Mass panic: MA warms to MS (and dust houses)

In today's IT Blogwatch, we look at how the state of Mass. may be warming to Microsoft's advances. Not to mention a new approach to doing the cleaning.

Massachusetts may accept the Office XML format after all -- seems that Microsoft's promise to submit the format to ISO and ECMA, the tweaked licensing terms and promises not to sue have done the trick. As ever, bloggers are having a heated debate. Much mud-slinging is ensuing. Sit back and enjoy the fun...

» Nate Mook from BetaNews explains: "Massachusetts says it expects the new version of Microsoft Office to meet its 'open format' requirement. The Massachusetts plan, which was finalized in September, calls for all electronic documents created after January 1, 2007 to utilize only formats deemed "open," which include OpenDocument and Adobe's PDF ... Governor Mitt Romney has remained adamant about moving forward with the change ... in a statement issued shortly before the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, Massachusetts state secretary of administration and finance Thomas Trimarco indicated that Microsoft's change of heart was agreeable to the Commonwealth. Trimarco is tasked with working out implementation details of the transition."

» Eric Lai tells us more: "[Microsoft] will offer the XML document formats that are due to be used in the next version of Office as open standards, a move that's partly designed to appease government users who insist that their software be standards-compliant. But it also is likely to escalate Microsoft's conflict with a group of vendors and users that is pushing the rival Open Document Format for Office Applications, or OpenDocument, as a global standard. And it's an open question as to whether Microsoft's planned submission of its Office Open XML formats to standards bodies will convince users that the software vendor is truly standardizing them."

» Brian Jones [the one from Microsoft, not the Rolling Stones] gives us his perspective on the new licensing approach: "We tried again to take a thoughtful approach to this, to go beyond any Standards norms that we know of for this special case of document formats. I'm sure it's obvious that the discussion and debate of the licensing issues following the State of MA policy were useful helping us understand the many different views and how to give the most confidence to people about a licensing approach ... We are really hopeful that this will be the sort of breakthrough that people have been looking for."

» Sun's Tim Bray is incensed: "to see the schemas you have to fight through a bunch of technical barriers and draconian legalese. But unless Brian Jones is lying in his teeth, their intent is to remove the legal encumbrances and let developers loose on their file formats. (If that’s not the case, we’ll find out pretty soon, and in that case I think the Microsoft XML is pretty well doomed; the world is simply not willing to live with legally-tainted file formats any more) ... Which do you like better? I know which one I’d pick. But I think we’re missing the point. Why Are There Two?"

» The OpenDocument Fellowship knows which it likes better: "OpenDocument benefits from 5 years of development involving many experts from diverse backgrounds ... It was written with the explicit purpose of being interoperable across different platforms. In contrast, MS XML has not gone through a peer-review process, and was written with only one product in mind. This difference shows in the design of the formats ... Reusing existing standards allows the programmer to reuse her existing skills and her existing tools. Also, existing standards are well tested and mature." [Lots more in that post, but the summary is: Microsoft's XML design skills are rubbish]

» Microsoft's Scoble, R. is feeling really cranky: "Tim Bray just told me (and my fellow Microsofties) to do more work. Tim, I think you are GREATLY overstating the point ... 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? ... If it’s so easy someone with your skills should be able to finish the job in a few weeks, no?" [The comments to that post are definitely worth a read; Scoble later blames his crankiness on jetlag -- your humble blogwatcher knows the feeling]

» Microsoft's Dare Obasanjo continues the attack on Bray: "I find it extremely ironic that one of the driving forces behind creating a redundant and duplicative XML format for website syndication would be one of the first to claim that we only need one XML format to solve any problem. For those who aren't in the know, Tim Bray is one of the chairs of the Atom Working Group in the IETF whose primary goal is to create a competing format to RSS 2.0 which does basically the same thing. In fact Tim Bray has written a decent number of posts attempting to explain why we need multiple XML formats for syndicating blog posts, news and enclosures on the Web."

» But Microsoft's Randy Holloway urges caution: "Microsoft’s position on open formats is obviously much better now than it was 6 months ago. Still, Tim’s question remains. Why would we need two formats? I’ll let the Office (as in MS) folks respond to that question, but I think that we do need to make this clear for customers on the technical merits. First, what’s the justification for another format? Second, why is it not feasible for us to change or merge our work with the OpenDocument format? ... We’ve been through this before (competing standards, defining the benefits to our customers) and we’ve weathered that pretty well. Let’s make sure that we do the same when it comes to Office document formats."

» RedMonk's Stephen O'Grady rolls his eyes: "Well, whoever said that standards were boring needs to really reevaluate that perspective: things are getting downright crazy in the battle of Office productivity standards."

Buffer overflow:

• FixingEmail: Should We Publish Email Addresses?
• Techdirt: Netgear's Generous Settlement: Buy More Of Our Stuff
• Nicholas Goodman: Must have IE to evaluate SQL Server?
• Microsoft Monitor: Even More Beta Blues
• IT Toolbox: ITO Leader: Do you know if your subordinates think you're a jerk?
• IT Toolbox: Understanding the Vicious Circle of Complexity
• Silicon Beat: Google is watching you
• Joatblog: Excommunicated?
• Martin McKeay: Microsoft serious about keeping Xbox 360 hack free
  
• Douglas Schweitzer: Despite warnings, social engineering still works
• Mitch Betts: Radio buttons for classifying documents
• Ken Mingis: Santa comes early in Cupertino?
• Robert L. Mitchell: How "degunking" extends PC lifecycles at Bank of NY
• Douglas Schweitzer: FTC advice for keeping online shopping experiences as safe as possible

And finally... Dust Houses.

Richi Jennings is an independent technology and marketing consultant, specializing in email, blogging, Linux, and computer security. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. Contact Richi at blogwatch@richi.co.uk. Also contributing to today's post: Judi Dey, our very own Antipodean.