The technology business can be frustrating sometimes. I like to call a spade a spade - and its always worth remembering what its for (digging holes, which is potentially what I'm doing in writing this article). So, when faced with a new situation I know less about, call me old fashioned but I try to find out the facts.
Which leads me to ODF and OOXML. I recently wrote a post about the pair, wondering just who cared about whether one or the other was important. It was honestly, genuinely an honest, genuine question - I really don't know the answer! And yet, rebuked in some of the comments, I thought I should really find out more about the debate, particularly in the light of the state of Massachusetts decision to include both ODF and OOXML in its plans.
Where better to start than Google, I thought. Typing "odf ooxml" into the search engine yielded 963,000 entries - in fact, Google kindly stripped out the duplicates and left me with only 402. So I started to wade through them.
The question is, how many can be seen as independent? The very first kicks off, "I was asked by the UK Action Group of the Open Document Format Alliance to write..." Hmmm, I thought. Not that likely to over-sell OOXML, that one. The next was a blog by Mary Jane Foley - I have a great deal of time and respect for M-J's commentary, but this was an interview with Tom Robertson, GM of interop and standards - for Microsoft. Okay, that's one-all, I thought.
The third was a list of other articles. And so it goes on:
Number 4 was written by Sam Hiser, a member of the Free Software Foundation
Number 5 is the paper by the ODF Alliance UK Action Group (again)
Number 6 is a hopeful request for information from a student
Number 7 is on the O'Reilly web site by Kurt Kagle, who is "very much in favor of seeing ODF’s acceptance as an ISO standard."
Number 8 - the Free Software Foundation Europe
Number 9 - by Rob Weir of the OASIS ODF Adoption TC, amongst others
Number 10 - from Linux Today
You get the picture? 12 and 13 are BBS discussions, 14's another list of articles, 15 is from Free Software daily, 16's a discussion, 17's a mate of Rob Weir, 18's an eWeek news story, 19's a search string, and 20's a link back to the very first article in the list.
It's in the mid-30's that I find something that's not been written by someone in the pro-Open community (whatever that means - I made it up). It's by a chap called Jerry Fishenden who... wait... "is Microsoft UK's lead technology advisor and spokesman on..." Noooooooo...
It is one of the articles that follows Jerry F's that finally seems to have less of an axe to grind. Indeed it offers one of the sagest statements I've read so far: "it seems clear that rational technical discussion is out the windows and the parties involved are in full mud slinging mode."
Yes, I noticed! And yet, as I scan the lists of blogs and articles, I find little reference to (and this was back to my original question) views from the end-user community, or indeed independent commentators. Gartner makes one mention of the Novell translator, but that's about it from the larger analyst community. (/me is also guilty as charged...)
So, what I have gleaned from my researches (though that is probably too strong a word) so far is that while there are some valid discussions to be had, the majority of participants are either staunchly pro-ODF, or they are working for Microsoft. I do know that, were I an end-user, I would remain ignorant - but given the mud flying around, perhaps ignorance is bliss.
Next step: lets try to consider what are the real benefits to end-user organisations!
5 comments:
Very interesting thoughts, Jon.
What facts about these technologies would interest you? I'm genuinely curious.
Here's a neutral...
http://atrc.utoronto.ca/index.php?option=com_content§ionid=14&task=view&hidemainmenu=1&id=371
I think the litmus test in this debate, Jon, is does it make common sense. There are arguments being made along economic, business and political themes -- not just technical ones -- which educated people such as yourself can parse.
I submit that middle-schoolers can suss the quality within the debate. It's fair complaint that the field has deteriorated; why don't you commit to helping make the open standards for document formats discussion a meaningful one?
You certainly already begun there; I would like to encourage you to continue.
I am not an expert in the technicalities of these file formats but I do know from our research that the overwhelming majority of businesses in the Western world use Microsoft Office and intend to continue doing so. We can debate why this is or whether it is "right" or "wrong" for as long as anyone likes, but it won't change the situation.
So let's take pervasive MS Office as a given for the foreseeable future.
If we assume for a minute that businesses care significantly open file formats (this is a big if, but let's run with it), then it is a no brainer to drive OOXML through as a open standard as it also allows users to take full advantage of MS Office functionality. With this in place, coupled with PDF as a standard too and MS Office being able to save files in that format as an alternative, then I am struggling to see why the business community would push for an immature and less complete alternative that would only support a subset of the functionality within MS Office.
It would be a lot more helpful to businesses in general if Openoffice.org, etc, just ran with OOXML, which unless I am mistaken, caters for pretty much everything ODF does, plus a lot more.
The bottom line is that OOXML is guaranteed to become pervasive in a relatively short space of time, whereas ODF is just a blip on the overall landscape at the moment which appears to me to be being promoted largely for political rather than practical reasons.
What am I missing?
Unless the objective is to use the ODF debate to switch people from the evil M$ office suite, but take it from me guys, the average IT department just isn’t that interested or motivated. There are much more important things for them to worry about or aspire to that will actually have a significant business impact.
Think of it this way. Office 2007 has a new file format. Microsoft has written down a rough draft of what the rules are for reading and writing this new document format, and submitted it for standardization to ISO. But this draft is, as expected for a 6,000 page document created in less than adequate time, full of inconsistencies, ambiguities and errors. Those who have reviewed it, even in part, have come up with hundreds of specific problems. This does not detract from Office 2007 or its importance. How could it? Office was not build on the OOXML standard. Office came first and the OOXML standard was built on Office. The fault is in the standard, not in the application.
So, if you think Office is important and that OOXML documents will be everywhere, then we need a standard of at least average quality, and certainly not sub par. How else can we ensure that users and vendors can write applications that can read and write this important format? That is the question ISO members have right now. Do they approve OOXML purely because Microsoft is big? Or do they protect the ISO mission and brand and remind Microsoft that "even standards have standards" and that the OOXML specification requires a significant amount of additional review and editing before it can be approved.
Fair comments Sam and Rob, and thanks Dale. I think its worth framing this in terms of outcomes, and the necessity to achieve them. I am reminded for some reason of X.400 vs SMTP - perhaps because it it reflects this situation in some ways, and is the mirror opposite in others. In that X.400 was designed to be a complete, comprehensive and military grade messaging transport, whereas SMTP was created as an incomplete yet serviceable email mechanism. One was ISO and the other, "open" and yet in this case, ISO lost. Today we have a situation where (frankly) the message isn't guaranteed to get through, however we get by because it is "good enough".
And today we have (in the red corner) OOXML which is 6,000 pages long and, so some quarters would say, buggy; meanwhile, (in the blue corner) we have ODF, in some quarters considered incomplete. To my mind both of these issues are both common in IT, and indeed surmountable; to Dale's point however, I'm not sure that either will necessary make much of a difference to the outcomes for the business majority. Given that the primary outcome must surely be to enable transfers of documents between Microsoft Office applications, whatever the historical background to the applications, I would still surmise that wholsesale rejection of OOXML would be a costly waste of effort. Indeed, I woudl say the same if we were talking about Oracle database formats, or tar backup formats, or indeed the use of English which is a convoluted anachronism at best ;)
Cheers, Jon
P.S. Please do not read this as meaning that I do not consider accessibility issues as important, perhaps I am still smarting from my wasted days as an X.400/X.500 trainer but equally perhaps, the standards process is not the best place to hammer out some of these issues.
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