In the dispute with the Massachusetts state government over their planned adoption of the OpenDocument format, Microsoft has claimed that their Open XML formats, which they recently announced will be the default format for the pending Office 12, will be “published and made available under the same royalty-free license that exists for the Microsoft Office 2003 Reference Schemas—openly offered and available for broad industry use.” While the 2003 Reference Schemas specifications are freely available (for example, the Word 2003 XML Reference) under a royalty-free license, saying that the specifications are “openly offered” is disingenuous.

Microsoft has patented techniques used to in their “open” formats. The license for the specifications includes a patent license, which states that “Except as provided below, Microsoft hereby grants you a royalty-free license under Microsoft’s Necessary Claims to make, use, sell, offer to sell, import, and otherwise distribute Licensed Implementations solely for the purpose of reading and writing files that comply with the Microsoft specifications for the Office Schemas.” Unfortunately, the provisions below include: “You are not licensed to sublicense or transfer your rights.”

The last clause precludes, for example, writing a program that uses the new formats and then letting your friend tweak the code to do something else. Your friend might make your code do something that wasn’t “solely for the purpose of reading and writing files that comply with the Microsoft specifications,” and even if he didn’t, you can’t transfer your royalty-free license to Microsoft’s patents to him.

Handily, this eliminates all of the GPL software in the world.

On the other hand, the OASIS OpenDocument format is truly open. Its specification is available from OASIS, which guarantees that the OpenDocument license is royalty free. Furthermore, “By ratifying this document, OASIS warrants that it will not inhibit the traditional open and free access to OASIS documents for which license and right have been assigned according to the procedures set forth in this section. This warrant is perpetual and will not be revoked by OASIS or its successors or assigns.” Additionally, Sun Microsystems, one of the companies involved in the development of the standard, has stated that it will not assert its patents as they relate to the standard.

David Berlind of ZDNet has a lengthy analysis of the Halloween hearing of Massachusetts’ Committee on Post Audit and Oversight. He also has what he claims is a transcription of the passage I quoted yesterday from Andy Updegrove’s “rough transcription.” Additionally, he has the audio available for download.

From Berlind:

[MP@44:05] In the proposal that the Library of Congress has before them, have they opted for OpenOffice?

LH: OpenDocument Format and PDF

MP: It’s different.  You can do OpenDocument Format with out saying OpenOffice, right?  So we have a proposal that is before us with ETRM that basically requires the OpenDocument Format and anybody that’s going to run that system, and I asked this recently, will realize, in the OpenOffice [DB: I think he was implying that the ODF was a system that would have to run in OpenOffice, or, in other words, that OpenOffice is required to support ODF]. So has the Library of Congress taken a position on that?

LH: Senator, like ITD the Library of Congress is referring to a document format. Not to an office application that supports it. ITD has never come out and said that agencies have to use OpenOffice. To the contrary, there are multiple distributors,…

MP: If you could just answer my question: Has the Library of Congress taken a position saying yes, or no. Have they done this, yes or no, that OpenOffice is the product that should be implemented.

LH: Like ITD, they have not Senator. Just like ITD, they have not.  They came out in favor of OpenDocument Format as we have. And, ITD has never specified that agencies have to use OpenOffice and in fact, interestingly enough, because OpenDocument Format ..

MP: Isn’t that the practical reality in terms of the implementation of the policy if it was to go into effect tomorrow..isn’t that the practical reality of where things are, at least at this time?  In other words, the support systems that are out there.. listen.. As we’re sitting here, I’m sure some time in the future that even some the people that may be opposing this like IBM was two years ago and now all of the sudden they’re in a different situation now.. I’m sure there will be all kinds of things happening down the road, but as we are sitting here today, it is my understanding that it’s OpenOffice is the product that can be used right now.

LH: Senator, that is not ITD’s understanding. ITD understands that there are multiple office applications that support OpenDocument Format and we know from Microsoft’s recent adoption of the PDF format that it’s quite possible — even for the vendor that owns 90 percent of the desktops that you fund — that they too could support OpenDocument Format if they chose to do so. A gentleman whose last name is..

MP: Within the timeline that your talking about. You’re talking about January 2007.  I know because I had the same feeling that you just expressed.  Why can’t we do this with PDF and it’s my understanding that PDF took well over a year to develop. I know we just had an annoucement but there was a lot of development going on before that announcement took place.

I’m downloading the audio right now. It appears that a section of Pacheco’s statements (not the one quoted above) that Berlind claims occurs at 31:30 actually occurs at 33:30.

Andy Updegrove, one of the partners at the Boston law firm, Gesmer Updegrove LLP, reports from a meeting at IBM in Armonk, NY, that, “There has been a commitment made to not only close the gap between Microsoft Office and ODF by the Commonwealth’s deadline of January 1, 2007, but also to make ODF a superior alternative to Office for those with disabilities by that date, if not before.” The companies represented at the meeting who I presume are making this commitment include IBM, Sun, Adobe, Corel, Computer Associates, Google, Nokia, Novell, and RedHat. That’s a lot of the big guys.

Accessibility for those with disabilities appears to be the major impediment to ODF adoption, but from the tone of Pacheco’s questioning at the hearing last Monday, it seems to me that the real problem is that he doesn’t understand the difference between a document format and an office suite. I suspect he’s just pissed off because the world is changing faster than he can update the model in his mind, and he’s getting low-frequency aliasing from the . . . never mind. Discussion between a representative of the Massachusetts ITD (Peter Quinn?) and Pacheco, from Updegrove’s transcript of the meeting:

“Q: Has the Library of Congress adopted ODF? So we have a proposal from the ITD we go with ODF. Has the Library of Congress made the same decision? Have they said, “Use OpenOffice?” Answer me yes or no.

A: No– and neither have we. We haven’t mandated the specific product?

Q: Isn’t that the practical situation? Isn’t that the only product? That’s my understanding.”

The discussion is about what format to use for government documents– Microsoft’s new formats, currently supported by no software on the market, or ODF, currently supported by, yes, OpenOffice, but also KOffice. It’s not clear who else will *really* support it, but Novell, IBM, and Corel would be likely candidates, though Corel’s statement, quoted by David Berlind, rises to to the level of artistry in its equivocation:

“Corel is a strong supporter of the continued development and adoption of the OASIS Open Document Format, and Corel strongly endorses ODF. Corel views Open Standards as a way for customers to maintain seamless and timeless access to their documents, and Open Standards free customers from the risks and costs related to reliance on a single vendor.” (Greg Wood of Corel)

It would be entertaining if Microsoft decided to support ODF. If Massachusetts goes ahead with their ODF requirement, I expect that Microsoft will add half-assed support for ODF to make it look shabby.

It’s stunning that in 2005, we don’t have a standard format for writing a letter. On the other hand, we still don’t use the metric system in the US.

Jason of Real Linux Geek mentions that OpenOffice.org is available for many more platforms than Microsoft Office. He mentions that it runs on “Windows 9x/Me/XP/NT/2000, Linux, Macintosh, FreeBSD and Solaris.”

As someone in charge of buying office suites for a largely Mac institution, I’m sad to say that the status of OOo on the Mac is tenuous at best. There is a version that runs under X11, which requires an additional installation and a little user education; what’s more, it runs slow as a dog. A really slow dog. Maybe a dog that was towing a sledge of bricks.

The other Mac version is NeoOffice/J, which in my experience, is slightly faster, but the project, while a valiant effort, hasn’t released version 2.0 yet. Version 1.1, which I’ve used for a few months, is decent, but still slow compared to Microsoft Office. On the other hand, it doesn’t make me want to gouge my eyes out.

At the recent OpenOffice convention, according to Tim Bray, a Mac port of OOo using Cocoa will be attempted soon. Sounds like I’ve heard that before somewhere.