Microsoft's document gambit moves ahead

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Agreed, mostly: On competition:
"I think ODF WAS dreamed up as a part of being a current Office competitor, rather than raising the bar to another level. I think it is trying to wrest away some of MSs customers rather than present a new and significantly improved direction."

Yes, it's not about the quality of the software.
The alternative is preferred by some only because it's Not Microsoft.
Others add a general hostility to any software that makes profit, and so hires employees and pays them a wage appropriate to their contribution.

Because these attitudes are not widely shared, you're correct when you wrote:

"All ODF has really done is make MS provide an open format. Having done that, ODF will probably recede, though still hang around as a beacon to which anti-MS veterans can look back when they are old and say how it made a difference, even though they lost the battle!"

Though I think Microsoft was responding to developers and potential customers sympathetic to the idea of open standards rather than to ODF, which is likely to remain rare.
Whether "open" as defined and guarded by an organization is significant is a separate issue from the concerns of people whose acceptance Microsoft requires for continuing predominance and profit.

Microsoft has undertaken many responses to the inclinations of those who can help them maintain and increase profits, even at the expense of the company's own views.

As a quick example: Mr. Ballmer once commented that looking at a device running Linux hurt his eyes, so the agreement with Novell that commits Microsoft to helping sell Linux must be painful.

I also agree with you on the meaning of standards:

"Getting standards ratified requires sustained (and expensive) effort. For many standards, only the largest players have any chance of making the distance, and so they extract their price and overlay their myopic preferences. Therefore, often 'open standards' are not really open, but just a reflection of the ideological and economic preferences of those few that contributed to them. They do not guarantee the best, just an expedient consensus, as any decision by commitee is. Even then, there are so many factors outside the standards committees' influence that will show how really viable they are."

[Adjusted a few typos]

I'll add that sometimes the committee process can be arranged to create a disadvantage.

For example, if Microsoft had to go to a committee of its competitors and antagonists to obtain pemission to make a change that would sell more software, how likely is approval?

Standards set by mutual agreement between companies affected which respond satisfactorily to the goal of each participant are worthwhile, even essential.
There the goal is to increase sales by each party as a result of efficient operation of features and the interoperability sought by customers.

But when the goal is not mutual advantage, but disadvantaging a named organization, then the process should be considered war by other means.

That's why I disagree when you write:

"Regarding 'standards' with proprietory strings attached, I do not like them. They exhibit bad faith, because they are not open, but often are controlled by, or require licensing or paying fees to, a particular company ... . If a company offers something to be standardised and it is ratified, with no proprietory encumbrances or licences (free or otherwise), then it is an 'open standard', just like any other (which have always reflected the biases of those individuals and companies sitting on their committees)."

You're right about the approval process being political and reflecting bias. But those are the licenses of which you approve.

Why not simplify and say that all Committee based licenses are the product of their encumbrances(?), the result of jockeying for advantage, commercial or ideological. And that the committee process itself, dependent upon the approval of the most sluggish member, is likely to hinder innovation.

I'd say that any standard which is the product of a committee should be treated with suspicion, and approved only if its effects can be seen to be beneficial.; Posted by: Anton Philidor Posted on: 12/08/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use