Tim Bray wants Microsoft to make Office support ODF

November 28, 2005 By

Tim Bray just told me (and my fellow Microsofties) to do more work. He wants us to convert Office to support the open document format from OASIS.

Tim, I think you are GREATLY overstating the point when you say ” Almost all office documents are just paragraphs of text, with some bold and some italics and some lists and some tables and some pictures. Almost all spreadsheets are numbers and labels, with some sums and averages and pivots and simple algebra. Almost all presentations are lists of bullet points with occasional pictures. The capabilities of ODF and O12X are essentially identical for all this basic stuff.”

If they are so similar it’ll be a breeze to write a converter to take one XML file format and convert it into another, right Tim? Hey, Tim, wanna come work for the Office team? I think we have an office open for a co-inventor of XML. Maybe Sun Microsystems can give you a leave of absence. Or, heck, take a vacation and work on it on your three weeks off a year. If it’s so easy someone with your skills should be able to finish the job in a few weeks, no?

But, back to reality, thanks for telling me to do more work. I’m passing the request along.

Filed Under: Blog Tips, Microsoft Office

Christopher Coulter

Man, case study of how you manage to step-in-it time and time again, yet always bounce back. Webbles wobble, but they don’t fall down. Where’s dat “Human face”? Ack, shrill patronising back-stabbing.

I think it comes down to…

Pat the doggie on the head, give him a treat, do tricks for me, nice doggie, pat on head more, nice nice doggie, ignore and go about biz until need some more tricks.
Christopher Coulter

Man, case study of how you manage to step-in-it time and time again, yet always bounce back. Webbles wobble, but they don’t fall down. Where’s dat “Human face”? Ack, shrill patronising back-stabbing.

I think it comes down to…

Pat the doggie on the head, give him a treat, do tricks for me, nice doggie, pat on head more, nice nice doggie, ignore and go about biz until need some more tricks.
Christopher Coulter

Man, case study of how you manage to step-in-it time and time again, yet always bounce back. Webbles wobble, but they don’t fall down. Where’s dat “Human face”? Ack, shrill patronising back-stabbing.

I think it comes down to…

Pat the doggie on the head, give him a treat, do tricks for me, nice doggie, pat on head more, nice nice doggie, ignore and go about biz until need some more tricks.
Christopher Coulter

Man, case study of how you manage to step-in-it time and time again, yet always bounce back. Webbles wobble, but they don’t fall down. Where’s dat “Human face”? Ack, shrill patronising back-stabbing.

I think it comes down to…

Pat the doggie on the head, give him a treat, do tricks for me, nice doggie, pat on head more, nice nice doggie, ignore and go about biz until need some more tricks.
Christopher Coulter

Man, case study of how you manage to step-in-it time and time again, yet always bounce back. Webbles wobble, but they don’t fall down. Where’s dat “Human face”? Ack, shrill patronising back-stabbing.

I think it comes down to…

Pat the doggie on the head, give him a treat, do tricks for me, nice doggie, pat on head more, nice nice doggie, ignore and go about biz until need some more tricks.
Christopher Coulter

Man, case study of how you manage to step-in-it time and time again, yet always bounce back. Webbles wobble, but they don’t fall down. Where’s dat “Human face”? Ack, shrill patronising back-stabbing.

I think it comes down to…

Pat the doggie on the head, give him a treat, do tricks for me, nice doggie, pat on head more, nice nice doggie, ignore and go about biz until need some more tricks.
http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

Robert, Stephane nailed it.

In addition to all those points, everyone at MS is NOT LISTENING

“You want ODF? Here, use our XML”
“That’s nice, but I really want ODF. I’ll pay for it”
“Oh good, here’s our XML”
“But I don’t want that, I want ODF”
“Ours can do more stuff, use that”
“But I don’t want that, I want ODF”
“ODF sucks, and it’s hard”

The “Silly Tim Bray, he just doesn’t know how hard this here programmin’ stuff is” smacks of classic MS arrogance. You DO know who Tim Bray is, and what he’s done, programming-wise, right? I’ll guess, he has FAR more of a clue about the technical issues than oh, you do.

Besides, your argument pushes you into a logical corner. If it’s SO hard to make Office work with ODF, then how are third party devs supposed to add that feature in? If it’s too hard, then it cannot happen, because obviously if MS can’t no one else can. If someone else can indeed to it, then MS has been bullshitting people, (AGAIN), and you all look the fool.

So far, it’s all just “ODF SUXXORZ” crap. I’ve yet to hear one logical reason for Office 12 NOT supporting ODF out of the box via “Save As”.
http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

Robert, Stephane nailed it.

In addition to all those points, everyone at MS is NOT LISTENING

“You want ODF? Here, use our XML”
“That’s nice, but I really want ODF. I’ll pay for it”
“Oh good, here’s our XML”
“But I don’t want that, I want ODF”
“Ours can do more stuff, use that”
“But I don’t want that, I want ODF”
“ODF sucks, and it’s hard”

The “Silly Tim Bray, he just doesn’t know how hard this here programmin’ stuff is” smacks of classic MS arrogance. You DO know who Tim Bray is, and what he’s done, programming-wise, right? I’ll guess, he has FAR more of a clue about the technical issues than oh, you do.

Besides, your argument pushes you into a logical corner. If it’s SO hard to make Office work with ODF, then how are third party devs supposed to add that feature in? If it’s too hard, then it cannot happen, because obviously if MS can’t no one else can. If someone else can indeed to it, then MS has been bullshitting people, (AGAIN), and you all look the fool.

So far, it’s all just “ODF SUXXORZ” crap. I’ve yet to hear one logical reason for Office 12 NOT supporting ODF out of the box via “Save As”.
http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

Robert, Stephane nailed it.

In addition to all those points, everyone at MS is NOT LISTENING

“You want ODF? Here, use our XML”
“That’s nice, but I really want ODF. I’ll pay for it”
“Oh good, here’s our XML”
“But I don’t want that, I want ODF”
“Ours can do more stuff, use that”
“But I don’t want that, I want ODF”
“ODF sucks, and it’s hard”

The “Silly Tim Bray, he just doesn’t know how hard this here programmin’ stuff is” smacks of classic MS arrogance. You DO know who Tim Bray is, and what he’s done, programming-wise, right? I’ll guess, he has FAR more of a clue about the technical issues than oh, you do.

Besides, your argument pushes you into a logical corner. If it’s SO hard to make Office work with ODF, then how are third party devs supposed to add that feature in? If it’s too hard, then it cannot happen, because obviously if MS can’t no one else can. If someone else can indeed to it, then MS has been bullshitting people, (AGAIN), and you all look the fool.

So far, it’s all just “ODF SUXXORZ” crap. I’ve yet to hear one logical reason for Office 12 NOT supporting ODF out of the box via “Save As”.
http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

Robert, Stephane nailed it.

In addition to all those points, everyone at MS is NOT LISTENING

“You want ODF? Here, use our XML”
“That’s nice, but I really want ODF. I’ll pay for it”
“Oh good, here’s our XML”
“But I don’t want that, I want ODF”
“Ours can do more stuff, use that”
“But I don’t want that, I want ODF”
“ODF sucks, and it’s hard”

The “Silly Tim Bray, he just doesn’t know how hard this here programmin’ stuff is” smacks of classic MS arrogance. You DO know who Tim Bray is, and what he’s done, programming-wise, right? I’ll guess, he has FAR more of a clue about the technical issues than oh, you do.

Besides, your argument pushes you into a logical corner. If it’s SO hard to make Office work with ODF, then how are third party devs supposed to add that feature in? If it’s too hard, then it cannot happen, because obviously if MS can’t no one else can. If someone else can indeed to it, then MS has been bullshitting people, (AGAIN), and you all look the fool.

So far, it’s all just “ODF SUXXORZ” crap. I’ve yet to hear one logical reason for Office 12 NOT supporting ODF out of the box via “Save As”.
http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

Robert, Stephane nailed it.

In addition to all those points, everyone at MS is NOT LISTENING

“You want ODF? Here, use our XML”
“That’s nice, but I really want ODF. I’ll pay for it”
“Oh good, here’s our XML”
“But I don’t want that, I want ODF”
“Ours can do more stuff, use that”
“But I don’t want that, I want ODF”
“ODF sucks, and it’s hard”

The “Silly Tim Bray, he just doesn’t know how hard this here programmin’ stuff is” smacks of classic MS arrogance. You DO know who Tim Bray is, and what he’s done, programming-wise, right? I’ll guess, he has FAR more of a clue about the technical issues than oh, you do.

Besides, your argument pushes you into a logical corner. If it’s SO hard to make Office work with ODF, then how are third party devs supposed to add that feature in? If it’s too hard, then it cannot happen, because obviously if MS can’t no one else can. If someone else can indeed to it, then MS has been bullshitting people, (AGAIN), and you all look the fool.

So far, it’s all just “ODF SUXXORZ” crap. I’ve yet to hear one logical reason for Office 12 NOT supporting ODF out of the box via “Save As”.
http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

Robert, Stephane nailed it.

In addition to all those points, everyone at MS is NOT LISTENING

“You want ODF? Here, use our XML”
“That’s nice, but I really want ODF. I’ll pay for it”
“Oh good, here’s our XML”
“But I don’t want that, I want ODF”
“Ours can do more stuff, use that”
“But I don’t want that, I want ODF”
“ODF sucks, and it’s hard”

The “Silly Tim Bray, he just doesn’t know how hard this here programmin’ stuff is” smacks of classic MS arrogance. You DO know who Tim Bray is, and what he’s done, programming-wise, right? I’ll guess, he has FAR more of a clue about the technical issues than oh, you do.

Besides, your argument pushes you into a logical corner. If it’s SO hard to make Office work with ODF, then how are third party devs supposed to add that feature in? If it’s too hard, then it cannot happen, because obviously if MS can’t no one else can. If someone else can indeed to it, then MS has been bullshitting people, (AGAIN), and you all look the fool.

So far, it’s all just “ODF SUXXORZ” crap. I’ve yet to hear one logical reason for Office 12 NOT supporting ODF out of the box via “Save As”.
http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

Robert, Stephane nailed it.

In addition to all those points, everyone at MS is NOT LISTENING

“You want ODF? Here, use our XML”
“That’s nice, but I really want ODF. I’ll pay for it”
“Oh good, here’s our XML”
“But I don’t want that, I want ODF”
“Ours can do more stuff, use that”
“But I don’t want that, I want ODF”
“ODF sucks, and it’s hard”

The “Silly Tim Bray, he just doesn’t know how hard this here programmin’ stuff is” smacks of classic MS arrogance. You DO know who Tim Bray is, and what he’s done, programming-wise, right? I’ll guess, he has FAR more of a clue about the technical issues than oh, you do.

Besides, your argument pushes you into a logical corner. If it’s SO hard to make Office work with ODF, then how are third party devs supposed to add that feature in? If it’s too hard, then it cannot happen, because obviously if MS can’t no one else can. If someone else can indeed to it, then MS has been bullshitting people, (AGAIN), and you all look the fool.

So far, it’s all just “ODF SUXXORZ” crap. I’ve yet to hear one logical reason for Office 12 NOT supporting ODF out of the box via “Save As”.
http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

Robert, Stephane nailed it.

In addition to all those points, everyone at MS is NOT LISTENING

“You want ODF? Here, use our XML”
“That’s nice, but I really want ODF. I’ll pay for it”
“Oh good, here’s our XML”
“But I don’t want that, I want ODF”
“Ours can do more stuff, use that”
“But I don’t want that, I want ODF”
“ODF sucks, and it’s hard”

The “Silly Tim Bray, he just doesn’t know how hard this here programmin’ stuff is” smacks of classic MS arrogance. You DO know who Tim Bray is, and what he’s done, programming-wise, right? I’ll guess, he has FAR more of a clue about the technical issues than oh, you do.

Besides, your argument pushes you into a logical corner. If it’s SO hard to make Office work with ODF, then how are third party devs supposed to add that feature in? If it’s too hard, then it cannot happen, because obviously if MS can’t no one else can. If someone else can indeed to it, then MS has been bullshitting people, (AGAIN), and you all look the fool.

So far, it’s all just “ODF SUXXORZ” crap. I’ve yet to hear one logical reason for Office 12 NOT supporting ODF out of the box via “Save As”.
http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

Robert, Stephane nailed it.

In addition to all those points, everyone at MS is NOT LISTENING

“You want ODF? Here, use our XML”
“That’s nice, but I really want ODF. I’ll pay for it”
“Oh good, here’s our XML”
“But I don’t want that, I want ODF”
“Ours can do more stuff, use that”
“But I don’t want that, I want ODF”
“ODF sucks, and it’s hard”

The “Silly Tim Bray, he just doesn’t know how hard this here programmin’ stuff is” smacks of classic MS arrogance. You DO know who Tim Bray is, and what he’s done, programming-wise, right? I’ll guess, he has FAR more of a clue about the technical issues than oh, you do.

Besides, your argument pushes you into a logical corner. If it’s SO hard to make Office work with ODF, then how are third party devs supposed to add that feature in? If it’s too hard, then it cannot happen, because obviously if MS can’t no one else can. If someone else can indeed to it, then MS has been bullshitting people, (AGAIN), and you all look the fool.

So far, it’s all just “ODF SUXXORZ” crap. I’ve yet to hear one logical reason for Office 12 NOT supporting ODF out of the box via “Save As”.
http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

Robert, Stephane nailed it.

In addition to all those points, everyone at MS is NOT LISTENING

“You want ODF? Here, use our XML”
“That’s nice, but I really want ODF. I’ll pay for it”
“Oh good, here’s our XML”
“But I don’t want that, I want ODF”
“Ours can do more stuff, use that”
“But I don’t want that, I want ODF”
“ODF sucks, and it’s hard”

The “Silly Tim Bray, he just doesn’t know how hard this here programmin’ stuff is” smacks of classic MS arrogance. You DO know who Tim Bray is, and what he’s done, programming-wise, right? I’ll guess, he has FAR more of a clue about the technical issues than oh, you do.

Besides, your argument pushes you into a logical corner. If it’s SO hard to make Office work with ODF, then how are third party devs supposed to add that feature in? If it’s too hard, then it cannot happen, because obviously if MS can’t no one else can. If someone else can indeed to it, then MS has been bullshitting people, (AGAIN), and you all look the fool.

So far, it’s all just “ODF SUXXORZ” crap. I’ve yet to hear one logical reason for Office 12 NOT supporting ODF out of the box via “Save As”.
http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ scobleizer

>You DO know who Tim Bray is, and what he’s done, programming-wise, right? I’ll guess, he has FAR more of a clue about the technical issues than oh, you do.

I know very well who Tim Bray is. He wasn’t able to make RSS into one format, so why is he asking Office to make their format into one format?
http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ scobleizer

>You DO know who Tim Bray is, and what he’s done, programming-wise, right? I’ll guess, he has FAR more of a clue about the technical issues than oh, you do.

I know very well who Tim Bray is. He wasn’t able to make RSS into one format, so why is he asking Office to make their format into one format?
http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ scobleizer

>You DO know who Tim Bray is, and what he’s done, programming-wise, right? I’ll guess, he has FAR more of a clue about the technical issues than oh, you do.

I know very well who Tim Bray is. He wasn’t able to make RSS into one format, so why is he asking Office to make their format into one format?
http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ scobleizer

>You DO know who Tim Bray is, and what he’s done, programming-wise, right? I’ll guess, he has FAR more of a clue about the technical issues than oh, you do.

I know very well who Tim Bray is. He wasn’t able to make RSS into one format, so why is he asking Office to make their format into one format?
http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ scobleizer

>You DO know who Tim Bray is, and what he’s done, programming-wise, right? I’ll guess, he has FAR more of a clue about the technical issues than oh, you do.

I know very well who Tim Bray is. He wasn’t able to make RSS into one format, so why is he asking Office to make their format into one format?
http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ scobleizer

>You DO know who Tim Bray is, and what he’s done, programming-wise, right? I’ll guess, he has FAR more of a clue about the technical issues than oh, you do.

I know very well who Tim Bray is. He wasn’t able to make RSS into one format, so why is he asking Office to make their format into one format?
http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ scobleizer

>You DO know who Tim Bray is, and what he’s done, programming-wise, right? I’ll guess, he has FAR more of a clue about the technical issues than oh, you do.

I know very well who Tim Bray is. He wasn’t able to make RSS into one format, so why is he asking Office to make their format into one format?
http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ scobleizer

>You DO know who Tim Bray is, and what he’s done, programming-wise, right? I’ll guess, he has FAR more of a clue about the technical issues than oh, you do.

I know very well who Tim Bray is. He wasn’t able to make RSS into one format, so why is he asking Office to make their format into one format?
http://www.psynixis.com/blog/ Simon Brocklehurst

OK. I don’t think anyone seriously believes that the reason why Microsoft doesn’t use ODF as its base format (as Tim suggests) is due to technical difficulties, do they? Similarly I don’t think anyone believes that Sun would be funding development of a free Office suite and pimping ODF, if MS Office wasn’t such an important product for MS.

That both Tim and Robert seem to want to make this stuff about technical issues is a bit of a mystery to me.
http://www.psynixis.com/blog/ Simon Brocklehurst

OK. I don’t think anyone seriously believes that the reason why Microsoft doesn’t use ODF as its base format (as Tim suggests) is due to technical difficulties, do they? Similarly I don’t think anyone believes that Sun would be funding development of a free Office suite and pimping ODF, if MS Office wasn’t such an important product for MS.

That both Tim and Robert seem to want to make this stuff about technical issues is a bit of a mystery to me.
http://www.psynixis.com/blog/ Simon Brocklehurst

OK. I don’t think anyone seriously believes that the reason why Microsoft doesn’t use ODF as its base format (as Tim suggests) is due to technical difficulties, do they? Similarly I don’t think anyone believes that Sun would be funding development of a free Office suite and pimping ODF, if MS Office wasn’t such an important product for MS.

That both Tim and Robert seem to want to make this stuff about technical issues is a bit of a mystery to me.
Pingback: or maybe something uplifting...
Bob Campbell

Let me see if I got this straight. I work for company with 20,000 users. We use Microsoft Office Suites (97-2003 and we just purchased a company that uses Wordperfect Office.

Now you are telling me that we have to update each user to comply with someones idea of “open” standards? And that this update will be applied when and if Microsoft and Corel build the “patches”.

And who is going to build the adapters to hook into dozens of legacy applications that interface with different Office products?

You’re out of your freakin’ minds.

Bob
Bob Campbell

Let me see if I got this straight. I work for company with 20,000 users. We use Microsoft Office Suites (97-2003 and we just purchased a company that uses Wordperfect Office.

Now you are telling me that we have to update each user to comply with someones idea of “open” standards? And that this update will be applied when and if Microsoft and Corel build the “patches”.

And who is going to build the adapters to hook into dozens of legacy applications that interface with different Office products?

You’re out of your freakin’ minds.

Bob
Bob Campbell

Let me see if I got this straight. I work for company with 20,000 users. We use Microsoft Office Suites (97-2003 and we just purchased a company that uses Wordperfect Office.

Now you are telling me that we have to update each user to comply with someones idea of “open” standards? And that this update will be applied when and if Microsoft and Corel build the “patches”.

And who is going to build the adapters to hook into dozens of legacy applications that interface with different Office products?

You’re out of your freakin’ minds.

Bob
Bob Campbell

Let me see if I got this straight. I work for company with 20,000 users. We use Microsoft Office Suites (97-2003 and we just purchased a company that uses Wordperfect Office.

Now you are telling me that we have to update each user to comply with someones idea of “open” standards? And that this update will be applied when and if Microsoft and Corel build the “patches”.

And who is going to build the adapters to hook into dozens of legacy applications that interface with different Office products?

You’re out of your freakin’ minds.

Bob
Bob Campbell

Let me see if I got this straight. I work for company with 20,000 users. We use Microsoft Office Suites (97-2003 and we just purchased a company that uses Wordperfect Office.

Now you are telling me that we have to update each user to comply with someones idea of “open” standards? And that this update will be applied when and if Microsoft and Corel build the “patches”.

And who is going to build the adapters to hook into dozens of legacy applications that interface with different Office products?

You’re out of your freakin’ minds.

Bob
Bob Campbell

Let me see if I got this straight. I work for company with 20,000 users. We use Microsoft Office Suites (97-2003 and we just purchased a company that uses Wordperfect Office.

Now you are telling me that we have to update each user to comply with someones idea of “open” standards? And that this update will be applied when and if Microsoft and Corel build the “patches”.

And who is going to build the adapters to hook into dozens of legacy applications that interface with different Office products?

You’re out of your freakin’ minds.

Bob
Bob Campbell

Let me see if I got this straight. I work for company with 20,000 users. We use Microsoft Office Suites (97-2003 and we just purchased a company that uses Wordperfect Office.

Now you are telling me that we have to update each user to comply with someones idea of “open” standards? And that this update will be applied when and if Microsoft and Corel build the “patches”.

And who is going to build the adapters to hook into dozens of legacy applications that interface with different Office products?

You’re out of your freakin’ minds.

Bob
Bob Campbell

Let me see if I got this straight. I work for company with 20,000 users. We use Microsoft Office Suites (97-2003 and we just purchased a company that uses Wordperfect Office.

Now you are telling me that we have to update each user to comply with someones idea of “open” standards? And that this update will be applied when and if Microsoft and Corel build the “patches”.

And who is going to build the adapters to hook into dozens of legacy applications that interface with different Office products?

You’re out of your freakin’ minds.

Bob
Bob Campbell

Let me see if I got this straight. I work for company with 20,000 users. We use Microsoft Office Suites (97-2003 and we just purchased a company that uses Wordperfect Office.

Now you are telling me that we have to update each user to comply with someones idea of “open” standards? And that this update will be applied when and if Microsoft and Corel build the “patches”.

And who is going to build the adapters to hook into dozens of legacy applications that interface with different Office products?

You’re out of your freakin’ minds.

Bob
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Ralph Scheuer

I find it very interesting that everyone seems to have forgotten that Microsoft is (was?) a member of OASIS. For that very reason it’s even stranger that they did not adopt the format.

I don’t really believe the decision to come up with your own format was a technical one but rather a power-preserving one. After all, with Office’s own format it’s far easier to do with it what Microsoft and only Microsoft wants, and oh, there’s patents. Aren’t patents great?

But being part of OASIS looked good as long as it lasted and it gave you at least the impression of credibility…
Ralph Scheuer

I find it very interesting that everyone seems to have forgotten that Microsoft is (was?) a member of OASIS. For that very reason it’s even stranger that they did not adopt the format.

I don’t really believe the decision to come up with your own format was a technical one but rather a power-preserving one. After all, with Office’s own format it’s far easier to do with it what Microsoft and only Microsoft wants, and oh, there’s patents. Aren’t patents great?

But being part of OASIS looked good as long as it lasted and it gave you at least the impression of credibility…
solomonrex

Scoble, he makes a good point. What do you DO besides this blog? Isn’t MS a little distracted by, I don’t know, X360 and Vista? The new Office 12 looks great, but championing open formats online – where you happen to be losing – and dissing them in Office – where you built your empire – is hypocritical and you should know it.

In other words, you’ve no intention of putting the customer ahead of your business strategy of incompatible formats.

Your point about RSS? Apples and oranges, because no one uses RSS yet. It’s less than 1% of the world, easy. Office has a sizeable footprint. You know, you can see it from space. RSS also doesn’t require file management. Firefox or reader.google.com or whatever just takes care of it, and I don’t care what format it is (not that I’d know the difference anyway). That’s the difference between web 2.0 and Office. The network really IS the computer. You’ve at least dropped the ball on Word. What exactly goes into a Word document that needs custom file formats? What’s the advantage of one xml format over another? Nothing. Microsoft has had 20 years with Word, and still need to change formats?

Lastly, don’t imagine that openoffice is your competitor. Or Google. Because without them, you still have dozens of IT managers saying, let’s move this to a database and website, or let’s set this up on salesforce.com. I’m sure Office will always be around, but if blogs are transmitting content in RSS format rather than Word format, you’ve already lost. I mean, how many people save Excel as an Excel webpage? Any stats?
solomonrex

Scoble, he makes a good point. What do you DO besides this blog? Isn’t MS a little distracted by, I don’t know, X360 and Vista? The new Office 12 looks great, but championing open formats online – where you happen to be losing – and dissing them in Office – where you built your empire – is hypocritical and you should know it.

In other words, you’ve no intention of putting the customer ahead of your business strategy of incompatible formats.

Your point about RSS? Apples and oranges, because no one uses RSS yet. It’s less than 1% of the world, easy. Office has a sizeable footprint. You know, you can see it from space. RSS also doesn’t require file management. Firefox or reader.google.com or whatever just takes care of it, and I don’t care what format it is (not that I’d know the difference anyway). That’s the difference between web 2.0 and Office. The network really IS the computer. You’ve at least dropped the ball on Word. What exactly goes into a Word document that needs custom file formats? What’s the advantage of one xml format over another? Nothing. Microsoft has had 20 years with Word, and still need to change formats?

Lastly, don’t imagine that openoffice is your competitor. Or Google. Because without them, you still have dozens of IT managers saying, let’s move this to a database and website, or let’s set this up on salesforce.com. I’m sure Office will always be around, but if blogs are transmitting content in RSS format rather than Word format, you’ve already lost. I mean, how many people save Excel as an Excel webpage? Any stats?
http://rjonas.blogspot.com/ Richard Jonas

If you want competition in the Office software market, it has to save in ODF (or if ODF can’t do the job, some other open format) by default.

When they save a document, most (non-IT) people don’t think to change formats, and assume everyone can read it. If they use Office, this means people with office can read it but others can’t easily. As most people send documents via email in office format, everyone else feels they need Office to read documents they receive, and it’s difficult not to feel locked in.
http://rjonas.blogspot.com Richard Jonas

If you want competition in the Office software market, it has to save in ODF (or if ODF can’t do the job, some other open format) by default.

When they save a document, most (non-IT) people don’t think to change formats, and assume everyone can read it. If they use Office, this means people with office can read it but others can’t easily. As most people send documents via email in office format, everyone else feels they need Office to read documents they receive, and it’s difficult not to feel locked in.
http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

Oh wait, so because Tim Bray hasn’t fixed RSS, he’s unqualified to talk about ODF and Office 12 issues

Well, Microsoft hasn’t fixed RSS either, and the programming core of MS outnumbers Tim by what, 8000 people or so?

Do you REALLY want to see how stupid you can make your company look here, or are you just going to admit that you were wrong for saying Tim didn’t/couldn’t understand the technical issues that you couldn’t even begin to articulate without a week of briefings.
http://www.bynkii.com/ John C. Welch

Oh wait, so because Tim Bray hasn’t fixed RSS, he’s unqualified to talk about ODF and Office 12 issues

Well, Microsoft hasn’t fixed RSS either, and the programming core of MS outnumbers Tim by what, 8000 people or so?

Do you REALLY want to see how stupid you can make your company look here, or are you just going to admit that you were wrong for saying Tim didn’t/couldn’t understand the technical issues that you couldn’t even begin to articulate without a week of briefings.
Joshua

Richard – Documents in Office 12 will save by default in an open, documented, ECMA standardized, XML format. Nobody will have to think about taking special action so that their documents can be used by other applications.
It will not be the ODF format, but a different standardized XML format. Different groups decide different formats serve them better, which is why Scoble brought up the relevant RSS vs. ATOM war. Maybe one will dominate the other, and the other group will be forced to be compatible. Or maybe they will both co-exist, with many applications supporting both formats. No big deal.
But until a clear winner is chosen (by the market), it would seem premature to try and build in support for every possible format that may exist out there.
Surely, nobody thinks ODF is a “clear winner chosen by the market”. I’m sure some people use it, but it by no means has mass market penetration or acceptance (I’ve never come across a document in ODF).
Joshua

Richard – Documents in Office 12 will save by default in an open, documented, ECMA standardized, XML format. Nobody will have to think about taking special action so that their documents can be used by other applications.
It will not be the ODF format, but a different standardized XML format. Different groups decide different formats serve them better, which is why Scoble brought up the relevant RSS vs. ATOM war. Maybe one will dominate the other, and the other group will be forced to be compatible. Or maybe they will both co-exist, with many applications supporting both formats. No big deal.
But until a clear winner is chosen (by the market), it would seem premature to try and build in support for every possible format that may exist out there.
Surely, nobody thinks ODF is a “clear winner chosen by the market”. I’m sure some people use it, but it by no means has mass market penetration or acceptance (I’ve never come across a document in ODF).
http://larryborsato.com/ Larry Borsato

Actually Robert, Tim did make RSS into one format. It is called Atom. Though it may take some time for folks to standardize on one format.

And he didn’t ask Microsoft to make Office into one format. He did ask Microsoft to support ODF, just as they support other formats.

At least you would make the state of Massachusetts happy. And it would be quite a leap for the new face of Microsoft – listening to customers.

How hard can this be really?
http://larryborsato.com Larry Borsato

Actually Robert, Tim did make RSS into one format. It is called Atom. Though it may take some time for folks to standardize on one format.

And he didn’t ask Microsoft to make Office into one format. He did ask Microsoft to support ODF, just as they support other formats.

At least you would make the state of Massachusetts happy. And it would be quite a leap for the new face of Microsoft – listening to customers.

How hard can this be really?

Tim Bray wants Microsoft to make Office support ODF

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