Hoist by their own petard: Judging MS Office by Microsoft's criticism.

 

In their letter, displayed on the Massachusetts website, Microsoft had some heavy criticism of Massachusetts' decision to go with the OpenDoc file format for their work. Microsoft had a lot of criticisms of the decision. The implication in their complaint was that Staying with Microsoft file formats would serve Massachusetts. When scanning Microsoft's criticism, the word 'hypocrite' kept coming to mind ?#8364;” in part, perhaps, because a local newspaper had a 1-page set of quickie interviews about peoples' attitudes towards hypocrisy. I guess that we should start with a definition.

 

hypocrisy n ....

2: insincerity by virtue of pretending to have qualities or beliefs that you do not really have

 

Having viewed that definition, I now turn to Microsoft's criticism of the Massachusetts decision to go with an office format not preferred by Microsoft. I'm going to do this by going through Microsoft's own criticism of OpenDoc and the OpenDoc decision, and see how Microsoft, and Microsoft's file formats stand up to their own criticism.

 

 

(i) ANF did not provide sufficient time for review and comment on the proposed policy, nor a robust process for addressing comments. Due process requires much more, particularly given the unprecedented nature of the proposal and the potentially adverse consequences it could provoke,

 

Microsoft had ample time to respond to the committee's proposals and comments, including the time to relicense Microsoft's internal, proprietary, and patented document format to more closely comply with the requirement for an open, freely implementable format. About the only real complaint that I can see here is that Microsoft didn't win.

 

(ii) the proposed policy would create significant costs and problems for state agencies, for the private sector, and for its citizens,

They later expand:

First, there would be significant, and entirely unnecessary, costs incurred by all state agencies, departments, cities, counties, and school districts to procure new software applications that support the OpenDocument format for their individual users.

 

The history of Micorosoft document formats is interesting in this context. The Microsoft Office suite has a long history of incompatibility with it's own historical formats. There are recurrent stories of people finding that current versions of Microsoft Office are unable to read the output of older versions of the suite and it seems to be almost a given that older versions of Microsoft Office will not be able to read the output of current versions. The end result is that customers are forced into a seemingly never-ending, frenetic cycle of upgrading both software and documents so that neither users or data is orphaned.

 

This disruptive and expensive problem seems to be part of the reason why the commonwealth of Massachusetts embarked on it's current hunt for a standard, open, stable document format.

 

Furthermore, there are a number of Free and Open Source solutions which already implement the OpenDoc formats and more likely to come online. As Free Software, the Commonwealth may redistribute them for only the cost of the media. For example, blank CD-Roms are available for a cost of approximately $.10 each. If we double this price to $.50 each to include duplication and overhead, it would be possible for the commonwealth to make a CD with a number of alternative software solutions available to each and every commonwealth voter during the 2006 election cycle for a total media cost of apx. $2Million. This is roughly the retail cost of about 6000 Microsoft Office upgrades, but would allow almost all citizens full read-write access to all of the OpenDoc formats ?#8364;” including on operating systems which Microsoft refuses to support with their office suite.

Such a CD could include Proprietary software where the company involved is willing to give permission to the distribution.

 

(iii) the document format designated in the proposed policy is new to the marketplace, still subject to potential revision, and not widely deployed or tested in a wide variety of product or usage scenarios.

 

Microsoft's proposed Office Open XML solution, unlike the OpenDoc format, is not a standard, open or otherwise. It has not, (to my knowledge) been accepted by any standards body, and It is only implemented by one company (Microsoft) ?#8364;” and, at that, only in a limited beta. That they would try to pass off their beta implemention as a 'standard' and expect people to accept that statement unexamined indicates little more than the level of control which they feel they have over their customers

 

As mentioned above, Microsoft's document formats have been in continual (and ?#8364;” according to some ?#8364;” technically unnecessary) flux. Each new version of Office seems to produce a new set of incompatibilities with older, or competing software. Although Microsoft is promising to provide filter patches for older versions of Office back to Office 2000, there are still thousands of people running older versions of Word, or even (heaven forbid) competing solutions.

 

(iv) there are substantial technical challenges associated with implementation of the proposed policy. For example, there are issues associated with converting documents saved in the well-established, existing document formats which apparently have not been considered, including the possibility that the new policy will lock out citizens and organizations which use software applications supporting these existing formats from Commonwealth systems or services, or significantly change countless legacy documents that are not fully supported by the newly designated format,

 

The issue of Microsoft's incompatibility with it's own old formats has already been mentioned. If the move to the OpenDoc format does not proceed, it can be expected that Microsoft's policy of bidirectional incompatibility would result in a similar requirement for document conversion and the the possible lockout of entities using older and/or competing office software.

 

(v) the policy would prohibit impacted agencies of the Commonwealth from taking advantage of innovations and solutions from a multitude of technology vendors, including vendors whose technologies are now widely deployed throughout the Commonwealth, thereby denying these agencies the benefits of future technological innovations,

 

Even though they were trying to please the Commonwealth, Microsoft's proposed changes to the licensing of their Office XML format left a number of legal landmines for any non-Microsoft entity attempting to use their format. The long-term result of Microsoft's questionable license could easily be the effective legal lockout of all (or substantially all) other technology vendors. Microsoft also has a history of modifying it's software to intentionally break the software of competing vendors.

 

In contrast, the OpenDoc format is freely implementable by any company or organization, including Microsoft, and the design of the OpenDoc format took into careful consideration the ability to enable current Microsoft capabilities. Should Microsoft refuse to implement the OpenDoc format, they would not be locked out. They would be choosing to not compete.

 

(vi) the proposal appears both inconsistent and discriminatory in that it approves use of one "propriettary" document format as an alternative to the OpenDocument format, while excluding others, and

 

I can only presume that they are referring to the PDF The PDF/X-1:2001 standard, which is an ISO standard, and is openly implementable. There are are number of implementations of the format, both Free and Open Source and proprietary. Microsoft's so-called 'standard' document formats, on the other hand, generally need to be reverse engineered. In addition, Microsoft is now adding legal hurdles into the fray by patenting aspects of their formats and now offering legally questionable licenses to make limited use of those formats.

 

(vii) there are less costly, less limiting, non-preferential policy options to achieve the proposed policy's stated goals. Of particular note, only months ago, the CIO's office publicly supported Microsoft's open and royalty free licensing approach with regard to its Office XML formats by agreeing to include these formats within the Commonwealth's policy. Now, with the imminent departure of Secretary Kriss at hand, the Commonwealth is proposing a policy that is at odds with its previous affirmation of Microsoft~'s approach. Such a sudden reversal by the CIO's office is questionable in its timing, process, motiivation, and commitment.

 

The Commonwealth is probably in a better situation than me to determine whether it agreed to include Microsoft's formats in the Commonwealth's policies (as opposed to simply considering the modified proposal). My own memory is that the Commonwealth has voiced possible issues, all along, with respect to Microsoft's proposed licensing scheme.

 

In short, the proposed policy is costly and unnecessary and would limit the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to a desktop software policy that is less functional, less open, and less flexible than the Commonwealth's current policy.

 

 Executive Summary:

  1. If Microsoft believes that, by refusing to implement the OpenDoc Protocol, they can Bring the Commonwealth to it's knees, this would simply be an indication of disdain for their customers and the degree to which they wield, and hope to continue to wield, control and fear over their customers, including the commonwealth, and it's citizens.

  2. Microsoft's format is not a standard, open or otherwise. It has not, (to my knowledge) been submitted to any standards body, and it is only implemented by one company (themselves) in a limited beta. That they would try to pass off their limited beta a 'standard' and expect people to accept that statement unexamined indicates little more than the thrall which they endeavor to hold their customers, and the public in.

  3. The cost of document incompatibility and upgrades would remain (and probably worsen) under the Microsoft-proposal, in the long term.

  4. Massachusetts could probably provide Free Software to the entire commonwealth for about the cost of procuring Microsoft Office-12 updates for a single (large) department.

 

Stephen Samuel http://www.bcgreen.com/

 


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