Microsoft: We were railroaded in Massachusetts on ODF

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Good article

You left out the part of the Sept. 16 meeting where they discuss the cost of upgrading to Office 12. Stuart McKee, the MS rep., brought up the possibility of including ODF in Office 12. Eric Kriss clearly sounded skeptical of the idea of upgrading to Office 12 just to get the ability to save in ODF, since he said it would require upgrading everything, even their hardware. However I believe that others on the committee tried to sound more concilliatory, saying that if MS would unencumber its format license, they would be more receptive to adopting the Office 12 XML schema as one of their standard formats.

Perhaps MS underestimated how much the committee deciding on format was listening to the input of others, particularly because they might've thought that the installed base of MS Office would be a convincing enough argument, from the financial perspective, to stay with MS Office in the future.

My sense from your article is that MS was complacent about the openness issue. They thought that using a prior standard of openness would be sufficient. I have read prior articles on ZDNet that have discussed how different people in the IT industry, representing their respective companies, have been discussing and going to conferences on the issue of software licensing. To date I have not heard about MS representatives being involved in those discussions. This is probably because MS has been inherently resistant to advancing open source licensing and releasing IP "out into the wild". They've been taking tentative steps towards open sourcing a little of their code, and they've been trying to advance their shared source initiative. That's been the extent of their efforts. What was striking to me about reading these past discussions of "thinking about licensing" is it felt like these companies were spending a lot of effort on trying to "innovate through licensing" rather than innovating through software.

What's unique about ODF and PDF, or so it appears to me, is this notion of allowing developers to take some of the IP and change it for their own purposes, a kind of "open source formatting". As you describe, MS's license doesn't allow this, but I think for much the same reason that Adobe doesn't want developers to take their IP and make it into something else and call it "PDF". The only difference between them is that Adobe allows developers to take what they want of their format IP, leaving out the rest, under certain circumstances, whereas MS categorically does not.

In terms of your definition of "open standard", a specification that is ratified by an independent standards body, I agree with your definition. That is probably the one area where the Office product had a blind spot in this negotiation, and it is puzzling, now that I think about it, given that MS's CLI specification, related to some of the .Net API, and the runtime engine, has been accepted by one or more standards bodies. The developer tools group at MS didn't hesitate to submit it as a standard. It may be that MS is waiting until Office 12 is released to do this, but they could have done it sooner, given that Office 2003 supports its XML formats as well.

I differ with you some about your closing argument. You say that MS doesn't have to make ODF the default format, if they choose to implement it, but the ETRM clearly states that any software that the Executive Agency of MA buys must feature the ability to save ODF by default. On the other hand, I recently read an article written by Andrew Updegrove at http://www.consortiuminfo.org/bulletins/sep05.php#feature where he says that in various documents, including an FAQ about the committee's decision, they say that Executive Agency employees can continue using MS Office after the Jan., 2007 date, even saving in Office's native format temporarily, but that they must convert their files to ODF when it comes time for them to be archived.

In the start of your article you state that this decision to go with ODF could affect outside contractors as well. What Updegrove also states is that nothing in the decision prevents outside parties from continuing to use whatever format they are now using, even after Jan., 2007. They can continue sending electronic documents to the Executive Agency in MS Office formats if they like. I'm not sure how they're going to work this out, but this is apparently what they said.

Overall, I'm a bit skeptical that this committee was entirely clear about its intentions. From what I've read of how they've documented their decision, it looks sloppy. For them to say in their ETRM document that systems must be migrated to office productivity systems that can be configured to save in ODF by default, and then to say elsewhere "No, it's fine for people to continue using MS Office even after the deadline. We only require you to convert your files to ODF for archiving." strikes me as unclear and unfocused. I mean, either it's a requirement or it isn't. Which is it?

Eric Kriss himself said that this is an "emerging environment", and he's right. ODF was only ratified this past May. It seems to me that MA is stumbling into this decision with no proven solution to implement what they ultimately want, but I guess they're okay with that. Not sure why. It sounds like a potentially expensive adventure. Given that state governments are strapped for cash right now, I wonder why they're forging ahead with this right now.

I think MS can be excused for thinking that MA is acting like a moving target. One moment they're here. The next moment they're not. One could rightly argue that it's incumbent on the vendor to show flexibility. Unfortunately MS doesn't have the kind of flexibility that MA wants, at least in its Office product. As Yates pointed out, it took them a year to incorporate PDF into it.

The fact is, like with Windows, MS has a huge installed base with Office, and this impacts its ability to change with each customer's needs. Their competitors, Sun and IBM, are not in the same situation. Their office suites are new and so don't have an installed base to satisfy. MS Office is a one-size-fits-all product for certain purposes. Obviously it's not one-size-fits-all in its licensing, though as MS reps have said, most of its customers have not asked for this, and I take them at their word. If a significant number of their customers ask for it, I think you'll see them respond.

I liked this article. Very detailed. Thank you for your good work.

Posted by: Mark Miller   Posted on: 10/14/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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