Ephraim Schwartz has started quite a discussion over at InfoWorld with his article “ODF vs. OpenXML.” Take a look and join in if you have something to add. Personally, I’m afraid I might use the wrong acronym (grin) – see the article.
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The article says something about IBM and Microsoft being in a ‘battle for supremacy’.
IBM and Microsoft are fundamentally different businesses, though.
IBM makes things which are bought by businesses and used by businesses; Microsoft makes things which are bought by businesses and sold on for use by consumers.
‘What makes you special’, as an IBM customer, is the serial number on the badge of the IBMer who is delivering your warranty service. IBM keeps an inventory of everything that’s under warranty, everywhere, planetwide; if you call 1-800-IBM-SERV, the person on the end of the phone will work out pretty quickly if you are entitled to warranty service; and if you are, you get help fast.
‘What makes you special’, as a consumer using the thing that Microsoft made, is the serial number on the bar-code on the holographic sticker. That’s the only proof that you have the right to use it. No-one from Microsoft will show up to mend it if it breaks.
When Linux shows up, IBM’s reaction is to withdraw OS/2; and to start selling warranties for Linux. Drop the plan to port AIX to Intel, and instead get Linux to work on the mainframes. It confuses the others in the market, but what did you think IBM was supposed to do ?
When Linux shows up, Microsoft’s reaction is to increase the differentiation in the pricing of Windows; now it’s down to $3 if you are a 3rd-world government, and up to $400 if you go into BestBuy for Vista SuperDuper Extreme. Also to try to block the distribution channels for Linux; which is largely futile in these days of Internet.
http://www.openoffice.org/ has shown up now, and doesn’t look as if it is going away. SUN said ‘the network is the computer’, and OpenOffice.org is their baby.
IBM is making chips for XBox360′s, and Microsoft is making games for XBox360′s. Hopefully both profitably.
We shall see; but it’s a kind of crash-of-gears where the two businesses have crossed in the night. I think it will be a Microsoft box in the living room of the future, but an IBM mainframe doing the heavy lifting lights-out in Beijing.
Of course IBM likes open standards; it’s cheaper to deliver on the warranty that way.
And of course Microsoft doesn’t. Change for change’s sake, and sell again.
Bob, I have a great idea for a news story. Microsofties universally use the acronym FOSS to refer to Free and Open Source Software. While they didn’t invent it, they seem to consistently use it, in a manner where it always sounds slightly derogatory, like “Foss-il”.
The comments on the Infoworld blog seem to be doing a very good job of balancing out the discussion. I hope that the journalist pursues a follow-up story.
That opening paragraph seemed off-kilter to me, too. While I understand that open source is a large part of IBM’s business strategy, I don’t associate ODF with IBM. Sure, IBM is a member of the ODF Alliance, but so are hundreds of other organizations. ODF is open source and as such, is part of IBM’s strategy.
The key line is at the end where Ephraim buys Microsoft’s brand of spin: “…If what Robertson and Paoli say about OpenXML and ODF is correct, then I think OpenXML is needed, at least until ODF becomes backward-compatible with older Office file formats and offers the capabilities large organizations require in their productivity solutions to run their business.”
Thus he just missed the whole point of ODF.
Don’t worry Sutor, you were not the only one, Andy Updegrove did it, Pamela Jones did it. Wikipedia even has an entry on it. But I am sure we both understand the “Uh-Oh OXML”. [Thank you Schwartz for pointing it out] That’s not the first time this happened, remember why SUN was furious with “eclipse”?
As far as I can tell, most people is using OOXML. They may like to call it OpenXML but that is not what most discussions on document formats do. They can rant about it, but just have to put up with it.
There is again one more moniker EOOXML floating around but got dis-favoured.
The only party refers to this ODF vs OOXML (I am not changing my description of it to O***XML at that’s it) as IBM vs MS is MS. A lot of journalists don’t buy this “framework”, Schwartz did.
Was that a balanced blog post? More like an opinion piece.
I tend to label it as MS-OOXML as a reminder of where it comes from and who controls it, which would stand for Microsoft Office OpenXML. No one around various forums has corrected me for it. But then I also often spell out ODF in context as OASIS OpenDocument (ODF) format the first instance to let readers know what I’m talking about, and always linked to http://www.odfalliance.org/ After that, then I feel safe in saying ODF only because “now they know.”