A year ago, many words were written (including by me) on why Microsoft may have chosen Ecma to package Microsoft's Office Open XML formats as a standard. Now that Ecma has finished that project and adopted the result, there's additional data to examine that sheds some light on that question. That will be my topic today, and for the next several entries.
About two weeks ago I wrote a related entry called Ecma Approves OOXML – What Does it all Mean? In that entry, I tried to give an even handed overview (admittedly, as I see it) of how the Ecma approval of Microsoft's XML formats fits into the grand scheme of things. The bottom line was that I did not think that the Ecma action was very significant, given the circumstances under which it had been achieved.
That post elicited the following question from a reader:
Maybe I'm a bit naive . . . but does this mean that Microsoft is trying to get the various standards authorities eating out of their hands - i.e. uncritically approving everything pumped out by the behemoth?
I tried to give that question an even handed response as well – because in fact it's common practice for most companies to engage in the equivalent of what a lawyer would call "forum shopping:" looking for the court and judge they think will most likely rule in her favor. My response therefore read as follows:
For those with an interest in how accessibility can be achieved at the technical level, the go-to expert is Peter Korn (you can find a link to his blog in the “Blog’s I read” list in the right column). Yesterday …
Updated 12:00 ET to include information from the IBM and FSG press releases (both have been appended as well)
Elizabeth Montalbano at ComputerWorld wrote a piece yesterday about a thus far little noticed project with the enigmatic name "Project Missouri." How little noticed? I just tried a Google search of "'project Missouri' IBM ODF" and found…just Elizabeth's article.
What is Project Missouri, and why the odd name? The title of the ComputerWorld article will give a first clue: IBM project aims to help blind use ODF applications. As you will recall, ODF accessibility has been a big issue in Massachusetts, with the community of the disabled, as well as ODF opponents, challenging the Commonwealth's decision to convert to ODF-compliant software products until such time as these products become as accessible as Microsoft Office.
In response, a number of ODF proponents – including IBM – pledged to make ODF not only the equal of, but superior to, Microsoft Office with respect to accessibility. Opponents scoffed, and hence an accessibility project that puckishly borrows its name from the hard to convince midwestern locale that refers to itself as the "Show Me State."
The Missouri Project is only one of a number of ongoing initiatives intended to enable improved accessibility for ODF compliant products. OASIS, which developed and maintains ODF, is supporting a number of these efforts. Version 1.1 of ODF, which has already been adopted as a Committee Standard at OASIS, already includes features based on these efforts. This new project supported by IBM specifically addresses the needs of visually impaired users, and is developing APIs (application programming interfaces) that have been named "IAccessible2." As reported by Montalbano:
The news on the ODF front continues to flow, as the air wars continue between ODF and OOXML. This morning's email includes a message from OpenOffice.org's Louis Suarez-Potts to those interested in the progress of OOo's ODF compliant, open source software suite. That message announces the third OOo release of 2006, versioned as OpenOffice.org 2.1. The following is taken from Louis's email:
There are a number of important new features for users in this release. The presentations application, Impress, now supports multiple monitors, with the presenter choosing where to display the presentation. The Calc spreadsheet has an improved HTML export capability, using styles to better recreate in a browser the appearance of the original spreadsheet. The database application, Base, has a number of enhancements, including improved support for Microsoft's Access product. The popular Quickstarter is now available for GNU/Linux users as a GTK application. OpenOffice.org's impressive language support is enhanced with five more localisations.
Version 2.1 also provides new support for developers, extending version control to extensions, simplifying the management of packages for those developing extensions. And, for those wanting to take advantage of new features as they become available between releases, 2.1 includes "an improved on-line notifier, which checks regularly and informs users if a new version is available (users may choose to disable this option at any time)."
Updated 4:45 PM ET
As expected, Ecma, the European-based standards body chosen by Microsoft to fast-track its Office Open XML standard to ISO, voted to adopt OOXML. The vote was 20 to 1, with IBM casting the only negative vote (as disclosed by IBM VP of Open Standards and Open Source Bob Sutor earlier in the day). What exactly does the favorable vote mean? Let's try the Q&A format again to sort it all out.
Q: Why did Microsoft not send OOXML directly to ISO?
A: First, let's clear up one thing for accuracy's sake: while people commonly refer to ISO approval as a shorthand convenience, the actual approving body is a joint committee formed years ago by both ISO, the International Organization for Standardization (right – it's not an acronym) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) to address the then-emerging area of information technology standards. That committee is called the Joint Technical Committee, or JTC1. So it's actually joint ISO/IEC approval that Microsoft wants for OOXML, to gain parity with OASIS's ODF document format. ODF was approved for all practical purposes last May, and was formally published just a few days ago.
Q: Right. So why did Microsoft not send OOXML directly to JTC1?
A Glad you asked. ISO and IEC are not standards development organizations as such, but rather global bodies that have historically approved standards that were generated at the national level by organizations that were accredited for that purpose by bodies recognized by ISO and IEC. In the US, for example, the accrediting body is ANSI – the American National Standards Institute. As more and more IT standards were created outside that system, by consortia, ISO/IEC began to accept those standards as well. But in either case, a specification must first be vetted, approved, and presented by an organization recognized by ISO/IEC. Only after that occurs will ISO/IEC present a specification to their global membership of nationally representative members for consideration.
David Berlind posted an interesting interview yesterday with Justin Steinman, Novell's director of marketing. In that exchange, David focused particularly on how Novell might (or might not) be asked by Microsoft to help it support ODF at some point in the future. To the extent that Steinman had any actual knowledge on that topic, he not surprisingly declined to show any cards.
Along the way, though, David asked and Steinman answered two interesting questions relating to Novell's own ODF plans. Here's the first, expanding on Novell's statement in its press release that it would offer its conversion code in open source code to OpenOffice.org, as I discussed yesterday:
ZDNet: ...I was looking at the wording of your announcement and trying to better understand exactly what's going on here. Is there going to be some code that opens and closes and saves OO-XML in OpenOffice.org? Is Novell going to develop that code and then contribute all of it [to the OpenOffice.org open source project] so that any OpenOffice.org user can use it the same way, whether it's Novell's version of OpenOffice.org or another one?
I posted an update to this story this morning, which you can find here.
Things are changing very fast in the ODF landscape right now: Last week, Corel announced it would provide limited support by mid-2007 for ODF (open, view and edit of text only – but not save), and greater support for OOXML – presentations and spreadsheets as well as text. Yesterday, Carol Sliwa at ComputerWorld released a detailed story on Microsoft's anti-ODF lobbying in Massachusetts. Later this week, Ecma will formally vote to adopt OOXML and submit it to ISO for consideration (expect things to pick up on a number of fronts when that happens).
And yesterday, Novell announced that it would support OOXML in its version of OpenOffice, to a showing of great hostility by many in the open source community who were already incensed over Novell's recent collaboration agreement with Microsoft (see, for example, Pamela Jones piece at Groklaw, titled Novel "Forking" OpenOffice.org). For a different perspective, see David Berlind's take at ZDNet on the same news.
I don't want to let the Novell announcement go by without comment. At the same time, I don't want to get down into the weeds regarding whether Novell is selling out (and if so, who it is they are selling out, and to what effect), or how this latest decision may factor into the long-term strategy of either Novell or Microsoft, or affect the fortunes of OOXML. Instead, I'd like to put this latest news in the broader context of all of the ODF developments we have witnessed since August a year ago, when Massachusetts announced the inclusion of ODF in the latest version of its Enterprise Technical Reference Model.
If I pan back and look at this series of events, what I see is an inexorable march of progress by ODF, and the Novell announcement as just the latest in a series of concessions to ODF's importance by companies that might otherwise prefer to see it die rather than flourish.
Carol Sliwa at ComputerWorld has a hat trick of excellent stories just now on ODF in Massachusetts, based on over 300 emails secured under the Massachusetts Public Records Law (the local analogue of the Federal Freedom of Information Act), as well as research into lobbying records and reports. The longest and in some ways most intriguing article focuses on Microsoft's lobbying efforts in Massachusetts, and on State CIO Louis Gutierrez's efforts to counter those efforts. One of the two shorter articles (they will appear as side bars in the print issue) provides details on the various individuals - both Democrat and Republican - as well as associations that Microsoft hired in the last two years to work both sides of the aisle in Massachusetts. The third and final article reports more narrowly on Massachusetts' decision in the summer of 2005 not to approve Microsoft's XML formats as an open standards.
The lobbbying article confirms a number of things I've written previously, including (long ago) that an amendment intended to rob the Information Technology Division (ITD) of much of its ability to set technology policy was intended to pressure the ITD to back off of ODF, and (most recently) that Brian Burke, the Microsoft Regional Director for Public Affairs, was spearheading that effort. Overall, the lengthy article describes in detail how Microsoft sought to bring pressure to bear through its efforts to "educate" legislators in an effort to seek a reversal of a Massachusetts policy that threatened its highly profitable Office suite franchise.
The article relies in large part on a back-channel email correspondence maintained between Massachusetts CIO Louis Gutierrez and Alan Yates, a general manager in Microsoft's worker product management group. Yates, you may remember, was particularly visible as a Microsoft spokesman in late 2005. The article includes a number of disclosures that will be of interest to anyone who has followed the ODF story. For example, in one email, Yates admits that Burke was promoting the amendment, stating, "I am certain that Brian was involved," which Gutierrez not surprisingly found to be objectionable. Sliwa continues:
But Yates claimed that Burke’s intention was “to have a ‘vehicle’ in the legislature” to address a policy that Microsoft viewed as “unnecessarily exclusionary.” Burke’s aim was “not specifically to transfer agency authority,” Yates wrote.
Presumably, this equates to promoting an amendment that could be used to threaten the ITD into backing down on its support for ODF.
In my last blog post, I focused on the fact that Governor-Elect Deval Patrick had named an eight-member technology adviosry group to counsel him during his transition period. One of the members appointed was John Cullinane, a senior stateman of New England technology, and the founder of early software-success Cullinet Software, Inc. Another was Microsoft Regional Director for Public Affairs Brian Burke, who had led the continuing Microsoft effort to persuade Massachusetts not to adopt ODF.
Just now, I received my copy of MHT (formerly Mass High Tech), in which staff writer Catherine Williams is reporting that Cullinane has decided to recuse himself from the appointment, due to the fact that he is the Chairman of the Board of a company called LiveData, Inc. Why, because that company has an existing contract with Massachusetts. His replacement will be Matt DeBergalis, a co-founder of a new software startup named Auburn Quad Inc. Williams reports that this company was used by the Patrick campaign to raise more than $1 million in contributions. While I'm at it, I might also mention that Court Square Data Group inc.,
In a case of strange political timing, governor-elect Deval Patrick announced 15 transition team working groups the day before Thanksgiving, while most people were leaving their offices and homes early for the holiday. In that announcement, Patrick named 200 people to a wide variety of advisory groups covering topics as diverse as healthcare and civic engagement. One of these committees is intended to advise the governor on the technology needs of the state government.
Most of the eight people on that group were not a surprise. They include:
- Co-Chair, Charles SteelFisher, New Media Director of the Deval Patrick Committee
- Co-Chair, Richard Rowe, CEO of Rowe Communications, and with many credentials in education, government and technology
- John Cullinane, Principal, The Cullinane Group, the founder of early software success story Cullinet Software, Inc., and a long-time New England technology leader
- Louis Gutierrez, the outgoing State CIO and Director of the Information Technology Division (ITD), and now with government IT consulting firm the Exeter Group
- Keith Parent, CEO of Court Square Data Group, a western Massachusetts-based IT services provider with a number of government customers. (Parent's appointment helps fulfill Patrick's campaign promise to provide regional representation in his administration)
- David Lewis, a consultant and the Massachusetts CIO prior to Peter Quinn
- Larry Weber, currently Chairman of PR services firm W2 Group, and another local high tech legend as the founder of the Weber Group, which became the largest technology-focused PR firm prior to being acquired by the Inter Public Group in 1996.
Oh yes. And one person from a major, out of state software company. Say what?