Contradictions in Microsoft's OOXML openness
552836
There is a fascinating article on Groklaw called Searching for Openness in Microsoft's OOXML and Finding Contradictions. One of the most relevant comments in the article is "So, they plan to be the only one in the Linux world that can actually interoperate with Microsoft. How do you think they will achieve that? By sharing? On the contrary, they already market themselves as uniquely interoperable, which means they get to interoperate and you don't, unless you are their paying customer."  There is also the Novell comment, "Only Novell has Microsoftâs endorsement as its partner to drive Linux-Windows interoperability."
255902
Now for some real Apache code Column As I write this, I'm on the Eurostar train, just returning from O'Reilly's OSCon (Open Source Conference) in Brussels. Some fascinating insights there; and even my own talk generated some interesting discussion. Some of the delegates, including O'Reilly himself, are promoting opensource ideas going beyond software and into society more generally. I've touched on that in this very column before now, but a related argument that's new to me is that the open/closed debate in software could become largely sidelined, as the industry focuses on software as a service (such as Google's offerings) more than as a product.â¦
492488
A discussion of how to use frame styles in OOo Writer.
499090
(InfoWorld) - People apparently are already tuning in to IBM's Symphony. The company reported Wednesday thatÂ its free rival to Microsoft's Office suiteÂ was downloaded 100,000 times in the first week of release. "To be honest, we were surprised at the speed with which people jumped on this," said Mike Rhodin, general manager of both IBM Collaboration and Lotus Software, in an interview Wednesday. To keep up with the number of people interested in downloading Symphony, IBM tripled the number of download servers it had for the suite of productivity applications in the first few days of its release, he said. At first, users had to sign up for an IBM ID and password and enter identity information to download the first beta of Symphony, a free suite of office productivity applications made available last Tuesday, but users complained that this process was "too onerous," Rhodin said. IBM tweaked the process so now all people need to get Symphony is a valid e-mail address. Because of this, it's been hard to track whether it's consumers or businesses that are downloading Symphony, he said. But IBM is less interested in who is using the software than in getting it into as many hands as possible, Rhodin said. Symphony is based on OpenOffice.org and the Eclipse framework and is meant not only to give consumers and businesses an alternative to Microsoft Office, but also to promote the use of ODF (Open Document for XML), an XML-based standard for documents approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). "The end goal here is the proliferation of the open standard," Rhodin said. Microsoft Office 2007, which has more than 90 percent market share, does not natively support ODF and instead uses the company'sÂ OOXML (Open XML) format, which failed to pass a recent ISO vote for standardization. IBM and ODF supporters like Sun and Google have been waging a public battle against Microsoft to promote their interest in ODF, on which all three companies have based productivity applications. The Microsoft competitors are hoping that because ODF is a standard and Office does not support it, more users will begin purchasing ODF-friendly software, thus giving competing players more of a chance against Microsoft's dominance in the productivity-application market. Symphony joins Sun's for-fee version of StarOffice as the latest software suite based on OpenOffice.org code to go up against Microsoft Office. So far, neither the free nor for-fee versions of OpenOffice.org have achieved any real success in cutting into Office's market share or revenue. IBM only recently joined the OpenOffice.org communityÂ after holding off for many years, and Rhodin said Symphony is not meant to be a slight against the suite that is freely available from that organization. But IBM is clearly interested in being more successful than its rivals in presenting a true alternative to Office as a way to promote ODF. "This isn't just another OpenOffice suite," he said. "We have made investments in OpenOffice.org to create an enterprise experience around it." As a part of this, IBM based Symphony on the Eclipse open-source development framework so it would be easy for third-party ISVs to build plug-in applications for the suite much like third parties have built applications for Office. In fact, one company in Brazil, Totvs, is already building an ERP application on Symphony, he said. And before Symphony was released as a stand-alone product,Â IBM had already included it in Lotus Notes 8, the latest version of its collaboration software, another arena in which it is tweaking its strategy to battle with Microsoft. Office is playing an increasingly important role for Microsoft in this market as the company hopes to leverage the ubiquity of Office among business users by making its applications the front-end interface for worker collaboration. So far, Symphony is getting decent reviews among users, and analysts think IBM, because of its successful software history, has a better chance than others at giving Microsoft Office some real competition. "IBM is the 800-pound gorilla in enterprise software, and Microsoft's main rival for information worker productivity tools," wrote IDC analyst Melissa Webster in a research report published Wednesday. "And Symphony addresses the concerns that potential OpenOffice.org users might have had in regard to using open-source software: Symphony is backed by the IBM brand and is provided as a commercially developed and supported product suite." IBM plans to release a second beta of Symphony in the next six to eight weeks with a general availability release of the software to come early next year, Rhodin said. At that time, IBM will offer enterprise support for the suite for a fee, though he acknowledged that IBM doesn't really expect to sell much of that support and is only providing it so enterprises will feel more comfortable implementing Symphony.
593797
Gone are the days when free software could blithely ignore what was happening in the world of proprietary code.  The two approaches are now inextricably intertwined as more and more users and companies choose to run both.  One paradoxical consequence of this is that as free software becomes more widely deployed, Microsoft's impact on it becomes greater.  Against this background, a recent shift in Microsoft's public statements about open source assumes a particular importance.
382153
IBM has taken the lead in lobbying against the adoption of Microsoft's Office Open XML format. But it does support the format in a few products -- a fact that some Microsoft bloggers were happy to point out.
20270
Maarten Balliauw points out a new blog post he's made today showing how to take the methods described in this article on the MSDN and convert it to a more PHP way of thinking, parsing the OpenXML info of the patients.    The scenario for the article is quite simple: Contoso provides a central medical records database. Whenever a physician has to register a new patient, he downloads a Word 2007 document from the Contoso server, fills it out, and uploads it back. Contoso then strips out the necessary data and saves it back in their systems.   This Word 2007 document is crafted around embedded custom XML data, which is displayed and edited using Word 2007. In short: to do the above exercise, you just need to strip out the custom XML and you're done.    Don't worry, Maarten includes his code and a demo to show the functionality in action. Check out the original article for more information as well.
680761
Despite an impassioned speech by a group member criticizing its technical merit, Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) document format will receive the United States' "yes" vote before the ISO standards body this weekend.
294865
Microsoft's Open XML format has won ECMA approval as a standard, giving Redmond, so often the opponent of open-source software, a better footing to compete with OpenOffice.org's OpenDocument Format (ODF).
305284
Research firm Burton Group predicts adoption of Microsoft's OOXML file format, regardless of results from ISO standardization bid.
721100
UPDATED - In another carefully timed move to garner support for its document format still under consideration for an international standard, Microsoft today clarified the terms under which use of its Office Open XML format by developers is permitted.
548113
Microsoft-endorsed Open XML Translator project releases downloadable ODF converter.
60236
Blog: It's true that open-source applications and infrastructure don't necessarily play well together today, as Microsoft suggests.  But it's also true that more than enough integration is in place for current market demand.
546577
Microsoft Corp.'s Office Open XML file format won approval from the Ecma International standards body. The vote could make it easier for users and vendors to justify supporting both Open XML and the rival OpenDocument format.
85922
Attendees at the Microsoft 2008 Office System Developer Conference this week are leveraging development capabilities in Office System, but cite issues such as getting used to the new ribbon-based Fluent UI in the 2007 Office release.A sampling of attendees at the San Jose, Calif. event revealed mostly satisfaction with Office System. Most were Microsoft business partners developing applications for Microsoft's SharePoint platform for collaboration and business processes."I bought into it. I'm drinking the KoolAid," said Jeff Modzel, technical architect for SunGard Higher Education."Our customers are colleges and universities and their constituents, which are students. Kids very much want collaborative environments for their classes. SharePoint's an easy solution to that problem," Modzel said.He described Office System as an "excellent" development platform, although he noted difficulties in writing an Excel 2007 add-in prior to getting the newly released Visual Studio 2008 platform.The new ribbon-based Fluent UI in the Office package takes some getting used to, Modzel said. "The first handful of times I used it, I did not like it and the more I used it the more I liked it," he said.Consultants at developer OTB Solutions also mentioned issues with the ribbon. The people who hate it the most are the people who are very familiar with the old Office platform, said Dick Federle, consultant at OTB.? But he still likes the feature. "The neat thing about the ribbon is since it?s context-sensitive, you're only seeing what's important for what you're looking at, at the time, said Federle.Another consultant at OTB gave the ribbon a thumbs-up. "It's become familiar. You can use it and extend it," said OTB consultant Jen Glass.OTB has been using SharePoint as an application development platform. "We saw with the new SharePoint platform that it was actually ready for enterprise applications," Federle said. For example, OTB has developed a health insurance claims auditing system that processes more than 1.5 million transactions a month, he said.Developers, though, must adapt to using configuration capabilities in SharePoint rather than resort to coding, Federle said. "There are a lot of capabilities and a lot of problems you can solve with SharePoint through configuration without having to write any code," he said.At FirstBank, the company is currently running Office XP and is looking to migrate to Visual Studio Tools for Office and Office 2007, said Greg Mestas, distributed applications manager at the company.While features such as the ribbon UI in Office 2007 may make things easier for developers, Mestas is not so sure what the benefit is for end users."Most of our people use Word and Excel, and Word and Excel are still Word and Excel," Mestas said. "They've had a lot of the same features release over release. So the biggest benefit for us [in migrating] is staying on a supported platform, to put it bluntly," he said.The bank is starting a pilot project on SharePoint for office automation. "We're trying to get rid of all that paper and all that manual process and create some workflows and InfoPath forms as a replacement," Mestas said.An official at SharePoint applications developer Consejo applauded Microsoft's Open XML document initiative as a benefit for Office application development."Their whole Open XML is proving to be very comforting to most developers because in the old days, when it was binary, that not necessarily ideal," said Virgil Pate, development manager at Consejo.Also, the ribbon UI makes it simpler to modify the user interface, he said. But Microsoft could have done a better job in migrating users to the ribbon, Pate stressed.Recalling his company's experience with SharePoint, Pate said it is easy to get started developing extensions, but support has been slow, he said.Pate expressed caution about the Office Live platform, in which Microsoft offers online versions of software. While calling Office Live a great idea, Pate wondered about its security and reliability. "If they ever start to go down or start to have lag time, it's going to hurt them," he said.Another developer, Marcin Geborik, of developer Computer Plus of Krakow, Poland, cited good experiences in developing for SharePoint but found difficulty in working with Microsoft Office Project Server."As a matter of fact, Project Server's API is just not good," Geborik said.Meanwhile, Microsoft with version 2 of Office Live Small Business this week restructured the offering, providing users with a free domain for the first year as well as a free Web site. After the first year, the domain costs $14.95.?Subscribers get 100 free e-mail accounts each with 2-2.5GB of storage, as well as services such as contact management.Also, Microsoft with its Unified Communications platform plans to bulk it up with instant messaging capabilities that can find persons linked in a workflow chain.
154370
What Yahoo! can do for Microsoft--and what it can't.
123174
The Open Solutions Alliance, a nonprofit group backed by a number of commercial open source vendors, released a survey on Wednesday that found interoperability is a foremost concern among open source software customers.The group, which includes CollabNet, EnterpriseDB, and others, contended in a statement that if its members overcome interoperability challenges, they stand to &quot;out-Microsoft Microsoft by offering a fully interoperable suite of business tools.&quot;&quot;We think interoperability has to be a core feature [of open source software] from the very beginning,&quot; OSA&#39;s president, Dominic Sartorio, said in an interview. &quot;Most commercial open source companies are finding a good amount of success. But how many opportunities are they leaving on the table because they&#39;re not interoperable?&quot;The OSA singled out Microsoft, as opposed to Oracle or SAP, because its member companies mostly target midmarket customers, according to Sartorio. &quot;We have one common competitor: Microsoft.&quot;OSA derived the study&#39;s findings from a series of forums it held this year in Europe and the United States. It said some 100 people attended the events.Participants cited a variety of interoperability scenarios and concerns, including single sign-on for identity management.Another involved user interface interoperability. &quot;A lot of people try to plug open source projects into an enterprise portal, and they want a unified look and feel,&quot; Sartorio said.Customers also cited cross-platform portability and data integration challenges.In addition, the study found that:-- Lower up-front cost was the most important driver for adoption of open source products, but this was tempered by concerns that spending on support and services would be greater. That feeling in turn was mitigated by a belief among respondents that open source products will become more mature over time and easier to support.-- Few customers cited the ability to customize source code as a selling point for open source applications, preferring instead that it handle their needs out of the box.Sartorio said OSA&#39;s work will continue in 2008. &quot;This is going to be an ongoing effort. We&#39;re scratching the surface here with issues customers brought up in these forums,&quot; he said.