Michael Meeks On ODF and OOXML

biscuitfever11 writes "ZDNet has up a great interview with Michael Meeks, the distinguished Novell engineer, who's currently deeply involved in open document format and OpenOffice.org. In the interview, Meeks takes Microsoft to task on its alternative format OOXML and argues that Microsoft should adopt ODF — but says that realistically they never will. He also mentions his favorite example to explain the benefits of open source software to a nontechnical person: the flexibility of open source would have allowed us to free ourselves from Clippy, the world's most despised paperclip, by changing a single line of code."

No way, given half a chance

Given half a chance the OSS world would probably have neded up patching Office with:

' remove MS cruft:
' AssistantLoad "clippy.acs"
AssistantLoad "Tux.acs"

Re:No way, given half a chance

The post you replied to made no mention of the average user customizing that stuff. He said large businesses. Most large businesses put their own images on computers with specific combinations of software and modify/skin commercial software when applicable frequently write their own tools to do things like migrate users to a new computer without losing personal data or deploy images and software. A build of open office or any other OSS app compiled with their preferred flags to configure or their preferred skin/theme on an app is well within the realm of reality at these places.

For example, years ago when I worked for Best Buy, the techs used a fairly standard trouble ticket and inventory app (I'll be damned if I can remember the name), but it was rebranded as "STAR" by best buy and integrated with the POS software to a certain extent. I later worked at Capital One where they used the exact same application by it's normal name, but highly modified the interface to their needs (which Best Buy also almost surely did). We had a scripted tool built around some user migration tools MS provides to move user data from one computer to another. At the place I work now we use a modified Bugzilla and we're far from a large company. And as already mentioned, pretty much every large company has their own custom images for computers with software packages and versions that have been tested and verified to work together.

Re:No way, given half a chance

Hell, I'll better pay for a closed source solution in that case.

That's only true of your propriety software does what the open source software could potentially do.

The whole kernel hacking grandma is a misnomer when it comes to company's, even small ones, mainly because they either have access to technical experience, or they aren't getting even close to the most out of their IT systems (FOSS or Proprietary).

You have small organisations that tend to use stuff "out of the box", which basically means they don't. nor have the expertise to, use the more useful features within the software they already own. Things like Windows Update Server, Remote Installation Services, Active Directory, Print Servers, IIS, it all gets ignored, at best you might have a file server and a load of desktops. So in that instance they would benefit from some IT expertise regardless of whether they are using FOSS or not *and* if they need to grab someone with IT experience anyway then they could replace windows with an open OS and see many benefits, without modifying a single piece of code.

These small organisations wouldn't even consider looking at bespoke proprietary software, and the normal COTS products wont be perfect for them, so its not like they lose anything moving to OSS, and they can gain rather a huge amount, not to mention the fact that many small (as in cheap enough for SME's) software packages from less well known vendors are not exactly very good to begin with, all those crappy PHP CMS's et al you see in the OSS world also exist in proprietary land, except there you need to pay for them, and you cant fix them yourself.

So how do you get the benefits of a working complete, comprehensive secure and stable system, whilst still having a large amount of choice *and* the ability to get modifications made if you wish (and at a more reasonable price than having something custom made/faster than having a vendor provide a patch)? Easy use OSS software. It gives choice, doesn't stop you using proprietary software where it is best, doesn't lock you in and best of all doesn't inhibit growth due to licensing costs, and scalability issues.

If you do switch, don't do it everywhere at once if you don't want to (don't do some bits at all if you prefer), a gradual transition is possible, and probably easier. That leaves you with a choice. Oh and get someone to do it for you or with you, (that goes for an OSS or a MS based system, IT systems can make such a huge difference to a company that it is worthwhile contacting your local IT people, or even better a local college and trying to get someone to help you out. Any small business that goes down the 100% MS route will find itself without any *viable* options at all a short way down the road.

Having said all the above I should point out that I would find it extremely difficult to put myself into a non IT literate company owners shoes and figure out what I would see as best, I would guess choice stability, reliability, scalability, security etc.. would be good, but sometimes you just want to be able to point out you spent X thousands on a new IT system over lunch, and make your friends jealous.

Okay...

Isn't one file format (such as ODF) better than two? Surely the weakness of having many is the confusion it creates?

Not that I don't enjoy a good OSS flamewar, but isn't this something of a leading question? As an individual in a position to make buying decisions based on this sort of thing, this is exactly what turns me off to ODF and other "community" technologies.

The closed techs may have more technical annoyances and whatnot, but when it comes right down to it, open technologies and the confrontation they create even within their own support base just turns me off to the whole thing. Give me something that works for 95% of the whole group and I'll happily support the remaining 5% rather than risk 100% of my user base's productivity on something that may collapse from internal quibbling in a few months.

Just my 2 cents, is all....

Huh?

I have no way of proving it one way or another, but I'll say it again: I make buying decisions. I have access to two $25,000 lines of credit and one $10,000 line of credit and I make purchasing decisions for a 164 employee company (primarily related to replacing user PCs and web/database/file servers).

So, $60,000. For 164 person company.

We're a little over a 100 people and we spend over $500,000 a year on a single contract.

Every time I chicken out because the simple fact is, as much as I like Apache and OOo, I won't get blamed when IIS or Office fail.

Why would Apache "fail"?

And why would anyone not directly involved in it even know what you're running?

Like I said elsewhere in this thread, until I get to hire/fire the guy who makes the buying decisions, I can't really influence it all that much.

But you said, and I quote "I make buying decisions".

Five years ago I had a high profile account here where I supported OOS, but now that I'm in IT management, I realize that it's the non-technical executives that are really holding OSS back. It's sad, but it's true.

Noooooo...... What is "holding OSS back" is the fact that all those companies have LARGE investments in their current systems.

It takes a LONG time for companies to migrate from something that is working TODAY that they know how to support TODAY and that has been paid for TODAY.

Regardless of the internal quibbling at MS or other closed corps, they're established, and that carries and awful lot of weight, as unfair as it may be.

That depends upon what you mean by "established".

Microsoft has a MONOPOLY. Therefore, they are going to be around for a LONG time.

People will continue to buy from Microsoft because it is what they know and what they use and what works.

Free software (as in speech) will be taken up by non-US governments and such. It's easier to pitch a change there when you can show $X (or whatever the local medium of exchange is) being sent to Redmond, Washington, USofA instead of into the local economy.

Re:Huh?

We're a little over a 100 people and we spend over $500,000 a year on a single contract.

That's a rolling budget that I have access to without having to submit pre-approved expenditures for. It's primarily used for replacing user PCs, phones, etc, which is why I mentioned it here. I can request as much as I want, I just don't always get it. For example, we moved to SAM-FS last year for recovery and it cost us a pretty penny thanks to a subsidiary that has an assload of data, but I had to request pre-approval for the expenditure.

Why would Apache "fail"?

Ah, yes, the hubris of the OSS community... forgot to mention that.

Apache can "fail" for many reasons. Your excessively technical question suggests to me that you're not very involved in the business. Regardless of why apache "fails" - be it because of some flaw in the program or because of a simple hardware failure - if apache is new apache is blamed. This is just how it is, unfair as it may be. I inherited IIS from my predecesor (who was, admittedly, clueless) and I won't risk my job switching to apache. The simple fact is that 99% of the failures in IIS can be patched or solved with a reboot and I come out the other side looking better for "fixing" the problem.

Perverse? You betcha. But I'm not a big enough man to risk my career for a technological principle, is what it all comes down to.

Again: when I'm the guy who's hiring for the position I'm in, we'll make some changes. Until then?

Not a bloody chance.

What is "holding OSS back" is the fact that all those companies have LARGE investments in their current systems.

You'd be surprised. We deal one-on-one with a lot of businesses and I can't see too many of them running their own vertical apps. That being the case, most of them could switch to OSS/ODF with minimal effort and a moderate investment in training, they just choose not to for the same reasons I won't switch my people: if it goes wrong, I take the blame from higher-ups and I'm the one who's out of a job.

Huh? x2

That's a rolling budget that I have access to without having to submit pre-approved expenditures for. It's primarily used for replacing user PCs, phones, etc, which is why I mentioned it here.

You cannot forecast when to replace PC's? And you have 160+ users?

Huh?
Huh?

Even at 100+ users, we lease our workstations and replace them every 3 years. It's a known cycle and they're under warranty. Not to mention that there aren't any surprises for Accounting for the next 3 years.

Ah, yes, the hubris of the OSS community... forgot to mention that.

Yeah, maybe you could just answer the question, okay?

Apache can "fail" for many reasons.

Yeah, maybe you could just answer the question, okay?

Your excessively technical question suggests to me that you're not very involved in the business.

Yeah, the question, care to answer it?

Regardless of why apache "fails" - be it because of some flaw in the program or because of a simple hardware failure - if apache is new apache is blamed.

How would they KNOW it was Apache? You haven't answered that question, either.

This is just how it is, unfair as it may be.

I didn't ask if it was "unfair".
I asked how Apache would "fail" and how they'd even know that it was Apache.

You have not answered either of those questions.

I inherited IIS from my predecesor (who was, admittedly, clueless) and I won't risk my job switching to apache.

Seeing as how you cannot answer either of those questions and you think $60,000 is a lot of money for a business and you cannot even forecast workstation purchases .....

I've been deploying Linux throughout the company I work at. And no one can tell the difference. As long as the service is available, they're happy.

Here's a free clue. Hardware fails. Real professions know this and have already taken steps to mitigate such failures. If a drive dies on your Apache server, the end users should not ever know about it.

If you're claiming that they'll be complaining about running Apache when that happens ... you've already failed at your job.

I'm going to agree with you.

My email server (Linux + Exim4 + SpamAssassin + ClamAV + chroot'ed BIND9) has over 600 days of contiguous uptime. And it's being hit every day by crackers from all over the world.

Any competent admin can keep IIS running. Any competent admin can keep Apache running.

And NONE of the users would even KNOW what webserver was running. My users don't know that I'm running Exim4. They don't know that ClamAV blocks the viruses. They only care about the SERVICE. And they're very happy with the service.

If you have to reboot IIS to get "kudos", then you're incompetent. That is all.

Competent admins get "kudos" for helping the end users perform their jobs faster and/or easier and for fixing the "I accidentally deleted an important document" problems.

Re:Okay...

Nice try at misdirection, troll, but the squabbling is over. ODF has already been accepted as an ISO standard, and is already supported by all of the following groups:

http://www.odfalliance.org/members.php#viewall [odfalliance.org]

Now perhaps you would care to answer the original question: why are two standards better than one ?

Well

There is no need to change one line of code for that. My mom never could do that, nor could 3/4 of the population. That's why there is Options-Help-Don't use office asistent. Nothing is black and white. there is a lot of gray there in between and while OS is a completly good and fair option, commercial software is a completly good and fair option as well. Both have their advantages and disadventages, and OS id not the paradise, nor is commercial software the hell....

Clippy is not a very compelling argument

I'll put on my Executive Hat here: "So Open Source is good for removing features, gotcha." Arguing about turning off Clippy not necessarily a shining example of why OSS is good. Things like zero-day exploits, internationalization, and no per server (or VM!!!) costs are what will make people adopt OSS.

The worlds most despised minimize animation...

is the one Metacity uses. The patch to remove that one is also only a few lines, but I have yet to see a non-technical person manage to do that. The great advantages of free software aren't technical, they are social. People working together for a common good because it is fun is a more efficient economic system than the one in which you do it to get a paycheck. Imagine what would happen if the rest of the world where also structured like free software communities?

Retraining compared to the ribbon?

but I buy MS Office at work every couple of years because I won't have to request a new training budget when I do so.

Citation needed that the retraining from Microsoft Office 2003 to OpenOffice.org 2.x is bigger than the retraining from Microsoft Office 2003 to Microsoft Office 2007's tabbed toolbar.

Clippy

Last time I checked you can disable Clippy in 10 seconds from the Office Options menu, without the need to find the right line, remove it, and recompile. Anyone who is not capable of clicking Tools->Options and checking off a checkmark would not be capable of editing the code either.

Not being anti-OOS in any way, and there are many instances when editing a few lines WOULD make a difference in the usefulness of software (Windows Firewall sure comes to mind), but this is not one of them. Sorry.

Re:Clippy

Yep, a paper clip is more important than a personal relationship. True sign of a CS guy: smart, experienced, and lonely.

Clippy!

It looks like you're writing code to remove me!

summing up OSS

"the flexibility of open source would have allowed us to free ourselves from Clippy, the world's most despised paperclip, by changing a single line of code."

This is also a prime example of where OSS fails too. How many basic users would be able to even compile a version with the altered code, let alone alter the codes themselves? Heck even finding a specific "no clippy" version among a variety of differently configured distributions could prove too taxing. Microsoft's approach to clippy is that if you hide it 3 times in general usage it'll present a user with an option to turn it off and it'll never appear again (provided you've a well configured server). An "if you don't like it, change it" approach simply isn't as effective as good interface usability testing when you're dealing with a userbase comprised of vastly different skill levels.

I'm not Capt. MS Office

But couldn't you free yourself from the Evil Clippy with a single click of a checkbox? He could make that analogy better and more current by saying "You know the 65535 issue? Programmers could find that and help fix it rather than waiting however long for an official patch"

Fooking Clippy

If that paperclip where a person I'd shoot him in the fooking head.

Microsoft and killing their main revenue source

The format war is the main reason why most people stick with MS Office. And well... let's take a look at Microsoft's balance sheets [microsoft.com].

So, "Microsoft adopting ODF"? Or even "Microsoft not sabotaging ODF plugins"? No freaking way.

It doesn't matter ... we are screwed either way.

As much as I'd love an injunction saying that MS must make its DOCX File format readable by other Office suites, and it must produce a plugin for OO.org to open it NOW. We are screwed. MS already has Office 2007 out in the wild, and I'm starting to get .docx files I can't open in OO.org. There's only one reason this was done, OO.org is so good at opening Docs it started to threaten Office. It doesn't matter if whether OOXML gets certified, its going to be up to OO.org to reverse engineer it as fast as possible or it will make everyone cry blood.

By the way, what do you think the result will be in a year when we start seeing Samba 4 AD? MS will attack again with even harsher resolve/.

Re:It doesn't matter ... we are screwed either way

Why don't you just grow a backbone and ask them to install the ODF plugin for office and send you an ODF.

Isn't clippy also in OpenOffice?

Unfortunately this clippy example is more showing how open source could be great. Right now, in OpenOffice, there is by default clippy activated! (of course it's not called 'clippy', it's called 'help agent'.) So, no, even open source is affected by clippy. Either human kind is doomed, or open source community is very tricky to understand.

Well, at least the OpenOffice clippy hasn't told me anything so far. It's just there, on the bottom of my screen smiling and cheerfully eating up a little bit of the memory space and graphical space. Maybe it's there to appease the user by helping him to believe it's really like MS office? It's just not working on me...

Clippy? That's his explanation???

Uh.. Clippy could be disbaled with three clicks. That's going to mean a lot more to the vast majority of non-programmers than "one line of code".

Christ. You might as well tell them all it takes is building a Porsche out of paper-clips for all the good that line will do.

Clippy is a hero, too.

http://overklocked.com/comic.php?c=54 [overklocked.com][www.overklocked.com

May he always be remembered as one...

Not a great example

"the flexibility of open source would have allowed us to free ourselves from Clippy, the world's most despised paperclip, by changing a single line of code."

Or.... like every other user in the world - just turn, clippy, off.

Code changes are not always a solution.

There is 1 reason for open source and only 1

I am not really satisfied with any of the above replies and I have to say this is the first time I have bothered to write a meaningful reply because someone usually is on the ball.

The ONLY reason to support open source is power in the form of self-determination.

Microsoft can try to force Vista on you and refuse to sell Window XP. Microsoft can decide next version of Office is not backwards compatible with other versions of office and refuse to sell your prior versions of office. Microsoft could decide tomorrow to make the next version of .NET completely incompatible with prior versions, making all of an organizations investment worthless as they have done in the past as they did with VB6, ruining the investment in that code.

In the above scenario, Microsoft is in a position to directly mandate your business. If Microsoft -- or any vendor -- were to discontinue a product your business depends on and refuse to sell it, you are guilty of copyright infringement if you try to resist the change since there are no legal venues for the additional purchase of product X, Y or Z (let alone possible DMCA or EULA violation).

Any business depending heavily on a closed source solution has empowered the closed source vendor to be the bus driver and they can -- by accident, by design or by circumstance -- drive your organization off the cliff.

Open source, in contrast, grants the organization the power to control their activities. There are no unexpected surprises forced upon them, no vendor-lock, etc.

It is NOT that whether or not you DO change, modify or compile open source software -- it is that you COULD and that you could decide to change or not change as you see fit and your organization can control its own destiny with no forced surprises.

Open source grants control, there is not one other significant advantage it has because Open Source solutions are not necesarily superior (and often not!) to their non-open source alternatives.

Open source means the freedom to not drive off the cliff if you do not wish to do so.

Partners

Novell has apparentally signed an interoperability (mostly patents) deal with MS, yet it looks like it is more about Novell working with MS or something, I mean, see these declarations! "It is unlikely in reality MS adopts ODF" , shouldn't Novell be... asking the partner to help them, you only see Novell implementing OOXML and nothing else, why is this deal working in only one direction?

Mmhmm...

Well, it's a bad example for those who know how to turn off office assistant and what-not.

However, the goal for Michael Meeks seem to be to push open source to a larger public audience, particularly the nontechnical savvies. Using his likable example of Clippy, could be part of that goal. Meaning, make our product easier than easy.

So, hopefully the Clippy example Meeks portrayed for open source and OpenOffice is the 'you get the point' idea.

hmmmm not a good example

He also mentions his favorite example to explain the benefits of open source software to a nontechnical person: the flexibility of open source would have allowed us to free ourselves from Clippy, the world's most despised paperclip, by changing a single line of code."

As opposed to say, just uninstalling clippy through the control panel? I'm all for open source and all - but seriously, it's worth checking out the options before busting out GCC...

Knowing next to nothing on the subject...

... I had never heard of Michael Meeks, but as soon as I read "ZDNet has up a great interview with Michael Meeks" in the summary, I knew exactly which format he supports. Slashdot can be so transparent sometimes.

Why not hardware/software solutions?

I thought I might throw this into the hat, why not an open source hardware/software solution? I suppose I mean something that would have to be revolutionary. I know that there are some open source hardware projects out there, but I have only seen a few (although I have more research to do on this and I hope to find cool stuff). I just keep coming back to the thought that perhaps something revolutionary being developed by a large group of people for the benefit of each other is one of the goals of open source or at least a side effect, yet the there is nothing really revolutionizing the industry other than the original idea of open source and what that brings. I don't want anyone to take my statement as an attempt to take away from the great open source software or even hardware that may be out there. But I do see more evolutionary or alternative steps being taken rather than whole new paradigms emerging or breakthroughs that might benefit most people in new ways instead of specific tasks or groups that now have the option of open source VS commercial solutions. I do think something like Woz giving away the schematics to build a personal computer at the Homebrew Club is one thing that sticks in my mind as a revolutionary step, and it may or may not be a good analogy for where I am coming from. I was not a member of the Homebrew club, so perhaps at the time the idea of an easy to use personal computer was not that revolutionary, I am not sure. I mean, can open source hardware/software produce a quantum computer? Is that just something that is going to be left to be owned and licensed by a University or Corporate patent? Are software/hardware solutions like this just not possible in open source?

Microsoft will never support ODF

For Microsoft to support ODF would require them to give up the monopoly that results from being able to write files that only Office can truly understand. Early versions of MS Word used to be able to import documents from all the popular word processors ..... just not export back to them. So MS Word ended up becoming the "default" word processing application because only it was certain to be able to read its own savefiles.

The .doc format contains various tricks and hacks designed especially to thwart reimplementation. So when your £20 otherwise-adequate office suite mucks up a Word document, you get a pirate copy of MS Word instead and you warn your friends not to buy cheap software. Microsoft haven't got your money, but they have got your heart and mind; and maybe the next time you buy a computer, you'll insist for it to come with Office pre-installed. That of course will be a newer version, and maybe some of your friends' older versions won't be able to read the files you save -- so some of them will upgrade.

Microsoft could mung their ODF export filter so that any document saved as ODF didn't render properly; but they would be shooting themselves in the foot, because then Word wouldn't be able to read back properly any ODF documents it had saved. And also, ODF is a human-readable format; so it will be obvious what has happened. (MS could put in an obfuscated proprietary XML container that would tell Word and only Word about the munging, but it'd still be obvious.)

It wouldn't actually take much to get ODF support into Word, because the relevant modules are already licenced under the "leech-friendly" LGPL. But -- unless someone rewrote the code in VBA -- only Microsoft -- or some renegade with access to the Office Source Code -- could actually link it into Word.

So why don't he get rid of

bulby? I despise it more than Clippy.

The real advantage of open standards

He's missing the point. The advantage of using an open, published standard with multiple implementations is that, twenty years from now when you really need to read the documents about the Jones contract, you'll be able to do so.

If you're a big company in business for a while, you probably have some documents in Word Perfect, some in WordStar, many in PDF, and maybe some on 8" floppies from a Wang word processor. There's no uniform way to archive all this stuff. And, because there isn't, it's not in an archive you can search like Google.

So you're probably paying for filing cabinets, off-site document storage, and people to track all that stuff, just in case. And you can't find anything in the archives anyway without a huge amount of work. It's a poor way to run a business.

That's what you tell management.

Patch Options

I'd love to see "alternative code" patches to apps, like patches that delete "Clippy", or replace it with a different character, or add an on/off GUI widget. Several different patches, each targeted to only that single feature/bugfix. Instead we get these bundles of several unrelated patches, just because they're all releasable at the same time, that keep a single bug/feature snapshot in a single version.

So much open source SW could benefit from this. But instead we look for the topheavy "plugin" architectures. If plugins were more portable across different apps that could share that plugged feature, the plugins might be more worth it. But just "pluggable patches" would be a very good way to "roll our own" version of apps, streamlined and hotrodded to our own preferences.

I don't see why the APT system couldn't use a database of optional patches dependent on the main app package to offer the different optional configs directly at the code level, not just config parameters for a monolithic codebase.

Re:what's their excuse?

Why on EARTH would anyone want them too?

ODF cannot possibly support all the specialised functionality in current office or future features Microsoft may want to add. If they started using ODF they would HAVE to IMMEDIATELY start extending it.

Now even though this is PERMITTED it doesn't matter, if it's Microsoft doing the extending there will be a NEVER ENDING hew and cry from the Open community about it.

Let Microsoft have their own formant and KEEP ODF "clean".