Competition is indeed good, and the public sector has to use his powers to sustain the pressure for more openness and ultimately better solutions/offerings.

If the dominant company deliberately obstructs competition it will run into competition law problems but they are on a different level. Competition authorities are not the nannies of the market players, and I find it despicable what lack of respect is expressed towards these institutions. The take deterrent action when its too late, but sometimes even their measures may not be deterrent enough and may be neutralised or compromised by lobbying.

The current market dependencies in Europe are a result of regulatory lazyness and ultimately threaten national security. To overcome dependencies and prevent them in the future Europe requires stronger interoperability measures in the future and exactly this is about to happen. Both soft law, like procurement guidelines, and competition enforcement measures.

Procurement strategy is key. Governments and companies understand that you have to support alternatives. OpenOffice 3.1 may not be on par yet for some users. It is no huge investment for a government to dump 50 or 500 Mio Eur on the product and thus make a big pro-competitive difference and there are flanking measures as ODF embracement by the public sector. Asus demonstrated how a Linux strategy pays commercially off. Government procurement agencies understand that you have to invest in market openness, strategically and tactical to get better procurement conditions. Sure, we find a string free rider effect of pro-competition measures. And Asus demonstrated how a Linux strategy pays commercially off.

Ironically Wouter benefits very much from the commercial interest to keep Pandora’s box closed for the dominant vendor. So he shouldn’t be too passionate about it but better keep an eye on the return of interoperability investment for him.

To say there is no implementation of IS 29500 is to use a yardstick by which there is no implementation of ISO 1.x whatsoever.

That’s it. And this big company, the market monopolist, tries to dominate and control the world-wide office exchange standard format by getting an own self-controlled standard through standardization bodies like a war. You really mean that’s right? You really mean that OOXML is just a standard? No, it’s a weapon, an uncontrolled weapon in the hands of a company running amok if there’s no policy regulation on that topic.

I started this discussion because I don’t want a future, where one big company dictates everything – the last ten years are enough for me. And it’s time for change, now. Not only in America, but also in Europe. In my opinion OOXML is no alternative. Everyone claiming this doesn’t believe in freedom, but in blind dependence. If it’s OK for you, then fine. I vote for competition, I want to have a choice and I will live in a world controlled by people, not by companies or their share holders.

And on those penalties. They were not filed against Microsoft for building Open XML, or for supporting ODF. How is it relevant? Microsoft is a big company.

Back up with facts that more people than productivity suite implementors need the specification of the documents they are trying to automate? Eh…

I personally used the standard to implement workflow activities, Package Explorer, validation tools, processing apps and a few more things. Does that count too?

Well, I think the iPhone has support for Microsoft files, like .doc, .xls and .ppt. Maybe there’s a deal between Apple and Microsoft, nothing more. One thing that should be changed on a way to openess.

“I force no-one. EU also does not care about using closed source software. They care about software getting the job done.”

That’s wrong. The operation level has to run daily business, yes. But the policy level has to decide on which base the future will be build up. And the poilicy filed Microsoft a penalty of 1.7 billion Euro and has two more investigations right now. That’s the difference. Policy changes, but in the long-term.

Care to back that up with facts, Wouter? And please be precise. Do you mean the OOXML as defined by ECMA 376? Or the IS29500?

If you want to compare apples and apples, you need to stick to IS29500. So how many implementations of IS29500 exist? Hint: None.

Jan

So you say yes to competing products, no to standardizing how these products save stuff. Basically, the end result would be a standard which defines ‘extensibility’ points, which will remain undocumented since each application uses their own things. How else will they be able to save their unique features in the file format? Take SmartArt graphics. Unique to MS Office. How would you like to see this represented in ODF? In a block?

By the way. Open XML is not bound to the Windows platform. Take the iPhone. It has support for Open XML, but not ODF. How is that possible with this standard being so bound to Microsoft? Apple was able to do it. Can’t you?

I force no-one. EU also does not care about using closed source software. They care about software getting the job done. When, and only when, both open and closed source applications provide the same level of solution capabilities will open source be choses (sounds smart doesn’t it?) They do care that documents created in whatever application can be read in the future. Which for both ODF and Open XML is the case. Open XML a little better, because it actually defines everything and does not choose to leave vital bits out like change tracking or formulas. ODF already has interoperability issues right now. How will that move into the future? I know, it won’t!