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The laziest type of blog post is one that just quotes a bunch of other people and adds little value in its own right, I tend to use this blog as a combination of a place to document some of my own views and a place to store my own notes as various events of interest take place, so I know that from time to time I’m guilty of over quoting.

This post is a combination of the two. Whenever Microsoft makes an announcement that is blog worthy there are generally two types of post that get generated, initially there is quick commentary on the announcement itself, but then shortly afterwards more considered words start to appear as people take time to think though the details.

This morning I thought it might be worthwhile bundling together some of the other posts that are out there, positive and negative.

So, here are a few of the more notable entries that are floating around this morning, for those interested in the topic of Microsoft and our support for both interoperability and document formats I think this makes for a reasonable round up of many of the views that are out there.

In each case I have pulled out a small quote from the posts I have linked, I would encourage you to follow the links and read the whole post though – there will always be more to digest than just my brief extract.

OpenMalaysiaBlog, Yoon Kit Yong – “Microsoft Office Supports ODF? AYE!”

However, I am an optimist, and I do hope that the Microsofties driving ODF support in core Microsoft applications are sincere in their intent. So far, I don’t see too much of the smarmy doublespeak this time in their press release, and I really applaud the guys for that. Although they tried to dilute the ODF subject with PDF (didnt they already have that last year?) and XPS (who really uses that?) and UOF (ni hui jiang ODF ma?), the message is quite clear.

So overall, its very encouraging. I hope Microsoft follows through with this announcement, and does not mess it up when they finally release the patch.

Before today, it used to be very hard in taking these statements seriously  …

“…  it is very important that customers have the freedom to choose from a range of technologies to meet their diverse needs.”
-  July 2006Jean Paoli, GM of Interoperability and XML architecture at Microsoft

… but now its definitely reads a lot less hypocritical.

Kudos Microsofties, and I wish your team and efforts well

Strong and supportive words indeed from one of the louder voices driving for ODF adoption here in the region. Yoon Kit and Ditesh (two of the principal bloggers at OpenMalaysia) frequently bring a blunt sense of reality to the way that the work that we do across the region is received by the FOSS community.

I’m pretty pleased to see Yoon Kit carrying a sense of optimism around what we’re doing here, but would encourage them both to keep our feet held close to the fire as we deliver on the promises we’re making!

NOOOXML.org – “Microsoft finally playing nice?”

A press release from Microsoft now promises native ODF support in the next service pack for Office 2007, while full support for the ISO version of OOXML will have to wait until the next major release of Office. Have they finally realized that their “format war” was a lost cause, and that the formal ISO acceptance of DIS29500 was a victory only on paper? If this is an honest attempt to play nice, it is a very welcome move. Of course, only time will tell if they will deliver on this promise, but the tone has changed dramatically, and this might actually be a good time to celebrate. We wish to welcome Microsoft to the party, even though they are very late and managed to make a fool of themselves in the process of trying to fight this outcome in every way possible. Had they only made this move a year ago, it would have saved many people a lot of trouble, including themselves. It is probably safe to assume that it was the strong opposition that forced them to the ODF table.

Pretty encouraging words from a site that was originally set up to oppose the work that we did to standardize the OpenXML file format. It is unfortunate that this is still seen as some kind of “Document Format War”. I still hold a strong view that different document formats serve different purposes. Our announcement yesterday is demonstrable of that point of view, support for ODF adds to the 20+ formats that Microsoft Office already supports, and as additional customer demand comes forth I would not be surprised to see that list continue to grow over the years.

Arnaud Le Hors – “My take on why Microsoft finally decided to support ODF”

One trick they could try and pull for instance would be to put just enough support for ODF to claim that they support it but not enough for people to really use it systematically. They could then tell customers who complain something isn’t working that it’s because ODF isn’t powerful enough, and if they want the full power of Office they need to use OOXML. That’d be a sneaky way to fulfill the ODF requirement set by customers and then force people into using OOXML anyway. Sneaky but not unlike Microsoft unfortunately. So, beware.

Reading assumptions about why we’re doing what we’re doing is always fun, I would like to think that just about everything possible is on the table and out in public view at this point, anything beyond that is just conjecture.

Maybe we’re also planning to take total control of the worlds chocolate supply, after all we do have an office in Switzerland. Next time I’m attending a planning meeting in our secret pacific island volcano I’ll ask around and see what I can uncover.

Francois Ragnet – “Microsoft opens up Office to open document formats”

Interesting to see how Microsoft have moved away from their proprietary document formats, which were previously considered as their “crown jewels”, and now focus their innovation efforts on the applications themselves. More surprising though, is the fact that Office 2007 will not support OOXML, Microsoft’s own competing format for ODF, which they recently “fast-tracked” through ISO approval. In any event, this is great news for the Future of Documents, as this is a major step towards one open document format for easy interchange between applications.

François raises an interesting point. I totally agree, innovation around office suites in general from now on will come through improvements in usability, accessibility and the role of the suite as a developer platform.

Value of an office suite will increasingly be measured thorough a combination of increased individual and group productivity and the role of that suite in integrated and diverse business processes.

Jesper Lund Stocholm – “No reason anymore to mandate anything but ODF?”

A lot of people are now spinning information about this move pulling the rug under OOXML and that ODF should be mandated everywhere – but nothing could be further from the truth. The reason why we approved OOXML still stands and the incompatible feature-sets of OOXML and ODF did not suddenly become compatible. There are still stuff in OOXML that cannot be persisted in ODF and vice versa. The backwards compatibility to the content in the existing corpus of binary documents is still a core value of OOXML and this incompatibility of ODF has not disappeared. You will still loose information and functionality when you choose to persist an OOXML-file in ODF … just as you would when persisting it to old WordPerfect formats. Insisting that having ODF-support in Microsoft Office (12 SP2) makes the need for OOXML go away is a moot point – since I am sure no one would argue to replace OOXML with TXT – simply because TXT is a supported format in Microsoft Office.

Ditto. Microsoft’s support and commitment to the OpenXML format is as strong as it ever was. As Jesper highlights for Denmark, OpenXML provides functionality that is key for customers, partners and the IT ecosystem as a whole. Support for one document format will never negate the need for another that is designed for a different purpose.

Groklaw, Pamela Jones – “Microsoft supporting ODF? –Close, But No Cigar”

I wish I could wholeheartedly applaud the Microsoft announcement about native support for ODF, but I can’t. Of course, it’s better to have native support for ODF, no matter what motives may have influenced Microsoft’s announcement, and I’m glad about that for the sake of end users. But it hasn’t happened yet. Was the word ‘vaporware’ not coined for Microsoft? In any case, I’m in the “I will believe it when I see it” category when it comes to Microsoft. They’ve earned my caution.

Fair enough Pamela, it is up to us to deliver from here, no disagreement there. Enough said. You might want to look up the word ‘vaporware’ though, it wasn’t coined for Microsoft!

Alex Brown – “Microsoft Moves to Support ODF Standard”

Whatever Microsoft’s motivations, users are set to benefit from a world in which MS Office, easily the most used office software, has aligned itself with open, documented standards. But while announcementsare all well and good the true test of Microsoft’s commitment will be found in the byte-by-byte details of the files that Office reads and writes. ODF lays down some strict rules for how these XML documents must be in order to be conformant, and software exists for testing them – I look forward on this blog to holding the magnifying glass to Microsoft’s efforts to see if what is claimed to be Standard really is so. Success will deserve praise; failure will deserve correction.

Alex has an interesting (as in genuinely interesting, not as in curious) role to play in the evolution of both OpenXML and ODF thorough his position in SC34. Ultimately ISO/JTC1 SC34 will be the working group who not only lead both the evolution of these formats, but also help the world understand what interoperability between formats actually means and how it can be best achieved.

Sheri McLeish – “Microsoft Crashing The Party: Announces Intent to Support ODF And Join Standards Boards”

Wow. Microsoft opened up today, taking a nearly 180-degree turn to announce its intent to support ODF, PDF, and XPS. Overall, this is a great, positive move. While unexpected, it’s not surprising. Microsoft has been moving toward more open standards, like with its recent DAISY XML initiative. But it’s also a no-brainer. Sticking exclusively with its competing Open XML was divisive, complicating IT’s efforts to leverage the benefits that open source XML provides.

This is back to that point around the value of Microsoft Office supporting multiple standards. What I see in Microsoft’s moves is a position that is driven by market and customer demands. Following needs of the community of companies and people who use our software seems to be the right route to take, and that is really what the addition of ODF to the list of supported formats in Microsoft Office is all about. 

Glyn Moody – “Microsoft and ODF: Has Hades Gone Sub-Zero?”

As Microsoft well knows, these markets are where most of the future growth can be expected. If they are bent on ODF adoption regardless of ISO ratification for OOXML, Microsoft will effectively be shut out of the hottest markets unless it builds some bridges (one of its favourite metaphors at the moment). Supporting this view is the fact that Microsoft’s latest announcement also includes news support for the less well-known (in the West, at least) Chinese national document file format standard, Uniform Office Format (UOF).

Again – more commentary on following customer and market demand. UOF (Uniform Office Format) is a big deal for us here in Asia, our neighbor to the north is keen to see it as the principal format for documents produced in China.

Rick Jeliffe – “Success has a thousand fathers…”

Developers/standarizers on both sides need to be whacked on their heady heads with a mackeral that Not Invented Here is not acceptable. I think people accept that until now there have been reasonable excuses: that Office could not implement ODF before it existed, that Office could not use ODF as its default format until ODF had even minimal features and completeness, that OpenFormula could be syntactically incompatible with everyone else’s spreadsheet syntax, that ODF’s graphics could cherry pick SVG without really providing actual SVG compatibility (SVG Tiny please?), and so on. (Actually, I don’t mean NIH in the sense that there absolutely cannot be multiple syntaxes or technologies for the same thing if there is some historical reason or feature difference, I am primarily talking about rejecting features merely because of their provenance.) The state of the schemas for DIS 29500 mark 1 and ODF 1.0 just reveal their level of maturity and production-level adoption, and there is nothing wrong with being an adolescent. ODF and OOXML will grow up, and they need the partisan spirit and the NIH attitude to be kept under control to do so.

I left this one until last because I think it goes to the heart of where we all need to go, and how we should think about operating from here.

Choice in document formats isn’t a war, it is a discussion, different people and groups hold different views and none can be considered wrong. Participation in the development of ODF and OpenXML provides a platform for these discussions, and a forum for resolution of the technical, political and in some cases ideological issues that need to be resolved.

I personally think we’re on a good path at the moment, but will agree with Pamela’s comment that it is principally up to us to deliver from here…