Swimming in the Pensieve

BBC news just posted this article, entitled, Microsoft opens up on file styles; which I presume to actually be speaking to microsoft’s closed, binary, undocumented file formats which they have, heretofore, refused to disclose to the world.

Some snippets from the article really do require some clarification:

• “The initiative covers the Word, Excel and PowerPoint programs from the Office software suite.”
  Looks like the global up-take of OOo has ms worried. Can you say, “losing market share“?
• “The prototype of the first tool to translate between formats will be made available as a free download on 6 July.”
  That’s some serious hang-time, considering that they could have made full ODF support patches available for all versions of mso programs early in May. Full-support patches! Forget this half-@$$ed tool they want to shove-off on you. That’s nothing more than another one of their signature kludges.
• “Microsoft said it started building the software tools in response to requests from government customers.”
  It’s a sure bet that we aren’t referring to Massachusetts. I’ll bet that the move to OOo by Europe, Australia and South America has more to do with forcing ms to support ODF than any request from any US-based state or federal government agency. And the congregation said, “lost market share.”
• “Every PC user knows how careful they have to be when moving important files around because of the incompatibilities between different programs, such as word processors, that do the same job.”
  Every PC user should realize that this is an artificial set of circumstances that microsoft set-up to force them to continue using mso, instead of losing their data to a set of proprietary, binary file formats. The time for microsoft to play nice was about 20 years ago…and they refused to do so then.
• “Both Microsoft and the broader technology industry have been working to remove some of these problems by standardising the ways information is saved so it appears the same when opened by different programs.”
  Fine. Allow me to re-state the request of quite a number of years back: “Bill, Steve, Jim (effectively microsoft); remove your heads from your posteriors and release the full specifications for all microsoft document and media storage formats. Quit intoning ‘innovation’ as a synonym for theft, and let’s get-on with the broader goal of technology for everyone. Oh! And leave Negroponte’s project alone, you greedy, amoralistic ingrates!”
• “Before now, Microsoft and the technology world have chosen to go their own ways.”
  PATENTLY FALSE!
  microsoft has, time and time again, refused to support any standard that they did not develop for any other purpose than to produce a unidirectional migration tool, to enable the consuming public to be sucked into the quagmire of their proprietary data formats.
  A good example is found in the way that microsoft approaches networking:
  Until billy-boy discovered that one could network computer systems, the networking world operated largely upon a set of standards that either, made sense as a long-term data exchange solution, or as an interim solution in anticipation of better solutions–based upon openly specified standards evolved through the concensus process.
  As soon as microsoft started playing-around with networking, we saw some of the most abysmal spit-wad-and-bubble-gum schemes issue-forth from Redmond; which existed solely for the purpose of doing things differently from the way the rest of the world does them.
  I could have dealt with it if the microsoft-way was a better way; but it almost invariably turned-out to be the absolutely worst way to do things.
• “Specifically, the tools will make it possible to save and work with files using the Open Document format - a specification developed by the open source community as an alternative to the proprietary formats used by large software firms.”
  Yes. One that microsoft swore never to support in any manner; claiming the various mso formats to be vastly superior. It seems that Steve Jobs has no corner on the market of making the most transparently ignorant statements with respect to technology.
• “Microsoft has been working towards a more open way of formatting documents based around the Extensible Markup Language (XML).”
  Nice statement, but completely false. Microsoft’s peculiar XML document format was not fully documented, and held the specter of the usual curse of proprietary extensions from Redmond (has everybody forgotten ms’s attempt at proprietary extensions to the public Internet protocols?). The true purpose for MS-XML was to attempt to kill ODF on the vine and present the appearance of an interoperable, open document format.
  The fact remains that ODF remains technically superior to the mso formats, in nearly every respect–including openness.
• “Some of the free tools will be add-ins for older versions of the programs in the Office suite, said Microsoft.”
  ms is dragging its feet, hoping for the inferior, ms-XML to make it through the ECMA process. If it–by some stroke of collective stupidity–does; it’s off to ISO for the next review. It will be at that time that msft dumps ODF–unless it can be seen that they will lose oodles of money in doing so.
  In any case, look for proprietary-spin and sabotage in the msft-supported ODF circles. It will, eventually, happen.
• “Prototypes of the translation tools will be made available via the SourceForge website which allows anyone to participate in the software development process.”
  Are we talking the full source code, here? Given msft’s dismal history, I tend to think this isn’t the case.
• “The Microsoft-led project is being carried out with three other companies - French firm Clever Age, Aztecsoft in India and Dialogika in Germany.”
  Three patseys to blame when the msft ODF support flops? I really need to look into that bit of collusion a bit deeper.

Don’t forget that microsoft swore not to support ODF in any way, shape, or form. This smacks of just another of their face-saving moves, to buy time for ms-XML to make it through ECMS. After that, I’ll wager that all bets are off for a fully-open, above board ms-ODF implementation.