Welcome to My World

It took them a year or so longer than they wanted it to take, but Microsoft have finally gotten their wish — they actually succeeded in rigging the vote to approve Office Open XML as an ISO standard. They’ve also just destroyed what was once a well-respected international standards body, but I doubt they care. This is just another avenue they can now “leverage” to rake in yet more money.

Everything about this process stinks, and I’m pissed that they got away with it. They even tried this exact same crap before, and were shot down (as they should have been). Deliberately named to be remarkably similar to OpenOffice, a competing (and free/open source) office productivity suite, the Office Open XML format is Microsoft’s faux bid to appear transparent and open to the world. Now that it’s an “official” standard ratified by the ISO, they can even waddle into government offices and gun for lucrative government contracts: “see? We’re even an ISO standard now! How much more open can you be?”

And yet, of course, the format itself permits mysterious (and undocumented) “binary” chunks that can contain whatever Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, etc., want them to, and they don’t have to be defined or documented. So much for interoperability. The naming issue will confuse people further, since OpenOffice, abbreviated “OO,” stores its documents in XML, and so its own (open source, actually documented and publicly available without cost) file format could be called “OOXML.” Some actual examples, lest you think I’m just making this up:

• The OOXML specification does not specify how macros or scripts are embedded in OOXML document
• “autoSpaceLikeWord95” (page 2,161xxvii) merely defines semantics in reference to a legacy application whose behavior is nowhere specified
• OOXML preserves certain file data in binary form based upon legacy formats not disclosed to outside developers
• The implementation of OOXML for spreadsheets in Office 2007 (Excel 2007) also makes use of data in binary form

I know, I know. Nobody cares. People will continue buying the largely useless Microsoft Office suite instead of using a free (and competent) alternative, partly because it’s “just what they’re used to” or because they like how one piece of the suite does one thing differently than the open source versions do (hell, I’ve even heard people complain that the default color scheme used in OpenOffice Calc’s charts aren’t “as good” as Excel 2007’s, even though there are plenty of ways available to improve and alter the appearance of OO’s charts).

It’s just a word processor, right? Who cares if those dumb Linux users (and Mac users) can’t open the files it creates, right?

Sigh. Lots of us care. I’m not thrilled with my government being lied to by a corporation trying to score a lucrative software contract that their stuff is more “archive friendly” than the open-source stuff just because they’ve gotten an ISO standard ratified for their file formats. Great. While Uncle Sam foots the bill for the latest-and-greatest Microsoft Office suite, now with Shiny ISO(R) Numbers(tm), Uncle Sam is still fucked if it ever stops buying Office and then wants to try to open its old documents in a new suite.

In case anyone actually does give a rat’s ass, the OpenOffice format (the actual open-source one) is also a ratified ISO standard (and, for what it’s worth, it got there first). It’s ISO/IEC 29300. For a more in-depth critical analysis of the OOXML standard, have a look here. In the interests of trying to be fair and impartial, have a look at Microsoft’s side of things, here. It is, of course, a massive slap in the face that Microsoft has the balls to call this an “Open XML Community” they’re running, to name it a .ORG (as if it were a grassroots organization and not owned by a multi-billion dollar company), and to run up the old-school “freedom to innovate” rhetorical bullshit they’ve been trumpeting since the company faced antitrust prosecution in the United States back in the late 90’s.

Be aware, folks: Microsoft’s oldest and best trick remains “embrace, extend, and extinguish.” Grab hold of an idea that everybody else loves, so that people start to think you love it to. Add your own useful features/extensions to it, so that people actually start flocking to your version of it, until you have a critical mass of users who will just automatically keep using your product because it “does the job well enough.” Then, make a crucial change that breaks everybody else’s implementation of it, making it look all of a sudden like everybody else on the market is deliberately trying not to work with your stuff. Instant victory.

I bet you think that sounds like bullshit. Go ask the folks who wrote Netscape Communicator how accurate that really is. Internet Explorer never was (and probably never will be) a superior product. In an evenly-matched, open marketplace without monopoly abuses and intense behind-the-scenes lobbying, IE would have been laughed off the stage and Netscape would probably still be building web browsers today. That wasn’t allowed to happen because of Microsoft’s behavior. No, I’m not making this up. The company was sued by the government and the company lost. Of course, nothing of substance ever happened as punishment (amusingly you can thank the Bush administration for that travesty, too — the Bush-era Department of Justice mysteriously lost interest in pursuing sanctions against Microsoft for continued abuses).

Bleh. Bastards. They’re all just rotten bastards. Every crooked official who voted “yes” for this thing, every Microsoft employee who bribed or coerced someone into voting “yes,” and the people who dreamed this plot up and pushed it along — all of you are shameful human beings. As I am not religious, I do not wish for some mythical condemnation of your misdeeds. I instead wish for a much more useful punishment: may your efforts ultimately prove fruitless, may your stock options wither on the vine, and may your financial entanglements in this bullshit bring you to ruin. The best and most delicious irony will be watching in 15 years when you file for bankruptcy, when you realize you have to fill out and submit your forms to the court in fucking ODF format