[odf-discuss] Linspire's MOOX initiatives

[Daniel Carrera]

Christian Einfeldt wrote:
> I am assuming that this is not good news.  According to the two press 
> releases below, the first from 1 july 2007 and the second from 11 July 
> 2007, Linspire has a plug-in for making the ODF and MOOX work together.  
> (I prefer to call OOXML "MOOX" because I have been told that MOOX is 
> neither open nor XML.)

Well... MOOX _is_ XML. A very crappy and non-idiomatic kind which you 
can argue misses much of the point of using XML, but it is certainly 
compliant with the XML 1.0 specification.

Now, back to the story... so this is a plugin for OpenOffice.org? The 
idea is that the OOo provided by Linspire, Xandros and Novell will be 
able to read and write MOOX?

> At any rate, I am assuming that Microsoft is doing this work because it 
> breaks ODF somewhere, right?  Can someone give me a fairly simple newbie 
> summary?

I'm not aware of any breakage. I think Microsoft is doing it because 
they have an interest in adoption of MOOX and because they want to 
"show" widespread adoption of MOOX. I think that if MS Office is the 
only program in the world that can read and write MOOX, Microsoft would 
have a harder time convincing governments that it is an industry 
standard. That's my take on the issue. So it is a "bad" thing, but not 
because it breaks ODF.

Note: This is not to say that it is not possible that their plugin could 
write invalid ODF. I'm just saying that no one has reported such a 
thing, and I note that the plugin is widely scrutinized so I think we'd 
find out about it very soon if it did.

> Thanks.  Consider this:  OOo and Audacity and a bunch of other 
> FOSS apps work on Windows, so what is wrong with Linspire's work here?  

The biggest problem with the Microsoft-Linspire deal, IMHO, is the 
patent portion of the deal. These patent deals create a precedent that 
the Linux community are a bunch of IP thieves and owe Microsoft money. I 
think Microsoft is working to build momentum in that direction. Start by 
targeting small Linux vendors who can't defend themselves in an IP 
lawsuit (no matter how base-less) and get them to sign a patent deal. As 
you build momentum, slowly build upwards towards larger vendors. By the 
time you get to the vendors who _are_ big enough to fight MS in court 
(Red Hat) you can say "look, 90% of Linux distributors have signed a 
patent deal with us, so obviously there is consensus that Linux 
infringes on our IP".

That's my take. That's what I think they are doing.

The MOOX-ODF translator is, IMO, to make MOOX look like an industry 
standard and so make it a contender against ODF.

> Or is it that this 
> news gives Microsoft more evidence to suggest that MOOX should be an ISO 
> standard?

IMO, this too.

I should note that a bi-directional converter also has pro-ODF benefits. 
Yes, the bad side is that it makes it easier for MS to get government 
approval for MOOX. But the good side is that it makes it easier for 
their customers to migrate away.

Of course, Microsoft has weighted these pros and cons and they've 
decided that the benefit of having government approval exceeds the risk 
of losing some measure of vendor lock-in. Hence, we can conclude from 
that angle that this is probably a "net bad" for ODF. Surely, if MOOX 
was not seen as an international standard a lot of governments would 
find it a lot easier to mandate ODF and not MOOX. But if they are both 
seen as international standards, it is hard to create an ODF-only policy.

There are also ways that you could cripple the converter. Ok, you can't 
make it write invalid ODF because the press would have a field trip with 
that. But for example, you could make the converter too slow to be 
usable for most people. On the other hand, since it is open source, if 
the converter is obviously crippled someone can fork it and make a fast 
version. So there's a limit as to how much they can mess it up.

I hope this helps.

Cheers,
Daniel.