Microsoft's Matusow and Mahugh on Office's move to open format support
By Scott M. Fulton, III, BetaNews
May 21, 2008, 6:28 PM
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Allowing just anyone to make Office's next big format
One of the most intriguing parts of today's development, especially for open source developers and ODF proponents, concerns Microsoft's upcoming release of its API's for document format plug-ins for the forthcoming "Office 14:" Developers will be able to write their own formats, plug them into Office, and then give users the option to make those formats the default for their setups.
DOUG MAHUGH, program manager for ISO 29500-based products, Microsoft: It's going to be a couple of scenarios there: One is, perhaps there's an ISV who has some ideas about how to support ODF differently, or better, than we do. They want to innovate in that way. They can write a filter for ODF, and then plug it in so that the Office users in their organization don't even know that's going on; they just save as ODF using the same UI as they had been using, but now they're saving and taking advantage of that custom code that developers plugged in.
A second scenario is, perhaps there's a format that we have not implemented or supported in Office, but for whatever reason, a particular organization wants to support that format. They can write their own support and integrate it into Office, so that it's very seamless; and from the user experience point of view, it just looks like yet another format Office supports.
The basic concept is that developers can extend that list of supported formats, and can write support for another format; and from the user's point of view, they're just all part of the same list.
But will Microsoft really go for it, or would it leave itself the option of applying intellectual property leverage against someone who thinks he can do a better job? Based on the early information we've received from Jason Matusow, it would appear Microsoft has shut the door on itself for that defensive option.
The APIs, BetaNews learned, will be released under the auspices of the interoperability initiatives the company launched in February. Those apply to documentation and information (note, not programs) that Microsoft says it will freely release to developers without them having to obtain a license; and those initiatives apply to Microsoft's "high-volume software" -- and certainly Office qualifies as that. A careful read of these initiatives' wording would indicate that Microsoft leaves itself no option for using intellectual property leverage against anyone who should make a format plug-in for Office 14 -- even a "better Open XML than Open XML," since that's no longer Microsoft's property either.
No matter where Microsoft goes from now on, it will find itself working in the document format space along with its own competitors, including Sun and Novell. How will it avoid going into those meetings and giving away its trade secrets? Is there intellectual property there that's still sacrosanct?
JASON MATUSOW, Director of Corporate Standards, Microsoft: Standards bodies themselves [and] the legal frameworks in which they're structured, are designed so that competitors and partners alike can come to the table, share ideas, collaborate, without either the concerns of people absconding with an idea that they're not supposed to, or the idea that you're coming to the table and doing something unexpected. Standards work is very deliberate work, and people make decisions before they come to the table about what they're going to share and what they're not going to share, and that creates an environment, effectively, of trust -- that you can then work in the context of the engineering for that specification. I think that is exactly why, within the context of the document format, these working groups are so important.
It is also worth noting, though, that interoperability doesn't end with the specification. It's actually just the start. You then have the real-world implementation issues that come up with how people go and actually build the code, the business relationship that might exist. For example, Microsoft has a very constructive relationship with Novell, and they do a lot of work with Open XML relative to OpenOffice, based upon that business relationship.
And then finally, you have the intellectual property structures that are in place, so that not only can you work within those committees properly, but you've structured it so that the IP that may exist around a given specification are made available to the public so that the adoption of that specification is possible. All those things are factors that we consider and think through very carefully.
Hasn't the decision that Microsoft has just made fundamentally and irrevocably change the way word processors and spreadsheets will work and will be designed, from this day forward -- specifically, charting a course for them that will be very hard to steer, let alone follow?
DOUG MAHUGH: The way I see that, we feel we are achieving parity in how Office treats the format, by making them all part of just one simple list of formats supported by Office, with the same options available for each. The thing that we can't do on our own is change the inherent limitations of each format, and the ways that certain formats allow for certain things that other formats may not. For that, we feel we can get involved in the standards organizations, and bring our experience to the table and talk with others about it, but we don't directly control that.
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