Microsoft trounces pro-ODF forces in state battles over open document formats
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Bills seeking to mandate the use of open document formats were introduced in various states this year. But heavy lobbying by Microsoft has helped to squelch or water down all of the proposals.
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A group of state legislators in New York has introduced a bill calling for the state government's IT director to study the issue of using open document formats within agencies.
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Despite an impassioned speech by a group member criticizing its technical merit, Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) document format will receive the United States' "yes" vote before the ISO standards body this weekend.
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Amid intense lobbying, Microsoft is expected to squeak out a victory this week to have its open document format, Office Open XML, recognized as an international standard.
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In Berlin on Tuesday, Microsoft unveiled a product package aimed at local and regional e-government initiatives, in the midst of growing government opposition in Europe to proprietary software.Microsoft&#39;s Citizen Service Platform includes applications and templates designed for local and regional governments primarily in Europe and the United States. It is built on products, including SharePoint, Office Live, and Windows Server.While Microsoft has been selling software to the public sector for years, it has recently begun focusing on local governments after discovering that many people interact with their local governments more often than the federal government, said Ralph Young, vice president of Microsoft&#39;s Worldwide Public Sector group.Europe alone has more than 80,000 local and regional governments, Young said.Governments can use the Citizen Service Platform to create portals, manage documents, deploy alert systems in the case of emergencies, and create and manage citizen information databases that can be shared among different agencies.Microsoft is introducing the product as it faces&#160;mounting opposition Europe. Some governments there are migrating to open source products as a way to avoid being locked into a single vendor of proprietary software.Others, such as the Netherlands, are taking a more extreme route. Late last year, the Dutch parliament mandated that government organizations choose open source over proprietary software if a viable product is available. Agencies must also use open standards. The national government must comply with the new rules by May, with local governments following by the end of this year.Young was unfazed by the mandate. &quot;We have many opportunities in the Netherlands to work with local and regional governments,&quot; he said. &quot;We don&#39;t see any federal mandates having real impact locally because of local jurisdictions&#39; ability to make decisions in their best interest in terms of how to better serve citizens.&quot;Microsoft could be counting on local governments having autonomy from such federal mandates, said Mark Anderson, a consultant and founder of the Strategic News Service. &quot;There are a lot of times when a government will posture, and it doesn&#39;t really intend that posture to be carried through the rest of the country,&quot; he said.Still, some European government agencies may be predisposed to choose software other than Microsoft&#39;s, more so since the software giant began pushing its Open XML document format there, Anderson said. Microsoft is in the process of&#160;attempting to have Open XML be accepted as a standard&#160;by the International Organization for Standardization. Open XML competes with the Open Document Format promoted by IBM. Critics of Open XML accused Microsoft of stacking votes in the standardization process, souring some in Europe on Microsoft even further.Microsoft thinks that cost will determine decisions for many local governments. &quot;It&#39;s much less a religious discussion about open source and commercial software as it is about what are the solutions available that governments can see value from,&quot; said Young. &quot;Local governments are empowered to make decisions and if they say &#39;This is the best value for the dollar I spend over the life of a service capability, that will govern my decision-making process.&#39;&quot;
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Facing growing competition from open source software providers, Microsoft has decided to allow governments and international organizations access to source code for its Office 2003 productivity suite.
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The OpenDocument Foundation, which was set up to promote its namesake file format as a universal choice for storing documents, is switching  its allegiance to the Compound Document Formats created by the World Wide Web Consortium.
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In anticipation of an international debate over the viability of Microsoft's OOXML document format still slated for February, the company makes a key policy adjustment while leaving third parties to take their argument outside, as it were.
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Maker of the WordPerfect word processor and productivity suite will support Microsoft's Office Open XML, OpenDocument format.
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Rather than stacking the vote, Microsoft simply wanted to allow interested organizations to participate in the Open XML standardization process, unlike other rival efforts, a company executive said Wednesday.Critics and supporters of the competing ODF (Open Document Format) have accused Microsoft of stacking votes, particularly a preliminary vote late last year in the International Organization for Standardization regarding standardization of the Open XML format.&quot;We have a very different perspective&quot; on how that process occurred, said Tom Robertson, general manager of Microsoft&#39;s corporate interoperability and standards group, speaking to a group of journalists from around the world in Kirkland, Wash. &quot;There was an increase in participation both from ODF proponents trying to stop this and people who wanted to see it to promote choice,&quot; he said. That meant that more than the &quot;old guard&quot; -- companies such as IBM that typically participate in such processes -- became involved, he said.Microsoft wanted to involve anyone who has a stake in interoperability, including governments, technology companies, academics, and enterprises, he said. &quot;This cannot be a closed-door process,&quot; he said. &quot;Should those who are impacted by this decision have a seat at the table? Absolutely. Should it be restricted to Open XML advocates? No, it shouldn&#39;t be.&quot;Microsoft also defended&#160;its choice of Ecma to initially standardize the technology, rather than another standards body. &quot;It is one of the leaders in standardization in the IT space for decades,&quot; Robertson said.All but one member -- IBM -- of the Ecma general assembly voted to adopt the standard. The general assembly also voted to pass it on to ISO, a worldwide standardization body, for ratification.Despite that progress, critics wonder why Microsoft built the technology in the first place when there was&#160;already an existing open file format, ODF.&quot;It starts with our customers,&quot; Robertson said. &quot;Many say that ODF doesn&#39;t meet their needs.&quot;As an example, the ODF group initially decided not to support spreadsheet formulas, said Gray Knowlton, group product manager for Microsoft Office. &quot;When we look at customers of Excel, we can&#39;t give them a standard that doesn&#39;t recognize spreadsheet formulas,&quot; he said. However, he also noted that ODF later reversed that decision to support spreadsheet formulas.Microsoft is hopeful that Open XML will pass an upcoming ISO vote, but if it doesn&#39;t, it won&#39;t be the end of Open XML, the executives said. &quot;It&#39;s already an open standard and already available to the community,&quot; said Robertson. &quot;The issue here in the ratification is: Does the global community want a voice in the evolution of Open XML going forward.&quot;Also, if individual governments mandate the use of ODF instead of Open XML, Microsoft would adapt, Knowlton said. The company would then implement the missing functionality that ODF doesn&#39;t support. However, those extensions would be custom-designed and outside of the standard, which is counter to the idea of an open document standard, Knowlton said. &quot;Disastrous? No. But definitely not preferable,&quot; he said.
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(InfoWorld) - Texas and Minnesota may become the second and third U.S. states to adopt ODF (Open Document Format for XML) as the standard file format for government documents instead of the file format that Microsoft uses in its Office 2007 software suite. Two separate bills up for legislative consideration in each state propose to mandate the use of an open, XML-based file format that is "interoperable among diverse internal and external platforms and applications; fully published and available royalty-free; implemented by multiple vendors; and controlled by an open industry organization with a well-defined inclusive process for evolution of the standard," according to the Minnesota House of Representatives bill, which can be found here. The Texas bill, which can be found here, uses similar wording to describe the file format the states intend to support. The Minnesota bill proposes that the mandate would take effect beginning July 1, 2008, while the Texas bill gives the state's Department of Information Resources until Sept. 1, 2008 to develop a plan for the transition. Though the bills do not specifically name ODF as the document format under consideration, the explanation of what each state wants to move to seems to fit the standard. ODF is an industry standard supported by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), is available for free, and is supported by several vendors in their office suites, including IBM, Sun, and Google. In an e-mail to the IDG News Service, one of the senators who sponsored the Minnesota bill, State Senator Don Betzold, confirmed that his state's bill was written with ODF in mind. "ODF is the standard intended," he said. "It is my goal to make sure that the public has access to electronic documents in the years to come and that we do not have to rely on licensing agreements or code access." Indeed, proponents of ODF view the bills as another victory for the file format and another step closer to giving Microsoft Office the best -- and arguably only -- competition it's had in years. Office 2007 uses Open XML, a format Microsoft developed, as its default file format. "After Massachusetts, the ODF genie is out of the bottle here in the U.S.," Marino Marcich, managing director of ODF advocacy group the ODF Alliance, said. "We're encouraged that Texas and Minnesota seem to be following suit." Currently, Massachusetts is implementing a plan using ODF as the standard format for all state agency documents. Massachusetts was the first U.S. state to adopt ODF. Microsoft also has submitted Open XML as a global standard, and it is currently before the ISO for approval. If approved and adopted by companies other than Microsoft, it could theoretically fall under the description of an open, XML-based file format as outlined in the Texas and Minnesota bills. Novell plans to implement Open XML in its version of OpenOffice, and Corel plans support for Open XML in its WordPerfect Office software. In a statement from its public relations firm, Microsoft said it supports customer choice and interoperability and urges governments to also do so. However, the company does not approve of governments mandating the use of only one standard for file formats. Microsoft certainly is keeping a close eye on ODF and recognizes the need for its applications to interoperate with it. Microsoft funded the development of software that translates between Open XML and ODF. The software, called the ODF Translator, was made available in 1.0 form last week on SourceForge.net.
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Microsoft is offering protection against patent claims for Office binary formats under its Open Specification Promise.
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Facing growing competition from open source software providers, Microsoft Corp. has decided to allow governments and international organizations access to source code for its Office 2003 productivity suite.
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Following BetaNews' story yesterday on the State of Massachusetts' decision to propose formally accepting Microsoft's Office Open XML as a "suitable" format, advocates on two of the three sides of this issue wrote us to say they were concerned our story's contents might tend to favor a different side.
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BREAKING NEWS - Early this morning, Microsoft reported it had been notified that its Office Open XML format received a 74% positive vote in a preliminary ballot that could pave the way for its final ratification as an international standard.
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Proposed technical guidelines include Microsoft's Office Open XML on the list of "open format" standards.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft is enlisting Linux distributor TurboLinux to help tailor work being done to translate documents between Open XML and ODF file formats for Japanese and Chinese users. TurboLinux has joined the Microsoft-funded but community-led Open XML-ODF (Open Document Format) translator project and will help ensure that documents based on Open XML can communicate smoothly with ODF-based documents in Office suites that use Japanese and Chinese characters, said Jean Paoli, general manager, interoperability and XML architecture at Microsoft. "TurboLinux is one of the major distributors of Linux in Japan and China," he said. "They are bringing more knowledge [to the project]." TurboLinux, which also distributes a version of OpenOffice.org for Japan and China, also will ensure those suites can read and write Open XML files, Paoli said. More information about the Open XML/ODF Translator Add-In for Office can be found on the project site on SourceForge.net . Other companies contributing to the project are Novell, Clever Age, Aztecsoft, and DIaLOGIKa. The project already has released a 1.0 version of the Open XML Translator, a Microsoft Office 2007 add-in that converts Microsoft Word documents written in Open XML to ODF and vice versa. Novell is including the plug-in in its own distribution of OpenOffice.org. A beta version of a spreadsheet converter add-in that will work with Microsoft Excel also is available, and project members are working on the final phase of the project, a plug-in that will convert presentation files such as those developed in Microsoft PowerPoint between Open XML and ODF. Independent of the Sourceforge.net Open XML/ODF translator project, Sun MicrosystemsÂ last week released a 1.0 version of its ownÂ ODF translator add-in for Office, called Sun ODF Plugin. However, it only works with Office 2000, Office 2003 and Office XP. According to Sun, it was difficult to build a version to support Office 2007 at this time because of a product feature that ignores installed filters and opens documents with its own. ODF isÂ not supported natively in Office 2007, one of the reasons plug-ins must be built for the software. Much has been made of the fact that MicrosoftÂ did not provide native support in Microsoft Office 2007Â for ODF, though it provides support for 30 other file formats and uses Open XML as the default document file format. However, at this point companies such as Sun and IBM and others accept that there will be at least two XML-based file formats for documents and agree that it's important to have technology that can translate between them.