Allright. There's two formats: Microsoft® Excel™ + Microsoft® Word™ + Microsoft® Access™ + ... AND OASIS OpenDocument.
MS format is proprietary, closed, FULLY supported only by MS products, SPREAD.
OD format is free, open, well documented, FULLY supported by anything, NOT SPREAD.

It's obvious, what OD is better (but you have to MIGRATE from MS to OD and OD isn't spread - that's bad).

Now, MS makes the move: MS OpenXML.

Let's see the disposition now:

OX : proprietary (yes, still proprietary), open, well documented, FULLY supported by anything (not released yet, but it will be), NOT SPREAD.
OD : free, open, well documented, FULLY supported by anything, NOT SPREAD.

"NOT SPREAD" is the key thing, because OpenXML is the BRAND NEW format, like OD. It will not be spread, until new MS Office 12 released.

OD is STILL better, because if you have to migrate to one of two BRAND NEW formats, you can pick OX or OD. OD is free (legally free). There's nothing to choose, IMHO.

P.S. OpenXML is also Delphi-based XML engine, LOL MS!

Excellant analysis.

Key point being that if companies are going to spend the time, money and effort migrating to another document format why not move to the most open format possible so that they gain more control and power over hteir own inofrmation as possible.

Totally agree with ya LRN.

BTW does anyone out their have any links to really indepth articles on how MS are handling their new format.

Looking for tech specs and for general info about MS approach to OpenXML (licensing etc).

thxs

>>if you have to migrate to one of two BRAND NEW formats, you can pick OX or OD. OD is free (legally free). There's nothing to choose, IMHO.>>>

Then you’re blind and a fool. Free is a small factor in any migration, Linux is free, lets migrate 4000 PCs to it, wait, **** we have to image 4000 machines, train 4000 employees, hope our network will happily accept it (a network geared towards only Windows will cause issues in Linux), oh and train any future employees that don't know Linux....umm, lets not...

Same goes for the OD vs. OX debate. Train employees on how to use the new software (You will dump Office) you will have to make sure other business you deal with can work with the new format, any programs that interacts with the office files will have to have major changes done to them so that they will continue to work, security, actual support to the new software and file format, actual costs. There is more to migration then just ‘free’ and ‘open source’.

For most sticking with MS will be easier, and cheaper. There will be no re-training, the new Office line with support old file types, and there is a good chance that MS will produce a good quality batch conversion for older file types.

"You will have to make sure other business you deal with can work with the new format"
Same with OX. It's NEW format. Same migration problems ("your organisation should buy Office 12 because our organisation alreaby bougth it, else there will be format incompatibilities").

"...any programs that interacts with the office files will have to have major changes done to them so that they will continue to work"
Same for OX. It's COMPLETELY different format. Any applications, what works with .doc (for example) must be changed to work with OX, or they're history.

etc.

The only argument what i would agree - it's sometimes easer to migrate from MSO to MSO, than from MSO to OO (or such). But hey! This is The Progress.

If MS will follow standards, Office 12 will support OD => everyone could use MS Office, StarOffice, OpenOffice, anything - and without any incompatibilities! We have to continue to pressure MS until they agree to support OD, and everyone will be happy.

>>>We have to continue to pressure MS until they agree to support OD, and everyone will be happy.>>>

MS like any business, will do whats right for the bottom line, if support for OD means lower sales, your are dreaming. If you want a successful business, you don't run it to feel good, you run it to make money and it annoys me that people either forget or want MS to forget that.

You see, "business" isn't always "sales". There's plenty of ways to enfluence MS.
For example: denying ODF => ODF Alliance vs OXF Alliance => format war => bad for business.
I'm not expert, so this example may look somewhat naive, but i hope you understand what i meant to say.

As a network admin for the federal government I wish we could just go to MS wordvand be done with it.

It seems to me that lately people are just going all out against Microsoft with guns blazing.

"Some of the members in the Alliance include the American Library Association, Corel, Novell, Opera, OpenOffice.org, Oracle, Red Hat, Sun as well as representatives of the city of Vienna and two Massachusetts interest groups, whose state recently implemented a policy to use ODF."

Note that three of these companies are supposedly the ones that are "educating" the EU about MS's illegal monopoly practices. Sun, Oracle, and Novell probably care less about ODF just as long as Microsoft is hurt they're happy.

"While the group contains many of Microsoft's most vociferous critics, members of the organization say that it is no way a "partisan, anti-Microsoft group."'

How can they say it is in no way partisan if Microsoft's claims are true--that three members of this 'Alliance' are basically bribing the EU? (fewt calm down. I know they didn't necessarily "pay" the EU to get MS, you know what I really mean here)Then again I'm bias (NOT partisan--there's a big difference), and think Microsoft has finally cleaned up their act recently since FireFox arrived. Shame that now that MS has competition everyone suddenly decides to destroy them while they are even slightly weakened.

That's a good point:

-Some of the members in the Alliance include the American Library Association, Corel, Novell, Opera, OpenOffice.org, Oracle, Red Hat, Sun as well as representatives of the city of Vienna and two Massachusetts interest groups-

All of whom have sued, or in the process of suing Microsoft...

But yes, it is an all out war against Microsoft, and I am getting REALLY sick and tired of it.

You'll get over it.

Y'all said the market would fix the problem and now that it is you whine about that too.

competition is a refining fire. I personally prefer ODF, but who knows, maybe microsoft's implimentation might be better?

A war against microsoft might make their products a little bit more reasonable. You have to admit IE7 wouldn't be nearly as good if it wasn't for firefox.

"Y'all said the market would fix the problem..."

I KNEW you were from Texas!!! :D

Seriously, how is this "the market" fixing the problem? I'm not whining about MS being in jeopardy, only saying that it seems like everyone is attacking them at once. This too will pass though.

That's the market in action hahahaha.

I'm not from Texas, just across the gulf though.

Lately?? This crap has been going on for years.. I love Microsoft... If I was Microsoft Id build a worm in the next OS and say fine.. you dont like us? YOUR OS is dead! Bye.. See Ya! Remember we still own the software your using.. We just grant you license to use it... Your license has now been REVOKED! Peace.. end game.. set match..

So, you would recommend that Microsoft do things that are even more illegal than they are doing now?

Wonderful.

LOL

They may be true (Microsoft's claims). Microsoft spends TONS of money on umm lobbying efforts all over the world. This is just their competition doing umm the same thing.

I suspect it will get thrown out of court, but it'll be interesting if it doesn't.

We have an open document format, its called Word. What's wrong with everyone using Word? Wordpad can open Word documents, everyone uses Windows, so what's the problem?

Even viewers ALL recognize word documents, so you can get any FREE viewer, and its a safe bet, it will allow you to view word documents. I fail to see the need to change the document format to something that's "open". Its not open, if there is yet ANOTHER document format EVERYONE has to agree on, including WORD users, now is it?

So are they pushing for anti-word legistlation, another document format that THEY support and therefore, profit from, OR are they pushing for a NEW format? In any case, 25 million world wide Word users are going to be affected.

I ask you, which is easier to adopt a whole NEW format, or just have everyone use what we already have, which is Word. I for one don't wnat to adopt a new format, because some pansy's have a problem with Microsoft's already accepted format.

I hate it for them, but I fail to see why we need to switch, AGAIN. Everything is going smooth, and its not like a word viewer isn't readily available, and its a free download. Free to use, free to distribute. No you can't create Word documents in it, but Word can open ANY other popular format.

And for another thing, RTF is OPEN. WTF!!

RTF, yeah!!! Forgot about that. Also Corel WP can open most existing MS Word files too. Word files are basically Web pages in disguise if I remember correctly (where did I read this?). That's as open as it gets!

Wooo, really think your sproutin it.

Not trying to make out that i know every angle to this story so this comment may get blown outta the water.

BTW, i am not a MS hater.

The main reason that i'm for ODF (and I clarify ODF and not just OOo or another office suite) is so that MS doesn't have control over OUR information (and if it's in .doc then they can control it).

Lets say everyone decides to "just use what we already have, word", then MS decide to deprecate a version of the .doc format or the whole format (so people have to upgrade).

Now if this happened of course there would be a converter for the .doc to migrate to the new format. But come on, how well would this work and how many features would it cover.

And not to mention the time and cost of migrating all the .docs of a massive company, private or public. And how many companies would even bother to do it.

And who says MS can do this only once, why can't they do it again when THEY feel a mass upgrade by consumers should happen.

Now on the other side of the fence, there is a completely open, well documented, cross platform, backward compatible, feature rice and well supported document format. Now the cost to migrate all of a companies .docs to ODF will still be considerable, but can be completed over years if neccessary and once done the company will never have to 'upgrade' again unless that company themselves decide that it is warranted.

Let me stress that last point. Unless the COMPANY decides that it would be benefical to upgrage.

I'm not even going to go into the benefits that having an open format invariable bring to the table. The fact that anyone can use their skills to improve it is extreamely valuable.

An the cost saving for a company which does decide to use another office suite such as OOo would be substantial.

And why not use .RTF, Well does it support everything that .doc supports (i'm foggy on this point). It alos requires (at this point in time) users to change their default settings, in my experience the majority of people just leave it on the defaults.

Now on to MS OpenXML, from what i've heard of MS attempt i'm not impressed. Don't get me wrong whe MS said they were creating a completely open format for Office 12 using XML I thought that they had finally realized that they don't need to lock people in via formats and that they can more than compete on the quality of their offic suite (which i believe to be very good, and only getting better looking at office 12, man does it look tasty), but then the ineviatable reports came out saying that MS were still going to maintain control over the format and they got it passed (i think it's been passed) by the ECMA which seems to be MSs b****.

But the real nail in the coffin for me in reguards to whether or not MS have really changed and are going to compete on the Office suite alone is that they have not agreed to support ODF. Why not?

So i think that's it, commence the blowing this comment out of the water

The biggest problem with ODF is that it solves a problem which doesn't really exist. Sure, in theory, Microsoft's formats could become a dead-end trap, but there is absolutely no basis for believing that it ever would. Not a single mainstream file format EVER created in the history of microcomputers has ever become inaccessible due to the original manufacturer's actions, or even the manufacturer's total demise. I've got WordStar files I created 26 years ago and Ventura Publisher files I created 18 years ago that I'm still able to import today with readily available conversion tools. In 100 years, it is far more likely that physical media such as CD-R discs will pose a bigger problem than accessing a Microsoft Office file format.

The ODF crowd acts like it's a problem that conversion tools often fail to render formatting exactly like the original software, but is that really going to be a concern if you're trying to retrieve 100-year-old information? I don't think it will really matter if the character set comes out right for "curly" quotation marks, or purely decorative "page borders" are missing, or the page breaks fall in exactly the same places as 100 years ago. In 100 years, how do we even know that "Letter" sized paper will be common in the US, or "A4" in Europe?

What makes anyone think that apps supporting ODF will forever render exactly the same? Netscape Navigator was considered compliant with a superset of the HTML 3.2 standard, and today's Mozilla Firefox implements a superset of HTML 4.0 which should theoretically include HTML 3.2 compliance. But there are plenty of valid HTML 3.2 pages which don't render exactly the same in Navigator and Firefox. Who cares?

If you want a freedom format use TXT format, if you want just-working format use Microsoft format.

You bring up valid arguments.

good points.

Yes, the stuff i talked about may never happen but my whole point is that i don't like a single company having such control over my information, and boy do they have control. For example i would happily switch to ODF but i can't, Why not you ask. Because the University i go to doesn't support it so if i want to get my degree i have to use .doc.

As for MS never deprecating a format, well maybe they don't deprecate it but what's to stop them changing it so much, and keep doing it so that only there software can keep up to date. We never know what's going to happen in the future so rule out nothing. And MS have shown that they are capable of being morons when it comes to competition. i'm sure i don't have to list all of the examples.

And while i agree that whether very old documents are converted exactly i disagree that the conversion problem does not exist. it may be in the future that a document must be converted excatly as it was before. maybe due to the intermingling of differnt languages etc. Again don't know what will happen in the future.

Now on to whether ODF will forever render exactly the same. Well yes it will. If a company has a lot of valuable data tied up in old ODF format documents then that company can simple write a program that will let them view, edit or convert the old ODF to the new ODF because the format is OPEN and they have all of the information they need to do it.

I take it you also are of the opinion that everyone should use MS Windows and that there's no need for competition in te OS setor either. Again i use windows but would happily switch to another OS if it was feasible as again i don't like MS having so much control, Indeed i don't like any company having extream control over any sector as it always ineviatiable stalls innovation.

I just want to stress that i'm not an MS hater, it's just that i value competition in a market and sector of industry that has shown that without it innovation is always stalled. I don't believe that anyone, well anyone reading betanews, wants that.