Microsoft, Standards, and Incompatibility: 1991-2010 -- And a Novell Smoking Gun:

[handy]

If you don't like depressing news for your holiday, then don't read this:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20101219121621828

[inobe]

wth was that :-k

[theasprint]

That's a lot to read. (Looks like some Wikileaks or something similar)

Well, its about business tricks I say, but if you would want to criticize Microsoft, then you would need to be some big shot or something.

[handy]

wth was that :-k

Groklaw presented a quick overview of the picture that we are mostly all familiar with re. MS & its inherent vehemently anti-competition nature.

The article turns & focuses in on the more current situation where MS have been paying Novel to help them corrupt the open standard of .xml.

Groklaw draws the comparison which shows that the entire strategy being used by MS with Novel, against .xml, is extremely similar to the tactics that MS used successfully against IBM's OS2, all those years ago.

As many of us had feared, MS & Novel have been up to no good. Which is all pretty sad really.

[handy]

That's a lot to read. (Looks like some Wikileaks or something similar)

Well, its about business tricks I say, but if you would want to criticize Microsoft, then you would need to be some big shot or something.

Groklaw is all about using legal knowledge to interpret what the hell all of these corporations are up to & spitting it out for the layperson to read.

Just because it is for the layperson, doesn't mean that it is always easy to read.

[treesurf]

In short:


Novell has been at work since March to make Novell's version of OpenOffice.org interoperate, sort of, but as you will see not completely with Microsoft Office 2010 so that it would at least look like Open XML works and that somebody is implementing it.

[grahammechanical]

I have read some of the linked article but not all of it. It is too long. As I was reading I was thinking: If Novell is making its version of Open Office have better interoperability with Microsoft Office and if Novell Open Office is licensed under the GPL, then surely all the fixes to get the interoperability must be made available to the open source community. Michael Meeks of Novell is quoted as making a similar point. The test would be if Novell were to make this information or knowledge freely available.

I am not disagreeing with the opinions of the author and I have little trust in the directors and executives of companies. I am not siding with them or supporting them. I have known for a long time that Microsoft, like other companies, would be interested in me if I was the owner or representative of a big company but that it has no interest in me because I am a single individual and therefore they can make little or no profit from me. After all, it is "the American way" to establish a monopoly and become filthy rich in the process.

This is why I now use Linux and only Linux.

Regards.

[3Miro]

The most ridiculous thing about MS is that while they like to make their own standards, they cannot follow them. Look at MS office for Mac and Windows, they are not fully compatible in fonts/alignment and so on. Basically MS will make a their own version of XML, but I don't think we will see a fully compatible Office package for Linux.

[zekopeko]

Groklaw presented a quick overview of the picture that we are mostly all familiar with re. MS & its inherent vehemently anti-competition nature.

The article turns & focuses in on the more current situation where MS have been paying Novel to help them corrupt the open standard of .xml.

Groklaw draws the comparison which shows that the entire strategy being used by MS with Novel, against .xml, is extremely similar to the tactics that MS used successfully against IBM's OS2, all those years ago.

As many of us had feared, MS & Novel have been up to no good. Which is all pretty sad really.

Groklaw is biased as much as Microsoft PR is. I don't like the amount of pure ideological zealotry that outright distorts fact simply to push their view on Microsoft. Not to mention outright censorships in the comments that is targeted at silencing opposing views and facts. Or the occasional sliminess in the article.

An example of the amount of bias should be evident if you read this part:


Incidentally, here's the memo's author, still at Microsoft, working on interoperability, natch. Krawczak is now Microsoft’s group program manager for Outlook, as I mentioned, and look what he's been involved in:

Microsoft has released a set of open-source software tools and technical documentation designed to enhance the interoperability and flexibility of Outlook data. Specifically, the material facilitates the portability of data in .pst files, allowing government and commercial users more flexibility in storing, sharing and manipulating information created in Microsoft Outlook. (There is more here but I cut it out for the sake of brevity)

Do I even need to translate that for you? Microsoft might not change, but the world sure did. [B]By "open source" Microsoft means under its own licenses, which OSI was foolish enough to approve, thus enabling Microsoft to play the games it does. Yo, community. Wake up. To be fair, they'd play them anyway, but why help them?

Now if you go and google for "microsoft open source pst" you get this blog post:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/interoperability/archive/2010/05/24/two-open-source-projects-to-facilitate-interoperability-with-outlook-pst-data-files.aspx

And if you follow the links to the projects you see that they are licensed under Apache 2 license, a Free Software license. Hardly Microsoft's own "evil" FOSS license (their own license that is most used is Ms-PL a fully Free Software license recognized as such by the FSF).

Another thing is the author is ignoring the response from Microsoft in regard to Mr. Browns criticism of Office 2010 not supporting OOXML Strict. Here is a nice article from arstehnica about it: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/04/microsoft-office-15not-2010to-be-fully-ooxml-compliant.ars

The gist of the matter is that Microsoft didn't default to OOXML Strict in Office 2010 because it was too late in their product cycle and the ISO OOXML spec got some major additions. Office 2010 does have preliminary read-only support for OOXML Strict but no write support. Read/Write support by default is promised for Office 15 aka Office 2013/2014.

If people actually want a more balanced view then you need to read the blog posts from Michael Meek (one of the main guy behind the Document Foundation) and Miguel de Icaza on the matter.

Here they are:

http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2010-12-21.html
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2010/Dec-21.html

[MisterGaribaldi]

About the only zealotry I'm regularly guilty of myself is believing that one must do the right things for the right reason, not just the convenient reason or some careless reason.

All that being said, zekopeko, even though you're sort of right about Groklaw, someone's gotta keep their eyes on what Microsoft's up to and who they're partnering with. At the end of the day, I trust them about as much as I trust a snake.

[psusi]

The most ridiculous thing about MS is that while they like to make their own standards, they cannot follow them. Look at MS office for Mac and Windows, they are not fully compatible in fonts/alignment and so on. Basically MS will make a their own version of XML, but I don't think we will see a fully compatible Office package for Linux.

Yes, for years they have been publishing software user interface standards that third party software is required to get the "made for windows" logo, then violating those very requirements in their own software.

Also, it isn't XML, it is OOXML, or .docx files.

To summarize the article: MS submitted their format for standardization and it was rejected. They tried again, this time promising to phase out the objectionable parts over time, and truly implement the standard. Because of this promise it was ratified as a standard, yet they continue to use proprietary extensions that were rejected, making it impossible for a truly standard compliant program to use .docx files saved by MS Word. At the same time they hired Novell to make their version of openoffice work better with MS .docx format, but still not 100% compatible. That way they can claim that the "standard" is working and being used, and at the same time, tell their customers that openoffice is not 100% compatible so they need to buy MS Word. At the same time, some of what Novell has added to OO.o is encumbered by MS patents, inserting a trojan horse that MS can use to sue anyone else who tries to distribute OO.o or use a version not distributed by Novell.

[koenn]

I have read some of the linked article but not all of it. It is too long. As I was reading I was thinking: If Novell is making its version of Open Office have better interoperability with Microsoft Office and if Novell Open Office is licensed under the GPL, then surely all the fixes to get the interoperability must be made available to the open source community.
There is, under the GPL (and most similar licenses), no obligation to make source code publicly availabele. Source code has to made available to the people you distribute binaries to.

Apart from that, things get more complicated if you factor in patents. Microsoft may or may not hold patents on some of the technology you need to implement OOXML and/or compatibility with, Office 2010. Novell has a patent agreement with Microsoft, so they can do that.
But anyone who would re-use Novell's code, might be infringing on MS patents. That's usually not a good idea.
The whole patent issue is probably more complex than that and IANAL, but my guess is most developers would prefer to stay away from it rather that using code that may be booby-trapped

[betrunkenaffe]

The gist of the matter is that Microsoft didn't default to OOXML Strict in Office 2010 because it was too late in their product cycle and the ISO OOXML spec got some major additions. Office 2010 does have preliminary read-only support for OOXML Strict but no write support. Read/Write support by default is promised for Office 15 aka Office 2013/2014.

So what you are saying is that the development of Office 2010 was too far in development 2 years ago to be able to implement something as simple as read/write functionality for a file format?

Even given that at face value, it's not rocket science to update your product to add write functionality for the strict format post release and change the default from transitional to strict.

To me, that doesn't ring with a word of truth and instead seems like they want read functionality to claim interoperability with other programs but disable it for the other programs. We'll see if Microsoft actually bothers to update 2010 as I described, if they do before 2012 then I will agree with your "balanced" view.

[gnomeuser]

Based on conjecture from a two decade old memo. Do I need to introduce evidence that Microsoft has grown as an Open Source community member. They even got licenses approved by the OSI, donated and released code. 1991 Microsoft was vastly different and back then Linux was but a blip on the radar, the whole world has moved on.

It's nothing more than I could expect given the source and it's known biases and style.

The feebly weak desperate attempt to paint a valuable contribution from a growing partnership with our community member Microsoft as being "the end of the world".

Microsoft are undeniably doing much better at working in the open and by our terms than ever before and they have been improving rapidly. Yet you keep hearing the distantly irrelevant whisper of an overtly biased ill informed yet loud minority.

[koenn]

@gnomeuser

the point of that Groklaw article is actually to show that, despite some superficial embrace of open source, Microsoft hasn't changed all that much in those 2 decades (and that's where the 20 yrs old memo comes in). Did you miss that ?

OK, Groklaw has quite a bit of FSF rhetoric and sympathy - and bias, no doubt, but your views on Microsoft seem remarkably sympathetic - or naive.


yes, MS has contributed code. They contributed kernel code, but their alternative was to compete against VMWare with a hypervisor that doesn't support Linux as guest OS. Tough choice.

yes, they have some initiatives that almost sound like they're into FOSS, and even 1 license that is accepted by OSI. That whole initiative smells like a clever combination of window dressing, embrace, extend, ... tactics, and creating confusion about what open source actually is ("if i get to see source code, it's open source, right ?" )


Microsoft a member of the community ? I don't think so. FOSS community is not just about source code, it's also about shared values. I don't think Microsoft qualifies. Maybe in another 10 or 20 years;



So, there, let the flaming and bashing begin and kill this thread.

[gnomeuser]

@gnomeuser

the point of that Groklaw article is actually to show that, despite some superficial embrace of open source, Microsoft hasn't changed all that much in those 2 decades (and that's where the 20 yrs old memo comes in). Did you miss that ?


I read the analysis and found it generally poor, vague and clearly biased. The fact that it is rooted in a 20 year long perfect conspiracy to kill an at the time complete non-competitor.. it just gives it that Robert Ludlum vibe which you have to admit is kinda retro-cool.



OK, Groklaw has quite a bit of FSF rhetoric and sympathy - and bias, no doubt, but your views on Microsoft seem remarkably sympathetic - or naive.


My views are well published, posts here and in my blog. Go nuts. They are however not related to the argument at hand, namely willfully misrepresenting decades old material to further an agenda.

As is Groklaw's history of being anti-Mono, Anti-OOXML and generally anti-Novell. Contrary to play it as "reserved and appropriately cautious" as they protray it they have jumped at every chance to post doomday scenerio after doomsday scenerio. None of which have ever come to pass. There is such a thing as to yell Wolf so many times it is beyond even futile annoyance but full blown denialism, in the process harming Linux and creating unneeded suffering.



yes, MS has contributed code. They contributed kernel code, but their alternative was to compete against VMWare with a hypervisor that doesn't support Linux as guest OS. Tough choice.


Yeah, that certain j'ne sais quoi which is obtained how. Contributions of code, licenses, money, patents and documentation, test suites, coming to our conferences, talking to our people and yes using our licenses.

I defer this to your specific preference in Scotsmen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman).



yes, they have some initiatives that almost sound like they're into FOSS, and even 1 license that is accepted by OSI. That whole initiative smells like a clever combination of window dressing, embrace, extend, ... tactics, and creating confusion about what open source actually is ("if i get to see source code, it's open source, right ?" )


So you prefer doing a lot of thinking with your gut knowing full well that it is not intended for that purpose?

Honestly you are looking for them to be bad, ignoring mountains of evidence that the technical and management side are getting open source and open standards. They are doing better and we should be encouraging those moves and help them walk more fully down the path. Not flogging them for mistakes of a past century. Right now, right now and for a while now, Microsoft have increasingly folded their business model to work with Open Source. They earned some credit, yes they continue to do some stupid things (e.g. everyone involved in the ongoing Mobile patent stupidity are by extension utter morons - and Microsoft is definitely in that category).

Microsoft is a big company with it's own internal fiefdoms, but right now we are making process. I believe in nurturing that rather than continuing to look for the evil in everything assuming that it is the hidden in plain sight evidence for a multiple decade masterful plan to topple Linux.. before it's existence as a competitor was a reality. There will be friction in terms of the legal language used, they are not used to the full disclosure we so readily expects and will attempt to prevent some, to them obvious "bad uses", such as e.g. creating incompatible .NET implementations while labeling them as .NET and implementing .NET standardized parts. I believe we can agree that the aim is likely good. Looking at the past, they admittedly aided amongst others creating (and were convicted as I recall), around Java. They want .NET to be a solid predictable experience everywhere for developers and users.

Long term our best bet is to engage them in the ECMA meetings to discuss expanding the spec to cover bigger parts of the reference implementation as well as community contributions such as Mono.Simd. The GNOME Foundation are ECMA members and can speak on behalf of us, they do not currently attend these meetings but I am sure if you write the request on the back of a "Friends of GNOME" donation they might listen.



Microsoft a member of the community ? I don't think so. FOSS community is not just about source code, it's also about shared values. I don't think Microsoft qualifies. Maybe in another 10 or 20 years;

So, there, let the flaming and bashing begin and kill this thread.

Yeah, your intent seems to be provoking flaming not rational discord.

[zekopeko]

About the only zealotry I'm regularly guilty of myself is believing that one must do the right things for the right reason, not just the convenient reason or some careless reason.

All that being said, zekopeko, even though you're sort of right about Groklaw, someone's gotta keep their eyes on what Microsoft's up to and who they're partnering with. At the end of the day, I trust them about as much as I trust a snake.

Of course I want people to look at what Microsoft is doing. But this kinds of articles are counter-productive. No matter what you think they are the biggest OS developer on the planet with the majority market share. Is refusing to implement the OOXML spec going to help software freedom in any way? Do you seriously think that the world is going to switch to ODF any time soon(a standard with its own set of problems, both technical and legal ones)?

[koenn]

@gnomeuser

It's late, this side of the globe, so I'll have an other read of your post tomorrow.

For now, just this :


Yeah, your intent seems to be provoking flaming not rational discord.
You're wrong. I'll explain.

Overly positive posts like yours tend to attract responses like mine. Next thing you know, all the zealots show up, free software zealots, pro-microsoft zealots, anti-microsoft zealots, anti-FSF zealots, ... ; the thread derails, and gets closed. It's a pattern people seem to fall in to, but making it explicit in advance, making people realize there's a pattern, often helps them break that pattern.

So, the intended effect of that addition was to prevent flaming, and let rational discord continue.

So, now we've established that, let's have another look at the issue at hand (but, as far as I'm concerned, that 'll have to wait till tomorrow)




(oh, and you missed those 4 blank lines - my "let the flames" phrase was not directly related to the preceding sentence you included in your quote)

[zekopeko]

So what you are saying is that the development of Office 2010 was too far in development 2 years ago to be able to implement something as simple as read/write functionality for a file format?

Their product cycle for Office is between 3 and 4 years. Judging by Windows 7 and IE9 they first work on the core part of the product and finish the UI last. That supports their version of the story. OOXML is a huge format and saying that it's simple to provide read/write support is grossly underestimating the engineering effort. Write support is always harder to do then read support.


Even given that at face value, it's not rocket science to update your product to add write functionality for the strict format post release and change the default from transitional to strict.

That option is still on the table. Office 2010 still doesn't have an SP1 pack released AFAICT. I wouldn't be surprised if they release OOXML read/write support like they did with ODF support in MSO2007.


To me, that doesn't ring with a word of truth and instead seems like they want read functionality to claim interoperability with other programs but disable it for the other programs. We'll see if Microsoft actually bothers to update 2010 as I described, if they do before 2012 then I will agree with your "balanced" view.

Lets wait and see what happens.

[phrostbyte]

Yes, Microsoft now releases some FOSS, but it's really a pittance compared to other companies. They recently seem to cancel their more interesting projects too (IronRuby for one).

As so far as companies that are directly opposed to the use and development of Linux, Microsoft is in the forefront. To claim anything else is quite disingenuous I think.

We should encourage Microsoft to play nicely with FOSS and the Linux community, it is possible because there are a lot of Microsoft employees who are sympathetic to the cause. But never forget that Microsoft's business model revolves around destroying Linux.

[betrunkenaffe]

Lets wait and see what happens.

Absolutely, only time will tell. I'm really hoping that they do an update to 2010.

[phrostbyte]

All that will do is increase the number of formats any MS Office "compatible" suite will have to read to three. You have to realize these formats are very complex and require significant engineering effort to implement, and Microsoft is using this as the key barrier of entry of any competitor to their Office cash cow.

[psusi]

I read the analysis and found it generally poor, vague and clearly biased. The fact that it is rooted in a 20 year long perfect conspiracy to kill an at the time complete non-competitor.. it just gives it that Robert Ludlum vibe which you have to admit is kinda retro-cool.

You obviously didn't read the whole thing, or are willfully misrepresenting it. The 20 year old memo was to show that the pattern of behavior has not changed much. The meat of the matter is what they are doing with OOXML and OO.o.


As is Groklaw's history of being anti-Mono, Anti-OOXML and generally anti-Novell.

Having warned about it in the past hardly invalidates new warnings that come with some evidence to back them up.


Honestly you are looking for them to be bad, ignoring mountains of evidence that the technical and management side are getting open source and open standards. They are doing better and we should be encouraging those moves and help them walk more fully down the path.

That is exactly the image they are trying to portray without actually letting open source fully inter operate. That way they get people like you defending them, and stay out of trouble, while still being able to tell their customers that if they really want to inter operate with everyone else using MS Office, then they have to buy MS Office because OO.o doesn't really cut the mustard.


Long term our best bet is to engage them in the ECMA meetings to discuss expanding the spec to cover bigger parts of the reference implementation as well as community contributions such as Mono.Simd. The GNOME Foundation are ECMA members and can speak on behalf of us, they do not currently attend these meetings but I am sure if you write the request on the back of a "Friends of GNOME" donation they might listen.

It isn't a matter of them working on expanding the spec. The parts in question were already rejected, or can not be part of an open standard because they are patent encumbered. The problem is that they promised to stop using those parts and stick to the standard strictly so that OO.o could inter operate, and they are failing to do so, and these memos show they clearly have no intention of doing so.



Yeah, your intent seems to be provoking flaming not rational discord.

Discourse, not discord.

[betrunkenaffe]

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+1 for rational additions

[koenn]

I read the analysis and found it generally poor, vague and clearly biased. The fact that it is rooted in a 20 year long perfect conspiracy to kill an at the time complete non-competitor .... .
I think you're confused.
the "20 years ago" memo is not about Linux, but OS/2.
The Groklaw article also isn't about a conspiracy, but about painting a picture of Microsoft's style in dealing with competition, then, and now. Another example of this style, not mentioned in the Groklaw article, would be the 90s browser war.


Yeah, that certain j'ne sais quoi which is obtained how. Contributions of code, licenses, money, patents and documentation, test suites, coming to our conferences, talking to our people and yes using our licenses.

I defer this to your specific preference in Scotsmen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman).
I have no opinion on what 'true' Scotsmen would or wouldn't do.
I merely observe that Microsoft's Hyper-V is going to have to compete against VMware, that they apparently want or need some driver code in the linux kernel to do so, and that they wrote that code and submitted it for inclusion.
What would explain this better : that this was just something they needed get done, so they did it, or that Microsoft's management out of nowhere decided, hey, that linux thing is pretty cool, lets contribute some code ?



So you prefer doing a lot of thinking with your gut knowing full well that it is not intended for that purpose?

Honestly you are looking for them to be bad, ignoring mountains of evidence that the technical and management side are getting open source and open standards.
I do my thinking with my brain, but I do pay attention to what my gut tells me. Past experience shows me i's a powerful combination.

No, I'm not looking for them to be bad. They did, however, spend the past 20-30 years building the reputation they have today, and they (or you) can't expect to turn that around overnight. Like I said in a previous post, I'm perfectly willing to wait and see for another 10-20 years to see where they want to go.



They are doing better and we should be encouraging those moves and help them walk more fully down the path. Not flogging them for mistakes of a past century. Right now, right now and for a while now, Microsoft have increasingly folded their business model to work with Open Source. They earned some credit,
[...]

Microsoft is a big company with it's own internal fiefdoms, ...

It's true that Microsoft have accepted Open Source as a reality, and is trying to deal with that. Their first attempts, a while back with their "Shared Code Initiative" were still very clearly efforts to respond to the market's interest in open source without having to be/do open source.

Their OOXML effort looks very similar to this approach : the market shows an interest in open standards, so we'll give them one, or something that looks like rather like open standard at first sight.


Microsoft has a history of working in the best interest of Microsoft. I'm OK with that, it's how business works. It's in best interest of Microsoft to have a monopoly, financially, for the stream of revenue this generates, and technically, because their strong point has always been integration : every MS product integrates beautifully with every other MS product. That's their added value proposition. It is not in their interest to let others offer similar added value. This leads directly to their main OM : if there exists a product that might interfere with our monopoly, buy it, render it obsolete, or destroy it.


Open source projects and open source companies also work in their own best interest. (yeah, what else is new).
It is, however, in the interest of most open source projects and companies to have a triving open source community, and to be able to interoperate well with other OSS projects and products, because interoperability / compatibility with other, complementary products enhances their own product. Simple example : linux + apache + mysql + php/perl/python ... makes for a stronger product than, say "look here, yet another open source scripting framework".

So, while MS may show interest in Open Source, and while that interest may or may not be genuine, it's MS's business model that makes it a difficult fit. And no matter how much individual MS devs or sub-departments or isolated projects seem to embrace FOSS, or how many lines of codes the submit for inclusion in the linux kernel, changes in that business model will not come from guys at CodePlex.


But let's see how things evolve in the next 10-20 years ...