Let's pretend you're Microsoft
You just burned untold dollars and massive amounts of public credibility to force OOXML through an ISO vote, facing public accusations of bribery, corruption and documented evidence of business misrepresentation. But you got your way, and the Office 2007 XML format was approved as an ISO "transitional" standard with exactly ONE change that materially affected your product.
Before the IS29500 standard is even published, you decide to announce that your next service pack will support reading and writing of ODF 1.1, a standard which you have done everything in your power to attack and ridicule for the last two years. You've also joined OASIS, the consortium body responsible for the maintenance of ODF, who is currently working on ODF 1.2
Now, some notes about this...
There is nothing worse for Microsoft than for IS29500 to evolve to improve interoperability. Improving interoperability both puts their monopoly at risk AND increases engineering costs for Office. It's a lose/lose proposition.
ODF 1.1 is an unofficial standard. OASIS deliberately didn't submit it through the PAS process at ISO because they didn't want to flood the pipeline when they knew that 1.2 was the version that would be the big win.
ODF 1.2 is in draft mode. One of the challenges they face right now is to finish defining OpenFormula, and they had hoped to leverage the IS29500 spec to do that, but alas, it turns out that there are deep problems with this.
Microsoft also announced that they will not be making Office 2007 compliant with IS29500 until the next major release.
So my question, dear reader, is: why? Microsoft has never, ever, in the history of the company, done anything out of a sense of corporate ethics. Clearly they aren't doing this as a magnanimous gesture of good sportsmanship with OASIS following their hard-fought ISO vote victory.
So... why?
UPDATE: Apparently I'm not the only one to ask this exact same question.
Comments
Posted by Carl Tyler At 09:14:30 PM On 05/21/2008 | - Website - |
Do you think that part of the tactic will be to try to hopelessly deadlock ODF 1.2? It shouldn't be hard. They could offer the various Excel algorithms for YEARFRAC in source code and send that specification into a tailspin for an extra 6 months.
The amazing part is the "we won't deliver IS29500 support until our next major version." After all their campaigning, does this hit anyone else in the face like a brick? That is some serious chutzpah.
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 09:25:48 PM On 05/21/2008 | - Website - |
Posted by Ed Maloney At 05:21:59 AM On 05/22/2008 | - Website - |
Posted by Kerr At 06:08:34 AM On 05/22/2008 | - Website - |
Posted by Nathan T. Freeman At 07:12:40 AM On 05/22/2008 | - Website - |
I realise that a little research would probably answer these questions, but it wouldn't be the internet if I couldn't just wildly pontificate without checking first
Posted by Kerr At 08:15:42 AM On 05/22/2008 | - Website - |
There are all those Apple users, the *nix servers.
Charges from the EU commision, all those bigger countries from the emerging markets labeled BRICs like China, India and Brasil voted against the Microsoft "standard". I guess its hard to make business, if you have all those political entities as enemies.
Maybe I somehow got too much in an anti-Microsoft bashing camp over the years, but I really believe that they will search for new strategies to generate profits.
One never knows. The one I am using more extensively from the new Office suite, Powerpoint 2007, is no fun to use anyway.
Posted by Axel At 09:53:46 AM On 05/22/2008 | - Website - |
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Posted by Jane At 11:59:38 AM On 05/22/2008 | - Website - |
Posted by steveballmer At 11:41:28 PM On 05/24/2008 | - Website - |