to use OpenOffice.org as a plug-in to use Microsoft Office, they may soon start
|
|---|
| 698 | asking why they need Microsoft Office.
|
|---|
| 699 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 700 | Microsoft can choose to do what it likes, but so can customers.
|
|---|
| 701 | Customers want a completely open standard, and Microsoft has chosen
|
|---|
| 702 | to not meet their customers’ requirements. If Microsoft continues
|
|---|
| 703 | to do so, then
|
|---|
| 704 | Microsoft should expect to lose its customers; that’s how
|
|---|
| 705 | the market works.
|
|---|
| 706 | They can’t claim ignorance that their customers
|
|---|
| 707 | want fully open standards;
|
|---|
| 708 | governments have been asking for them for decades.
|
|---|
| 709 | They know the rules, they just chose to ignore them.
|
|---|
| 710 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 711 |
|
|---|
| 712 | </p><h1>But this Can’t Happen!</h1>
|
|---|
| 713 | <p>
|
|---|
| 714 | Actually, it can. A market leader can find that it’s failed to
|
|---|
| 715 | listen to its customers, and then either meet its customers’ needs or
|
|---|
| 716 | lose the market.
|
|---|
| 717 | It’s happened many times before.
|
|---|
| 718 | Microsoft decided to ignore the standards in this case, and so they’ll have to
|
|---|
| 719 | play catch-up if they want to compete.
|
|---|
| 720 | But they can do it, if they choose to, and they can harmed, if they
|
|---|
| 721 | ignore their customers.
|
|---|
| 722 | History even gives us some ready examples, so let’s look at them.
|
|---|
| 723 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 724 | In the late 1980s
|
|---|
| 725 | through 1995, Microsoft refused to accept the Internet TCP/IP (and later web)
|
|---|
| 726 | standards, and tried to get everyone to use Microsoft’s proprietary networking
|
|---|
| 727 | standards instead.
|
|---|
| 728 | Even though everyone used Microsoft clients, the market rejected
|
|---|
| 729 | Microsoft’s networking standards, and chose plug-ins or switched away from
|
|---|
| 730 | Microsoft.
|
|---|
| 731 | Microsoft suddenly realized that its customers were leaving, and that
|
|---|
| 732 | they were about to be completely sidelined. Around 1995 Gates commanded his
|
|---|
| 733 | troops to do an about-face and rush to get TCP/IP and the WWW far better
|
|---|
| 734 | supported. It wasn’t pretty at the time, but in fairly short order they got at
|
|---|
| 735 | least some things working to remain competitive.
|
|---|
| 736 | Microsoft has been powerful for
|
|---|
| 737 | a long time, but not omnipotent; when the market moves toward important
|
|---|
| 738 | interoperability standards, Microsoft usually manages to support them
|
|---|
| 739 | eventually, even if Microsoft had been trying to sell an alternative.
|
|---|
| 740 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 741 | In fact, market leaders in this <i>particular</i>
|
|---|
| 742 | market niche have been overrun before.
|
|---|
| 743 | WordStar, Word Perfect, VisiCalc, Lotus 1-2-3, and dBase were all
|
|---|
| 744 | market-dominating office software at one time, supported by companies who
|
|---|
| 745 | had great incentive to stay as market leader.
|
|---|
| 746 | Each one lost because they ignored their customers, through problems such
|
|---|
| 747 | as ignoring the transition to 16-bit computing, to graphical user interfaces,
|
|---|
| 748 | or the need for reliability.
|
|---|
| 749 | Customers want to transition to a standard XML format
|
|---|
| 750 | for office data that <i>anyone</i> can implement,
|
|---|
| 751 | and are getting serious about it.
|
|---|
| 752 | They are even more serious now, because this is a side-effect of massive
|
|---|
| 753 | networking: with massive networking, everyone needs to be able to take
|
|---|
| 754 | and extract different snippets of data, in novel ways, so they need a format
|
|---|
| 755 | that is general enough to support it.
|
|---|
| 756 | Microsoft hasn’t taken that seriously enough.
|
|---|
| 757 |
|
|---|
| 758 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 759 | Obviously, having a lock on the current market is no guarantee of the future.
|
|---|
| 760 | David Halberstam’s book “The Reckoning” gives another example from
|
|---|
| 761 | carmaking:
|
|---|
| 762 | “The US Big Three automakers thought that they could dictate what their
|
|---|
| 763 | ‘captive’ market could buy, but the US public proved that assumption
|
|---|
| 764 | to be false, in the mid seventies. The only survivors from that era of heavy,
|
|---|
| 765 | rear wheel drive land yachts (albeit in much reduced and much improved forms)
|
|---|
| 766 | were the Ford Crown Victoria/ Mercury Grand Marquis and the Lincoln Town Car.
|
|---|
| 767 | Every other passenger vehicle is some variation of the K-car.”
|
|---|
| 768 | <!-- http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=20050911201041458&title=You+guys+are+pretty+optimistic&type=article&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=357707#c357727 -->
|
|---|
| 769 |
|
|---|
| 770 |
|
|---|
| 771 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 772 | Can a group of suppliers overtake a big company? Sure.
|
|---|
| 773 | Look at the videotape standards war of
|
|---|
| 774 | VHS vs. Sony Betamax in the 1980’s.
|
|---|
| 775 | Sony was a big company, trying to control
|
|---|
| 776 | an industry through a format it created.
|
|---|
| 777 | But the rest of the industry chose VHS, which allowed many different
|
|---|
| 778 | suppliers (Sony tightly controlled who could implement Betamax, while
|
|---|
| 779 | the VHS specification was far more open to implementation by others).
|
|---|
| 780 | The group of VHS suppliers quickly competed with each other, while staying
|
|---|
| 781 | true to the standard, customers preferred formats where there were
|
|---|
| 782 | competing vendors, and as a group the VHS vendors demolished Betamax’s
|
|---|
| 783 | market share.
|
|---|
| 784 | There’s even a slang term based on this; “to betamax”
|
|---|
| 785 | means “to deploy a proprietary technology format
|
|---|
| 786 | that gets overwhelmed in the market by a format that allows
|
|---|
| 787 | multiple competing manufacturers”.
|
|---|
| 788 | There’s more to that story, of course, but my point is that being big
|
|---|
| 789 | does not mean every product you make is accepted in the market.
|
|---|
| 790 | The fact that there’s a slang term tells you something else:
|
|---|
| 791 | occasionally suppliers try this stunt.
|
|---|
| 792 | Large companies are often lured (by greed) into trying to completely
|
|---|
| 793 | control a market and their customers via a proprietary format.
|
|---|
| 794 | Often competitors (who fear being driven out of business) then
|
|---|
| 795 | band together with customers (who fear having a sole supplier)
|
|---|
| 796 | to develop and promote a standard that is not as proprietary.
|
|---|
| 797 | Eventually the broadly-created standards tend to win, because
|
|---|
| 798 | customers make the final decisions, and few customers want to be
|
|---|
| 799 | controlled by a single vendor.
|
|---|
| 800 | Having broad input into the standard’s development also helps make sure
|
|---|
| 801 | that all important needs were addressed.
|
|---|
| 802 | Microsoft is betamaxing in this case,
|
|---|
| 803 | and that’s too bad.
|
|---|
| 804 |
|
|---|
| 805 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 806 | Microsoft even freely admits that customers do not want to be locked
|
|---|
| 807 | into a single supplier for their office documents.
|
|---|
| 808 | The problem is that Microsoft has been repeatedly claiming that
|
|---|
| 809 | their format meets this requirement.
|
|---|
| 810 | No independent evaluator believes Microsoft has met this requirement,
|
|---|
| 811 | and in fact, several published reports have explained exactly why
|
|---|
| 812 | Microsoft has not met this minimum bar.
|
|---|
| 813 |
|
|---|
| 814 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 815 | Do official standards always win in the market?
|
|---|
| 816 | Of course not!
|
|---|
| 817 | Many standards have failed in the past because they didn’t have any
|
|---|
| 818 | implementations, their implementations were poor, or because the
|
|---|
| 819 | implementations were far more expensive than their competitors.
|
|---|
| 820 | But no one pretends that any of these cases are true.
|
|---|
| 821 | Even
|
|---|
| 822 | <a href="http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/789019/000119312505174825/d10k.htm#tx69164_3">Microsoft’s Form 10-K report ending June 2005
|
|---|
| 823 | admits that OpenOffice.org’s competition</a>, in particular, is now a risk
|
|---|
| 824 | factor for them.
|
|---|
| 825 | The main reason standards don’t win are not in evidence here.
|
|---|
| 826 | But the
|
|---|
| 827 | typical reasons for a market leader to fail are in full bloom, namely,
|
|---|
| 828 | failing to meet
|
|---|
| 829 | critical customer requirements and pushing a proprietary format against
|
|---|
| 830 | an open standard widely supported by competitors and embraced by users.
|
|---|
| 831 |
|
|---|
| 832 | <!--
|
|---|
| 833 | VHS beat Betamax, and the Internet TCP/IP protocols beat
|
|---|
| 834 | Microsoft's networking protocols, given the same circumstances.
|
|---|
| 835 | -->
|
|---|
| 836 |
|
|---|
| 837 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 838 | There’s no doubt that this will cost money.
|
|---|
| 839 | Any transition -- even a minor transition to a new version of the same
|
|---|
| 840 | product -- costs money.
|
|---|
| 841 | But these are one-time costs, whereas staying where they are will cause
|
|---|
| 842 | more data loss, and by telling everyone <i>now</i> where they are going they
|
|---|
| 843 | can get everyone moving in the same direction (with more lead time,
|
|---|
| 844 | the risks and costs go down).
|
|---|
| 845 | Saugus, Massachusetts’ website
|
|---|
| 846 | <a href="http://www.saugus.net/Dailies/daily_2005-09-01_1653/">
|
|---|
| 847 | Saugus.net</a>
|
|---|
| 848 | suggests this transition may not be as difficult as some fear:
|
|---|
| 849 | “It won’t affect most of the bigger Saugus web sites at all
|
|---|
| 850 | (as Saugus.net has been supporting open formats generally since 1998
|
|---|
| 851 | when the Saugus By-Laws were first made available, and newer Saugus School
|
|---|
| 852 | sites like the TAHG project site are already building in support, too).”
|
|---|
| 853 | Certainly this rollout will require planning, as with any IT policy, but
|
|---|
| 854 | that’s why people get hired to manage IT infrastructures.
|
|---|
| 855 |
|
|---|
| 856 |
|
|---|
| 857 | </p><h1>Bottom Line</h1>
|
|---|
| 858 |
|
|---|
| 859 | <p>
|
|---|
| 860 | At this time it appears that OpenDocument is the wisest and
|
|---|
| 861 | lowest-risk long-term decision, even though at first blush it
|
|---|
| 862 | seems surprising.
|
|---|
| 863 | Any market leader has lots of advantages, but it appears that
|
|---|
| 864 | Microsoft has far overplayed its hand here.
|
|---|
| 865 |
|
|---|
| 866 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 867 | The old Microsoft Office format is unspecified and will cause
|
|---|
| 868 | continuing data loss, and it fails to take advantage of XML technology.
|
|---|
| 869 | Even Microsoft is abandoning it. Microsoft’s XML format will
|
|---|
| 870 | prevent instead of help
|
|---|
| 871 | interoperability; it simply fails to meet typical government requirements,
|
|---|
| 872 | since its restrictive license prevents real competition and it
|
|---|
| 873 | failed to enter the standardization process (as requested by Europe and others).
|
|---|
| 874 | People will try to do what’s easy, but only if actually meets their
|
|---|
| 875 | requirements.
|
|---|
| 876 |
|
|---|
| 877 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 878 | By announcing their goal early, governments like
|
|---|
| 879 | Massachusetts make it easier to achieve them, because that gives people time to
|
|---|
| 880 | plan that transition, and suppliers more time to implement
|
|---|
| 881 | the requirement. It appears that many other governments (including
|
|---|
| 882 | European governments) are coming to
|
|---|
| 883 | the same conclusion, for all the same reasons.
|
|---|
| 884 | Massachusetts has not rejected Microsoft Office, the program; they’ve
|
|---|
| 885 | simply rejected Microsoft’s new XML format, and chosen the
|
|---|
| 886 | international standard instead.
|
|---|
| 887 | Even if Massachusetts backed down (always a possibility, especially since
|
|---|
| 888 | sometimes technical decisions get trumped by good ol’ boy networks), this
|
|---|
| 889 | certainly suggests that other organizations will do the same.
|
|---|
| 890 | In fact, this can’t help but move the eye to another battleground: Europe.
|
|---|
| 891 |
|
|---|
| 892 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 893 | <a href="http://europa.eu.int/idabc/en/document/2592/5588">In 2004
|
|---|
| 894 | Europe made its desires quite clear</a>. In particular,
|
|---|
| 895 | they told Microsoft to consider “the merits of submitting XML formats
|
|---|
| 896 | to an international standards body of their choice”
|
|---|
| 897 | and issue “a public commitment to publish and provide
|
|---|
| 898 | non-discriminatory access to future versions
|
|---|
| 899 | of its WordML specifications”.
|
|---|
| 900 | Europe also stated that where
|
|---|
| 901 | “only a single revisable document format can be used, this
|
|---|
| 902 | should be for a format around which there is industry consensus,
|
|---|
| 903 | as demonstrated by the format’s adoption as a standard.”
|
|---|
| 904 | Microsoft failed to take the hint, by avoiding standards and failing to
|
|---|
| 905 | provide non-discriminatory action.
|
|---|
| 906 | Microsoft could try to rush in at the last minute and catch up,
|
|---|
| 907 | or customers could decide that they don’t need their requirements;
|
|---|
| 908 | but every day that seems more doubtful.
|
|---|
| 909 | Governments and now doing just what they said they’d do... they’re
|
|---|
| 910 | choosing the standard, based on what meets their need.
|
|---|
| 911 |
|
|---|
| 912 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 913 | I’m no Microsoft-basher, I even have friends there,
|
|---|
| 914 | and I’ll freely praise good decisions they make.
|
|---|
| 915 | But in this particular
|
|---|
| 916 | case, I think they’ve made some poor decisions, and
|
|---|
| 917 | the result was fairly predictable.
|
|---|
| 918 | Predicting is hard, especially about the future (so it’s said), and
|
|---|
| 919 | this certainly isn’t as certain as the sun’s rising.
|
|---|
| 920 | But things sure don’t look good for
|
|---|
| 921 | Microsoft’s proprietary XML format right now.
|
|---|
| 922 | Tacking the word “open” into the name doesn’t make it open,
|
|---|
| 923 | and ’royalty-free but not to all my competitors‘ is
|
|---|
| 924 | simply not acceptable to people nowadays.
|
|---|
| 925 | Even the Microsoft’s old binary office
|
|---|
| 926 | formats didn’t have those kinds of onerous limitations!
|
|---|
| 927 |
|
|---|
| 928 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 929 | I’m sure that there will be people who use Microsoft’s new format.
|
|---|
| 930 | That’s not my point.
|
|---|
| 931 | My point is that it’s clear that Microsoft’s format is unlikely to
|
|---|
| 932 | dominate the future of office formats in the same way that their old
|
|---|
| 933 | binary formats did, unless something dramatic happens.
|
|---|
| 934 | The old binary formats for Word, Excel, etc., have become so common that
|
|---|
| 935 | essentially <i>every</i> office suite must be able to read and write them.
|
|---|
| 936 | But this ubiquity, without a specification and based on limited
|
|---|
| 937 | binary formats, has become problematic.
|
|---|
| 938 | These old formats are essentially unspecified, hard to process, and
|
|---|
| 939 | depend far too much on low-level arbitrary structures of old versions
|
|---|
| 940 | of Microsoft Office. Even Microsoft’s latest versions of Office
|
|---|
| 941 | often fail to read this format, and as they update their programs, older
|
|---|
| 942 | documents are increasingly likely to become unreadable.
|
|---|
| 943 | Since even Microsoft can’t manage to read the older versions of the format,
|
|---|
| 944 | reliably, there’s clearly a fundamental flaw in the format.
|
|---|
| 945 | Which is why there’s a need for a standard XML format.
|
|---|
| 946 |
|
|---|
| 947 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 948 | <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=1812">David Berlind of ZDNet has
|
|---|
| 949 | a suspicion similar to mine:</a>
|
|---|
| 950 | “My hunch is that there are plenty of government agencies,
|
|---|
| 951 | both domestic and foreign watching this one and that,
|
|---|
| 952 | in this game of chicken, Microsoft will not win.”
|
|---|
| 953 |
|
|---|
| 954 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 955 | This won’t be hard for Microsoft to deal with, technically; they
|
|---|
| 956 | can just add the code to support OpenDocument.
|
|---|
| 957 | They already support RTF, ASCII, HTML, Word Perfect, and lots of
|
|---|
| 958 | other formats.
|
|---|
| 959 | The real question is, can Microsoft swallow its pride to meet user needs...
|
|---|
| 960 | or are they willing to risk their entire company in the hopes that
|
|---|
| 961 | users don’t care about their own requirements?
|
|---|
| 962 | Hopefully cooler heads will prevail, and Microsoft will simply
|
|---|
| 963 | implement the only international standard.
|
|---|
| 964 | It’s only one format, after all.
|
|---|
| 965 |
|
|---|
| 966 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 967 | No doubt Microsoft will press on for a little while, and try to make
|
|---|
| 968 | it so that “everyone accepts both”.
|
|---|
| 969 | Except that everyone can’t accept both,
|
|---|
| 970 | because their licensing still forbids it.
|
|---|
| 971 | It really doesn’t make sense to have two formats for the same thing
|
|---|
| 972 | anyway.
|
|---|
| 973 | And if there can be only one format, customers want anyone to be able to
|
|---|
| 974 | compete using that format, without any restrictions.
|
|---|
| 975 |
|
|---|
| 976 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 977 | There’s no use in Microsoft
|
|---|
| 978 | complaining that their proprietary format wasn’t chosen.
|
|---|
| 979 | <a href="http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020390,39216391,00.htm">
|
|---|
| 980 | Microsoft claims that OpenDocument is specific to OpenOffice 2.0</a>,
|
|---|
| 981 | but that’s rediculous. <i>Many</i> programs implement OpenDocument,
|
|---|
| 982 | in fact, KOffice was first.
|
|---|
| 983 | In contrast, only one company currently implements
|
|---|
| 984 | Microsoft’ format.
|
|---|
| 985 | Besides, there seems to be universal agreement that
|
|---|
| 986 | Microsoft’ format is specific to Microsoft, and Microsoft made
|
|---|
| 987 | all decisions about the format.
|
|---|
| 988 | The accusation appears far more appropriate to be raised against Microsoft XML.
|
|---|
| 989 | Microsoft was told that
|
|---|
| 990 | what users wanted was an internationally-standardized format usable by all,
|
|---|
| 991 | without restriction.
|
|---|
| 992 | For <i>years</i> they were told that.
|
|---|
| 993 | Yet Microsoft was unwilling to provide what their customers demanded.
|
|---|
| 994 | Now other (hungrier) suppliers have stepped up to meet the customer needs,
|
|---|
| 995 | and the rest of the suppliers risk losing the market to the suppliers
|
|---|
| 996 | who <i>do</i> want to meet customer needs.
|
|---|
| 997 | That’s how the market works.
|
|---|
| 998 |
|
|---|
| 999 |
|
|---|
| 1000 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 1001 | </p><hr>
|
|---|
| 1002 | <p>
|
|---|
| 1003 | More information is available in articles such as
|
|---|
| 1004 | <a href="http://comment.zdnet.co.uk/other/0,39020682,39216101,00.htm">
|
|---|
| 1005 | ZDNet's "Microsoft must drop its Office politics"</a>,
|
|---|
| 1006 | <a href="http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/09/10/Mass-Opposition">
|
|---|
| 1007 | Tim Bray's Massachusetts Back-Room</a>,
|
|---|
| 1008 | <a href="http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1829728,00.asp">
|
|---|
| 1009 | “Open XML Incompatible With GPL” by Peter Galli</a> (June 20, 2005, eWeek),
|
|---|
| 1010 | and
|
|---|
| 1011 | <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/webmink?entry=a_study_in_framing">A
|
|---|
| 1012 | Study in Framing</a>.
|
|---|
| 1013 | Broader information is available in
|
|---|
| 1014 | <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Document">Wikipedia’s article
|
|---|
| 1015 | on OpenDocument</a>.
|
|---|
| 1016 | <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=170700325">According to Paula Rooney of Information Week</a>,
|
|---|
| 1017 | this should have been no surprise:
|
|---|
| 1018 | “The state and software company have locked horns on this issue
|
|---|
| 1019 | for more than two years”;
|
|---|
| 1020 | in January 2005 Microsoft said it would ease licensing restrictions, but
|
|---|
| 1021 | although they made a few tweaks, they
|
|---|
| 1022 | never changed the license so all competitors could use their format.
|
|---|
| 1023 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 1024 | <a href="http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1857298,00.asp">Jason Brooks’
|
|---|
| 1025 | article Masachusetts vs. Microsoft? (eWeek, Sep 9, 2005)</a>
|
|---|
| 1026 | opines that Massachusetts’ “Plan to move toward open formats
|
|---|
| 1027 | isn’t foolhardy if the state thinks it can better serve taxpayers
|
|---|
| 1028 | by escaping proprietary lock.”
|
|---|
| 1029 | His piece makes similar points to mine:
|
|---|
| 1030 | “I don’t blame Microsoft for doing what it believes is best for its
|
|---|
| 1031 | business -- but let’s not blame Massachusetts policy makers for doing
|
|---|
| 1032 | what they believe is best for their state, either...
|
|---|
| 1033 | Massachusetts has chosen to shift its default file formats
|
|---|
| 1034 | to those for which any developer or firm has an equal chance of
|
|---|
| 1035 | building an equally good application to create and consume these documents,
|
|---|
| 1036 | thereby ensuring choice and flexibility for itself and for its residents.
|
|---|
| 1037 | Where’s the controversy or zealotry here?”
|
|---|
| 1038 | Some discussion about recent Microsoft missteps (more generally) are noted
|
|---|
| 1039 | <a href="http://www.crn.com/sections/software/software.jhtml?articleId=170703809">in this CRN article</a>;
|
|---|
| 1040 | hopefully they can get it together and deliver to their customers what
|
|---|
| 1041 | the customers are asking for.
|
|---|
| 1042 |
|
|---|
| 1043 |
|
|---|
| 1044 |
|
|---|
| 1045 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 1046 | Feel free to see my home page at
|
|---|
| 1047 | <a href="http://www.dwheeler.com/">http://www.dwheeler.com</a>.
|
|---|
| 1048 | You may also want to look at my paper
|
|---|
| 1049 | <a href="http://www.dwheeler.com/sloc"><i>More than a Gigabuck: Estimating
|
|---|
| 1050 | GNU/Linux’s Size</i></a>,
|
|---|
| 1051 | my article
|
|---|
| 1052 | <a href="http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html">Why OSS/FS? Look at
|
|---|
| 1053 | the Numbers!</a>, and my papers and book on
|
|---|
| 1054 | <a href="http://www.dwheeler.com/secure-programs">how to develop
|
|---|
| 1055 | secure programs</a>.
|
|---|
| 1056 |
|
|---|
| 1057 | </p><p>
|
|---|
| 1058 | (C) Copyright 2005 David A. Wheeler. All rights reserved.
|
|---|
| 1059 | Some of this material was posted
|
|---|
| 1060 | earlier in <a href="http://www.groklaw.net/">Groklaw</a>.
|
|---|
| 1061 |
|
|---|
| 1062 | </p></body></html>
|
|---|
![(please configure the [header_logo] section in trac.ini)](/project/gtp/chrome/site/your_project_logo.png){kind=logo}
