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Is this the wrath of Sutor? Last week he threw the Linux desktop under the bus. And now this? No wonder @rcweir has shut down the slime machine.
excerpt: IBM has essentially declared war on the technical standards process. The words seem supportive enough, but when you read between them, you can see that a systematic round of arm-twisting is likely about to happen.
Anyone who knows tech is used to the dance that standard setting is. Experts from various companies serve on the committees, each with a sense of what ought to work “best” and trying to wrangle decisions in their direction. This is competitive dominance in action and the stakes are high. That’s what makes Big Blue’s more-collegial-than-thou stance so amusing, with the following “tenets”:
An honest misunderstanding? Hardly! Play the tape! ... A response to David Berlind relating to false claims made by IBM and the W3C regarding direct correspondence concerning CDF being used as an interchange format.
Instead of arguing about who said what when, let's just go to the record and see exactly what the W3C's Doug Schepers said to us in an eMail introducing himself. Keep in mind that we did not contact the W3C or Mr. Schepers. The following eMail was most welcome, but entirely unsolicited.
Great post exposing the sanctimonious bag of blather Rob Weir. Jesper calls out Rob Weir, exposing the deceitful tactics Wier uses to destroy individuals and corporate competitors, all the while posing as an arrogant and self righteous arbiter of interop and document expertise. This is very funny stuff. Especially where Rob joins in, defending his arrogant bloviating through personal attacks on anyone who might disagree with him. I called him a liar, and i've got mountains of eMails, non-disclosure agreements and meeting notes/schedules to prove it. Facing an avalanche of evidence proving his lack of candor, and inspite of ethics challenge that has become synonymous with his name, Rob soldiers on with even more slander, lies and inuendo. Very funny
I posted a lengthy comment here summarizing a few of the more glaring aspects of my relationship with Rob Weir and IBM. It's very much a response to the devastating Rob Weir post, "Cracks in the Foundation".
Good article from Aaron Ricadela. The focus is on Java, Sun's hardware-Server business, and Oracle's business objectives. No mention of OpenOffice or ODf though. There is however an interesting quote from IBM regarding the battle between Java and Microsoft .NET. Also, no mention of a OpenOffice-Java Foundation that would truly open source these technologies.
<br><br>
When we were involved with the Massachusetts Pilot Study and ODF Plug-in proposals, IBM and Oracle lead the effort to open source the da Vinci plug-in. They put together a group of vendors known as "the benefactors", with the objective of completing work on da Vinci while forming a patent pool - open source foundation for all OpenOffice and da Vinci source. This idea was based on the Eclipse model.<br><br>
One of the more interesting ideas coming out of the IBM-Oracle led "benefactors", was the idea of breaking OpenOffice into components that could then be re-purposed by the Eclipse community of developers. The da Vinci plug-in was to be the integration bridge between Eclipse and the Microsoft Office productivity environment. Very cool. And no doubt IBM and Oracle were in synch on this in 2006. The problem was that they couldn't convince Sun to go along with the plan.
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Sun of course owned both Java and OpenOffice, and thought they could build a better ODF plug-in for OpenOffice (and own that too). A year later, Sun actually did produce an ODF plug-in for MSOffice. It was sent to Massachusetts on July 3rd, 2007, and tested against the same set of 150 critical documents da Vinci had to successfully convert without breaking. The next day, July 4th, Massachusetts announced their decision that they would approve the use of both ODF and OOXML! The much hoped for exclusive ODF requirement failed in Massachusetts exactly because Sun insisted on their way or the highway. <br><br>
Let's hope Oracle can right the ship and get OpenOffice-ODF-Java back on track.
<br><br>
<i>"......To gain Sun's software assets, Oracle also has to take
History of the PC that debunks media myths concernign IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Intel, Compaq, HP and the all important Phoenix-Loyd's of London reverse engineering with legal insurance of the IBM copyrighted ROM BIOS
Great article from the Universal Interoperability Council arguing the case for CDF as a universally interoperable format capable of fully representing desktop productivity environment documents. The UIC arguments are of course opposed by IBM and the lawyer for OASIS, Andy Updegrove.
In late 2007, an article by OASIS attorney Andy Updegrove claimed that W3C Compound Document Formats: [i] are non-editable formats; [ii] are not designed for conversions to other formats; and [iii] are therefore unsuitable as office formats. Updegrove could not have been more wrong.
But unfortunately, the erroneous Updegrove article was widely publicized by the usual occupants of the IBM cheering section (1) in the stadium where the latest big vendor game for the Incompatible File Format Cup is being played, IFFC Games Stadium.
<p>Will the real universal document format please stand up! Comments on the recent article posted by the Universal Interoperability Council: <i>"Putting Andy Updegrove to bed without his supper".</i></p>
<p>The UIC article is well worth your time. It is extremely well referenced and researched. The arguments put forth counter claims by IBM and OASIS that the W3C's CDF format can not be used to represent desktop productivity environment documents. Not surprisingly, IBM and OASIS argue that the OpenOffice specific ODF is the only alternative to Microsoft Office specific OOXML.</p>
<p>The UIC argues that the full range of MSOffice legacy binary documents and emerging XML documents can fully be represented in CDF - something that not even the most ardent of ODF jihadists would claim as an ODF capabilitiy. The truth is that ODF was not designed for the conversion of MSOffice binary and xml documents.</p>
This site is now live, although there's a ton of customization and configuration work to be done. But we might as well kick off by reprinting a comment I unsuccessfully attempted to post on IBM vice president Bob Sutor's blog today.
I'm flattered that my post was the apparent triggering event for Sutor's announcement later in the day that he will now only allow comments from people who use their "real names."
"IBM have asked governments to have an open-source, exclusive purchasing policy," Tsilas said. "Our competitors have targeted this one product — mandating one document format over others to harm Microsoft's profit stream."
"It's a new way to compete," Tsilas said. "They are using government intervention as a way to compete. It's competing through regulation, because you couldn't compete technically."
Under a strategy called "Beyond Office," IBM is developing several technologies to make Symphony an extensible development platform for business applications and Web-based document editors.
Rather than compete head-to-head with Microsoft Office, IBM's strategy is to make documents act like "containers" for information within workflow and collaboration applications, according to IBM executives.
The plan also calls for IBM to make documents based on the Open Document standard available through Web browsers using Adobe Flash or HTML. On Wednesday, IBM opened a Web site called Bluehouse where small business people can access hosted Web applications for sharing documents.
On the revelation that some of IBM's products would support a document format that it officially, adamantly opposes, Hiser is not surprised one bit. IBM and Sun have both had "the magic blueprints" to Microsoft's document formats, including Open XML, for the past several years, Hiser said.
With that key technical interoperability information, "how could you not expect IBM to start coding around OOXML?" he asked.
Events have played out in the media and in the blogosphere over the last couple of weeks that represent a breakdown of some of those anti-OpenXML arguments that have been played back so frequently over the last year.
Arguments that there is a lack of demand for Open XML, the specification is too complex to implement, the specification can’t be deployed cross platform and the long running but baseless claim that the Ecma-376 specification might be encumbered by IPR and patent threats all appear to have been cast aside as big blue steps up to meet the demands of their own customers and the market in general.
Here is a blow by blow review of the relevant activity over the last two weeks…
Well, if that's IBM's plan they're going to need more than ODF, that's for sure - and that brings us to the announcement I've been wondering about:
IBM favors ODF as a file format because it is "truly open" and technically elegant, Heintzman said.
But IBM will support Open XML, which is the current document format in Office 2007, in its Lotus collaboration and portal products. IBM already supports older versions of Office.
I feel a Pamela Jones moment coming on .... there it is, as plain as day for the world to see, Doug Heintzman breaks through all IBM's doublespeak and hypocrisy and admits it.
I don't know about "Beyond Office" as a plan, I think the real game here is "Beyond ODF"
This was a day long event demonstrating for all the world to see that there is no such thing as ODF interoperability. The exchange of documents between OpenOffice 2.0, KOffice and Lotus Symphony is pathetic.
The results of the day long event were so discouraging that Rob Weir took to threatening developers who attended in his efforts to keep a lid on it. I think this is called damage control :). From what i hear, it was a very long day for Rob. but that's no excuse for his threatening anyone who might publicly talk about these horrific interop problems. The public expects these problems to be fixed. But how can they be fixed if the issues can't be discussed publicly?
- garyedwards on 2008-01-10Lotus Symphony is based on the OpenOffice 1.1.4 code base that IBM ripped off back when OpenOffice was under dual license - SSSL and LGPL.
- garyedwards on 2008-01-10
In e-mailed comments, Heintzman said his criticisms about the situation have been made openly.
"We think that Open Office has quite a bit of potential and would love to see it move to the independent foundation that was promised in the press release back when Sun originally announced OpenOffice," he said. "We think that there are plenty of existing models of communities, [such as] Apache and Eclipse, that we can look to as models of open governance, copyright aggregation and licensing regimes that would make the code much more relevant to a much larger set of potential contributors and implementers of the technology....
"Obviously, by joining we do believe that the organization is important and has potential," he wrote. "I think that new voices at the table, including IBM's, will help the organization become more efficient and relevant to a greater audience.... Our primary reason for joining was to contribute to the community and leverage the work that the community produces.... I think it is true there are many areas worthy of improvement and I sincerely hope we can work on those.... I hope the story coming out of Barcelona isn't a dysfunctional community story, but rather a [story about a] potentially significant and meaningful community with considerable potential that has lots of room for improvement...."
Despite some efforts by the two camps, ODF and OOXML are, for the most part, not interoperable, meaning documents that are created in one format cannot be successfully read by applications based on the other format.
According to Novell's vice president of developer platforms, Miguel de Icaza, the situation won't change in the foreseeable future.
good article from Eric Lai of ComputerWorld. Written on the eve of the infamous Barcelona OpenOffice.org developers conference, Eric argues that OOo isn't a real open source community. Instead, OOo is a owned and operated by Sun.
One of the more important control points Sun insists on is that of commit rights and project managers. Only Sun employees have these rights and can hold these important positions..
The more important point is made by Marbux (below: ODF is an application specific format designed exactly for OpenOffice. While other applications might partially implement ODF, interoperability and successful ODF document exchange require the OOo code base!
From Marbux:
This is the only article I've found to date where IBM (Heintzman) flat out says IBM wants changes in OOo licensing, more in line with the Eclipse and Apache licenses. See pg. 2. Significant because it feeds the meme that IBM's own ODF-based development goal is proprietary closed source built on the OOo code base, e.g., Symphony, et cet.
And that has huge signficance once you realize that ODF is not the real standard; the OOo code base is the real ODF standard. Look around the world and you see that ODF adoption decisions by governments are all in reality decisions to go with StarOffice, OOo, or OOo clones. I haven't, for example, seen a single instance where a government decided to ride with KOffice. Why would they, with the interop issues between KOffice and OOo? The fact that OOo's code base is the real ODF standard will figure strongly in the comments. Couple it with Sun's iron-fisted control of the OOo code base, and you have vendor lock-in with a Microsoft partner.
But with 70 developers committed in China, where developers salaries are inexpensive, IBM will soon be in a position to threaten to fork the OOo code base using proprietary extensions. Is that their real tactic to force changes in licensing and governance for OOo? I thought we would have heard by now that IBM acquired rights to OOo 2.x from Sun, but we haven't. So what was IBM's leverage to take over the ODF TC? Sun willingly surrendered the chairmanship. Searching for alternative scenarios here ...
BTW, I downloaded Symphony and took it for a quick test drive. I'm not impressed by the UI in the word processor. And I was really disappointed (but not surprised) to see that they haven't included any WPD conversion filters. (I was hoping I'd be able to convert my WPD to ODF using Symphony and get a better conversion than OOo.)
But in short, Symphony is far from a killer app. And I'm still amazed that IBM would publicize just how few downloads they got in the first week after release. I uninstalled it right after my first look. It's that pathetic.
Well well well. We knew that IBM had access to the secret binary blueprints back in 2006. Now we know that Sun ALSO had access!
And why is this important? In June of 2006, Massachusetts CIO Louis Gutierrez asked the OpenDocument Foundation's da Vinci Group to work with IBM on developing the da Vinci ODF plug-in clone of Microsoft's OOXML Compatibility Pack plug-in. When we met with IBM they were insistent that the only way OASIS ODF could establish sufficient compatibility with MSOffice and the billions of binary documents would be to have the secret blueprints open.
Even after we explained to IBM that da Vinci uses the same internal conversion process that the OOXML plug-in used to convert binaries, IBM continued to insist that opening up the secret binaries was a primary objective of the OASIS ODF community.
For sure this was important to IBM and Sun, but the secret binaries were of no use to us. da Vinci didn't need them. What da Vinci needed instead was a subset of ODF designed for the conversion of those billions of binary documents! A need opposed by Sun.
Sun of course would spend the next year developing their own ODF plug-in for MSOffice. But here's the thing: it turns out that Sun had complete access to the secret binary blueprints dating back to 2006!!!!!!
So even though IBM and Sun have had access to the blueprints since 2006, they have been unable to provide effective conversions to ODF!
This validates a point the da Vinci group has been trying to make since June of 2006: the problem of perfecting a high fidelity conversion between the billions of binaries and ODF has nothing to do with access to the secret binary blueprints. The real issue is that ODF was NOT designed for the conversion of those binary documents.
It is true that one could eXtend ODF to achieve the needed compatibility. But one has to be very careful before taking this route. The Sun - ODF covenant not to sue specifically exempts eXtensions to ODF not involving Sun! Meaning, if the interoperable subset of ODF was designed and implemented without Sun-OASIS participation and approval, the covenant not to sue does not apply. Developers beware! You cannot safely eXtend ODF without Sun's permission.
Here is the relevant text from Sun's covenant: "Sun irrevocably covenants that, subject solely to the reciprocity requirement described below, it will not seek to enforce any of its enforceable U.S. or foreign patents against any implementation of the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0 Specification, or of any subsequent version thereof ("OpenDocument Implementation") in which development Sun participates to the point of incurring an obligation, as defined by the rules of OASIS, to grant (or commit to grant) patent licenses or make equivalent non-assertion covenants."
The obscurity of intent is masked in clever legalese. Which means, bring your legal team if you want to eXtend ODF, and prepare to argue.
My point is that this covenant could have been written clear and direct to say that Sun will not sue anyone for any reason related to ODF. But they didn't do that.
People will of course wonder why ODF is so bad that it might a as well be ZERO interop? The answer to this question is complicated, but a good place to start is to observe that, just as OOXML is an XML encoded dump of MSOffice in-memory-binary-representation, ODF is an XML encoded dump of OpenOffice/StarOffice in-memory-binary-representation.
The interop problem truly kicks in at the level of specifying this encoding. The Ecma and OASIS technical committees are responsible for fully specifying the OOXML and ODF. This means a complete syntax and semantic description needed to properly implement the specs. ODF and OOXML share one very big fault; the presentation-layout layer (or styles) is not fully specified! We have the syntax but not the semantics describing how layout works. This is particularly problematic in that both ODF and OOXML are application specific dumps. While they each do a good job separating content from presentation, neither fully specifies the presentation layer. Nor is the presentation layer portable in the sense that a CDF XHTML + CSS separation is portable.
And it is the presentation layer that binds the formats to their originating applications. MSOffice has one way of implementing basic document structures like lists, fields, tables, sections and page dynamics, and, OpenOffice has another. That these application differences are embodied in the formats creates an enormous interoperability problem. Applications can exchange content, but break when trying to interpret another applications presentation-layout layer. Especially when that presentation layer is under specified!
There were three aspects of ODF 1.0 that were under specified: numbered lists, formulas, and styles (presentation-layout). ODF 1.2 attempts to fix the formula problem, but does nothing for styles. The numbered lists "interop" problem was not fixed, but exacerbated.
So even though the binary blueprints were released two years ago to Sun and IBM, we have yet to see any improvement in conversion fidelity able to crack the lock MSOffice workgroup-workflow business processes have in the marketplace. Writing a subset of ODF enabling us to achieve that high fidelity conversion has a legal cloud hanging over the process. And all of these concerns are shadowed by the fact that neither OOXML or ODF have fully specified their presentation layers!
No wonder the W3C's formats are attracting so much attention.
~ge~
- garyedwards on 2008-01-20The second issue we had feedback on was an interest in the mapping from the binary formats into the Open XML formats. The thought here was that the most effective way to help people with this was to create an open source translation project to allow binary documents (.doc; .xls; .ppt) to be translated into Open XML. So we proposed the creation of a new open source project that would map a document written using the legacy binary formats to the Open XML formats. TC45 liked this suggestion, and here was the TC45 response to the national body comments:
We believe that Interoperability between applications conforming to DIS 29500 is established at the Office Open XML-to- Office Open XML file construct level only.
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