[OpenISO] Fwd: The Deprecated "Smoke Screen" of MS Office Open XML (OOXML)

[Henrik Sundberg]

2007/12/29, Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch>:
> Henrik Sundberg <storangen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > 2007/12/28, Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch>:
> > > However I don't think that it's justified to also attack the people
> > > who are members of ECMA TC45 simply because their employer is
> > > interested in having a public-domain document with useful
> > > interoperability information.  I think that the move to declare that
> > > revulsive stuff "deprecated" comes from this kind of people.
> >
> > But isn't this a smoke screen anyway?
> > Microsoft will use the deprecated stuff.
>
> Calling it "deprecated" with Microsoft's agreement is a kind of
> promise that Microsoft would ensure that at least starting with
> the next major release of their software, at least new documents
> don't use those features.

But wasn't the reason for using OOXML instead of ODF that the
"billions and billions" of old documents would be possible to convert?
There is no reason for an OOXML that is not backwards compatible, is it?
Will Microsoft implement a free OOXML 1.0 -> 2.0 converter, usable bu
those who don't own an Office license? That can be executed on Linux?

> The practical value of this is a somewhat increased likelihood
> of Microsoft actually doing that (because they're going to get
> negative publicity if they continue using officially deprecated
> features of their own format), plus a significantly increased
> likelihood of other software authors not using the deprecated
> features but rather the recommended alternative methods with
> better interoperability properties.

Microsoft doesn't seem to be that publicity driven. Have you read the
Vista license?
They give themselves too much control over your computer. And the
original SPP, wow.
It just increases the lock in. Interoperability was only wanted by
Microsoft, when they were the runner up.

> > No one else will be able to render the documents correctly.
>
> Whether what one can do with a document is good enough for a
> given purpose, that depends on the purpose.  For some purposes,
> what can be done with the available interoperability information
> is good enough, for other purposes it isn't.  Every small
> concession from Microsoft at least potentially increases the set of
> use cases in which real-world businesses no longer feel a need to
> effectively enforce a (written or unwritten) "Microsoft Office only"
> policy, and is therefore worth fighting for.

I think the change only will change "Microsoft Office only" from
written to unwritten.
If you want to be sure, you have to use MS Office.

> I view these steps of deprecation as such small concessions.
> They don't change the big picture that OOXML clearly doesn't
> deserve to be called a "standard", but I view them as something
> positive anyway.

In my opinion these concessions will only lead to lock in. I think the
Microsoft PR spin on this will make a lot of damage to those that want
document formats to be truly standardized.

> > As I understand it, we are worse off than when reverse engineering the
> > binary formats.
>
> How so?

Ok. Entering hearsay mode. I read about OOXML patents a long time ago.
Somehow they had patented the procedures too handle OOXML, not OOXML
itself. That way they would be able to sue anyone implementing tools
that reads/generates OOXML files.
The old binary formats have no patents involved. Those formats are
never described and oft changed instead. I reckon OOXML is a pending
patent bomb.

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