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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.

This article discusses how Microsoft might change their ways and save the company. This particular quote concerns Microsoft support for standards, and their fight to push MS OOXML through ISO as an alternative to ISO approved ODF 1.0.

The thing is, ODF was not designed for the conversion of MSOffice documents, of which there are billions. Nor was ODF designed to be implemented by MSOffice. ODF was designed exactly for OpenOffice, which has a differnet model for impementing basic docuemnt structures than MSOffice.

So a couple of points regardign this highlight:

The first is that IBM's Lotus Symphony is NOT Open Source. IBM ripped off the OpenOffice 1.1.4 code base back when it was dual licensed under both SSSL and LGPL. IBM then closed the source code adding a wealth of proprietary eXtensions (think XForms and Lotus Notes connections). Then IBM released the proprietary Symphony as a free alternative to the original Open Source Community "OpenOffice.org".

If Microsoft had similarly ripped off an open source community, there would be hell to pay.

Another point here is the mistaken assumption that users can easily switch from MSOffice to an on-line product like Google Docs or ZOHO "without having to rip our and replace their entire desktop infrastructure."

This is a ridiculous assumption defied by the facts on the ground. Massqchusetts spent two years trying to migrate to ODF and couldn't do it. Every other pilot study known has experienced the same difficulties!

The thing about Web 2.0 alternatives is that these services can not be integrated into existing business processes and MSOffice workgroup bound activities. The collaborative advantages of Web 2.0 alternatives are disruptive and outside existing workflows, greatly marginalizing their usefulness. IF, and that's a big IF, MSOffice plug-ins were successful in the high fidelity round trip conversion of workflow documents, there could in fact be seamless integration of Web 2.0 services into existing business processes. But that's not the case. As Massachusetts discovered.

It's impossible to harmonize two application specific file formats. The only way to establish an effective compatibility between ODF and OOXML would be to establish a compatibility between OpenOffice and MSOffice.

The problem is that neither ODF or OOXML were developed as generirc file formats. They are both application specific, directly reflecting the particular implementation models of OOo and MSOffice.

Sun and the OASIS ODF TC are not about to compromise OpenOffice feature sets and implmentation methods to improve interop with MSOffice. Sun in particular will protect the innovative features of OpenOffice that are reflected in ODF and stubbornly incompatible with MSOffice and the billions of binary documents. This fact can easily be proven be any review of the infamous "List Enhancement Proposal" that dominated discussions at the OASIS ODF TC from November of 2006 through May of 2007.

So if Sun and the OASIS ODF TC refuse to make any efforts towards compatibility and imporved interop with MSOffice and the billions of binary docuemnts seekign conversion to ODF, then it falls to Microsoft to alter MSOffice. With 550 million MSOffice desktops involved in workgroup bound business processes, any changes would be costly and disruptive. (Much to the glee of Sun and IBM).

IBM in particular has committed a good amount of resources and money lobbying for government mandates establishing ODF as the accepted format. this would of course result in a massively disruptive and costly rip out and replace of MSOffice.

Such are the politics of ODF.