It's reported in a number of places that MS gave announced support for ODF 1.1, to come sometime next year. There's been a number of comments from various people about that - Ed, quite enthusiastically, Nathan, less so, and plenty of others, and questioning what MS's motives are for making this announcement. Is it because they've seen the inevitable, as Ed implies, or is it the start of an emasculation attempt as Nathan and others suggest?
Here's my spin on this. Whenever a new standard is proposed (in any industry), the proponent spends a lot of time and effort pushing the standard, because they know more about it (and its pitfalls) than anyone else, at least for a short period. They see that as competitive edge, with everyone else having to play catch-up for a while. The loss of proprietorial interest is worth it for the short-term gain. For everyone else, particularly those who have a competitive "standard", this new standard is a disaster, unless of course they can fight it off. If they can't, there comes a time when they have to engage with it, or lose their market share to those who do support the new standard. And when that happens, they'll embrace the new standard as though they have all along, but with sometimes less than perfect implementation, because, after all, their own one is "better". Ever seen that before?
So what I read into this announcement is this:
Firstly MS have admitted to themselves that ODF might not be as good as their file formats, but it is here to stay - they aren't going to defeat it completely. There are mainstream products out there supporting it, and they'll have customers start to ask them about interoperability. However, they're going to support ODF 1.1, not 1.2 - read into that what you may. And that is generally good news, unless, as the cynics say, support is the best way to undermine.
Secondly, MS must be worried about what appears to be IBM's marketing strategy for Symphony, if I read right the various clues that I've heard and seen. This appears to be that IBM offer Symphony for free, so that all that license money that's spent now on Office license renewals doesn't get spent on Office renewals. That money is then available for new sells, with the added incentive that as it's IBM who has made that money available there's a hope that it gets spent it with IBM rather than competitors on new stuff to help your enterprise do this or that better than it is done now?
MS must be hoping that if they can say "we do ODF too" that they have a valid counter for that approach. After all, the thrust of Symphony against MS products is 1: free, 2: support MS file formats and 3: ODF as well which is the new standard blah blah blah (as well as native generation of PDFs). MS aren't going to do anything much about the free bit, so their tactic will be 1: we do MS file formats better than anyone else, OOXML nothwithstanding, 2, now we also do ODF and PDF and 3: no it's not free but then neither is moving to Symphony. What they must fear though, is the suggestion that the first-year costs saved by not renewing MS licenses more than covers the transition to Symphony, and then after that, Symphony is free.
Mick Moignard May 22nd, 2008 02:42:18 AM