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Parsing the Microsoft - EU Interoperability Commitment

Posted by Andy_Updegrove on · 13 comments
ConsortiumInfo.org Standards Blog; By Andy Updegrove 		Mail this story
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Last week, Microsoft and the EU each announced that they had reached a proposed settlement of the various anticompetition law violation claims that had been brought against Microsoft by the EC. Typically, and as an afterthought, most of the stories written so far focus on browser issues, at most adding a brief mention that a settlement has also been provisionally reached relating to "another" dispute, this one relating to interoperability. That's a shame, because it's an important issue, and the answers are murky.

While the browser question is certainly important, it is in fact in many ways far less important than the interoperability. After all - the primary benefit for consumers under the browser settlement is that they can choose their favorite browser when they first boot up their new computer, as compared to investing a few extra clicks to download it from the site of its developer - as they can already do now. Interoperability, of course, goes far deeper. There's no way that you can make one program work the way you really want it to with another unless it comes out of the box that way, or unless you have not only the ability, but also the proprietary information, to hack it yourself. And if both programs don't support the same standards, well, good luck with that.

So what exactly did Microsoft promise to the EC, regarding interoperability? Let's use ODF as a reference point and see.

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Comments (13)

good catch by Andy Updegrove

tuxchick ·
Everyone is all going on about browsers, but Andy Updegrove digs a bit into the real meat of this, which is interop and document formats. Excellent analysis as always. Who cares about browsers, that's a meaningless sideshow started by Netscape back when they were dying and desperate, and they managed to make that a primary issue with the US DOJ investigation, rather than the many significant anti-trust issues the DOJ could have explored.
dinotrac ·
Antitrust. GRRRRRR!!!!

I've never believed that the Clinton administration actually wanted to take Microsoft to court given all of the real issues that they could have pursued -- like prohibitions against VARs allowing dual-boot, which played a hand in killing BeOS.

They had offered an earlier sweetheart deal that got bounced out of court and had the (I believe) misfortune to prosecute their case before an honest judge who understood the issues while Microsoft behaved badly at trial.

Wait -- must let old rants die.......
TxtEdMacs ·
dino,

You old fossil, never ... never let old rants die. How are we to know it really is you foaming at the mouth? We have so many others that play the role badly. So old buddy, never give up! That is, Never Give UP. For Crown & Country* you should perish that thought immediately.

YBT

* You remember, that restaurant we were planning on opening?
gus3 ·
Quoting:prosecute their case before an honest judge who understood the issues while Microsoft behaved badly at trial.
After watching the SCO train wreck over the last 6+ years, I'd say the odds of that are slim to none.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20090727112704743

"M$ shall implement ODF...effective 30 October 2009"

henke54 ·
Quoting:(29) Microsoft shall implement ODF 1.1 support, and include ODF in the “save as” drop down box, for Word 2007, Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007 in Office Service Pack 2 (“SP2”), and shall give customers who install SP2 the ability to set ODF 1.1 as their default format. This means that Microsoft shall support the ODF standard and provide a warranty as specified in the general provisions outlined in Section B.I of this Undertaking, effective 30 October 2009.
[url=http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:r-YmC2A1z5cJ:www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/eu-msft/docs/Microsoft_Interoperability_Undertaking.doc paragraph 32 microsoft&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk]http://74.125.77.132/search?q=cache:r-YmC2A1z5cJ:www.microso...[/url]

i wonder....
Bob_Robertson ·
Good luck with that.

This is going to be interesting to watch.
Sander_Marechal ·
Wonder? Interesting to watch? Not really. MSO 2007 already has ODF 1.1 support for some time now. It's even pretty standard's compliant, although the "to the letter" interepretation of the standard has left a few interoperability issues.
henke54 ·
>although the "to the letter" interepretation of the standard has left a few interoperability issues.

That's why ....'i wonder'.... ;-P http://www.odfalliance.org/resources/fact-sheet-Microsoft-OD...
gus3 ·
"To the letter" when it suits them. Case in point: that stupid Office OpenXML spec.
techiem2 ·
Quoting:Case in point: that stupid Office OpenXML spec.


Apparently. I was working on a group paper and the silly people kept uploading docx's. OO.o reads them fine of course. I tried once to save it back to docx after changing it and uploaded that. OO.o could reopen/read it fine, but the other students couldn't. Apparently Word was telling them it was corrupt....

I'm guessing this has something to do with OO.o having OOXML implemented via the standard, and Word not being fully compliant to the standard... Lovely.

Sander_Marechal ·
@henke54: Interestingly enough, the ODF implementation also flushed out a couple of things where Microsoft got the spec right and everyone else got it wrong (e.g. chart pathnames). It just shows that interoperability testing and plugfests work :-)

Quoting:and Word not being fully compliant to the standard...


That is correct. Office 2007 was finished before OOXML was OSI approved. During the approval process MS and consorts tried very hard not to change the spec in such a was that Office 2007 did not conform anymore. They succeeded in almost all points. Almost, not entirely. Office 2007 does not conform to ISO OOXML. It does conform to ECMA OOXML.
gus3 ·
Don't forget the Office OpenXML spec's use of "binary blobs". Just a way for Microsoft to say "we'll do as we d@#n well please".
hkwint ·
Silly question: Why doesn't OO.o have an ECMA-OOXML mode? Or is that just too much work?

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