Open Malaysia

"We’ve been listening to our customers from around the world and we’ve heard loud and clear that document format interoperability is critically important. Microsoft is listening carefully to these concerns and taking action to meet customers’ interoperability needs by using the power and flexibility of XML in a way that allows customers to bring their existing documents into an XML-based world and benefit from significant advances in the future versions of our products."
- July 2006 Chris Capossela, Corporate VP of Microsoft Business

The quote above is not unlike all the press releases of mega-corporations with claims of customer sensitivities as its priorities. It is wonderful that the largest software vendor in the world has such appreciation for its end-users requirements. However Microsoft is a big company, and like all big companies, their definition of "customers" will mean different things to different people within their organisations.

For example, end-users like you and I are the traditional "customer". We purchase software and use it on a daily basis. However dealers, software integrators, consultants are considered by Microsoft  also as "customers". They purchase products and services from Microsoft which makes them a "customer" in the traditional sense, with the only difference of reselling these products to us.

So when someone says that their company is looking out for their customers interests, always please probe a little deeper to get context and find out who exactly they mean by the term "customer". Their customer's interest may not ultimately be in congruence to your interests.

Who then are they appealing to w.r.t MSOOXML; Resellers or End-Users?

Consider the next few quotations:

"customers will soon have the confidence that Open XML and ODF formats can coexist and new document scenarios will flourish. We are looking forward to working with the community of developers and businesses interested in XML documents."
- July 2006 Frédéric Bon, CEO of Clever Age

"Open XML formats can be extended by customers to address particular scenarios, such as vertical industry requirements or organization-specific requirements."
- July 2006 Chris Capossela, Corporate VP of Microsoft Business

It is strange that customers need to gain confidence in MSOOXML if they supposedly demanded it in the first place. Customers do not usually have the resources to consider vertical industry requirements based on an immature and vendor dependent file format. However Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) would find these developments interesting.

"I think it is simplistic to think that MicroSoft has not been very aware that while their binary formats provide them some benefit from lock-in, the binary formats also prevent a lot of integration opportunities. And MicroSoft became successful by piggybacking on their system integrator networks."
- July 2006 Rick Jelliffe, CTO Topology Pty Ltd

Rick Jelliffe hits it on the head this time. Little would he realise that he would eventually be part of the MSOOXML food chain as a consultant and ISV. The trade-off to leverage on the power of lock-in using proprietary binary formats and access to the "secret sauce" provided by Microsoft, is the signing away of competition rights by certain ISVs.  This has proven to be a great symbiotic relationship, unfortunately at the expense of the real customers, the End-Users.

The "Opening" up of file formats in the guise of XML would have caused great concern to ISVs who have relied on the closed formats. Maintaining this "trust" between solution providers was key, and this reassurances had to be addressed:

"We hope and expect that millions of third-party developers around the world will build solutions using the Open XML file formats."
- July 2006 Chris Capossela, Corporate VP of Microsoft Business

With that they managed to extract calls for support of MSOOXML by their ISVs, not based on technical merits but by the simple fact that it's "Microsoft":

"Here are quotes from public sector and IT industry organizations (including many of the founding members of the Open XML Developer Group) about Office Open XML:"
- December 2006 Doug Mahugh, MSOOXML Evangelist, Microsoft.

The above quote is particularly interesting. Besides 15 congratulatory cheers from Microsoft ISVs ... well 16, if you count Microsoft's self congratulatory message by Craig Mundie, there was a subdued vote of confidence from the Lithuanian government: the only non-ISV on the list, which was placed right on the top.

This quote from Lithuania is particularly ironic, because just recently, after the Standards Board of Jordan "spammed" all other National Bodies worldwide with Microsoft marketing spiel to justify its complete support for MSOOXML, a keen response from Lithuania commented:

"I am not sure about the skills of experts of Jordanian standards board. ... Can you please comment the contradiction of OOXML with XML and other existing ISO standards?"
- August 2007, Mykolas Okulič-Kazarinas, Member of TK4 of the Lithuanian standards board

Could they actually find any real grass-roots end-user support? We'll come back to that later...

In the meantime, this is how MSOOXML can benefit the ISVs:

"... if, for example, governments start saying “We need interoperability” ... This will hurt PDF, XPS and Office Open XML and benefit ODF, I’d guess. But I don’t think MicroSoft cares much: they just want to be at the center of a vibrant market with a developer community who can go out and sell Office 2007-based systems to governments and business; at the end of the day, ODF is no more a threat to their profits than JPEG or HTML."
- July 2006 Rick Jelliffe, CTO Topology Pty Ltd

Rick's understanding of the ISV world is correct. Later that year, "verticals" were being deployed right here in Malaysia:

"MyBiz can now push their applications to the end-user because their tools can now be integrated into the Office 2007 ... For an ISV, that's exciting because my application can now be integrated into Office, and I can push my tool to the end-user...so the [procurement manager'] secretary will be able to pull the information out into his desktop. With this, more end-users will be aware of my technology."
- October 2006 Cheong Yuk Wai, Executive Director MyBiz Solutions

Although MSOOXML was not directly featured, the Microsoft marketing machinery can easily twist it to be so. For example, Malaysia is a great proponent for "Halal" food industry, where food is prepared, packaged and marketed according to Islamic regulations. [ This is equivalent to the label "Kosher" with Jewish requirements.] Recently, the Halal Development Corporation had a Memorandum of Understanding with Microsoft Malaysia to study the development of a Halal Hub or portal:

"The system, to be called the Malaysian International Halal Hub Open XML System, will be based on the Open XML document standard ...  A project team of officials from Microsoft and HDC are defining the scope of the project and method of implementation before deciding on these matters"
- May 2007 Yasmin Mahmood, GM for Microsoft Malaysia

No prizes for guessing what "architecture" they would chose, considering that the name of the project is already "Halal Hub Open XML System". Imagine being forced to submit your Halal purchase order from a specific version of a specific Microsoft product from a specific Microsoft suite, on a specific Microsoft operating system. And yet we get:

"...  it is very important that customers have the freedom to choose from a range of technologies to meet their diverse needs."
-  July 2006 Jean Paoli, GM of Interoperability and XML architecture at Microsoft

So where exactly is the choice when it has been pre-defined? Who's choice is it? The End-User (you and I)? The Customer (HDC)? The ISV who is implementing it (e.g. ISVs like MyBiz)? The software Vendor who happens to control the entire value chain from policies to licenses to operating systems to applications to tools (Microsoft)? Pick MSOOXML, and you have ultimately restricted your choices.

Microsoft IIS, Sharepoint, ActiveDirectory, Office, Windows, SQL Server and Visual Studio. These are the products which interoperate with each other with the new common glue called MSOOXML. Microsoft's definition of both "Interoperability" and "Choice" is not about using products from other vendors, but rather the "vertical" amongst a single vendor's product suite.

Real Customer Demand

Customer demand of competitive file formats is hard to find. Especially when you deliberately not look for it.

"One of the issues I have raised that has drawn the ire of my critics has been about customer demand for ODF vs. PDF.  ...  This [PDF support] came about because we had very strong feedback from customers that this was important. The feedback was not one or two customers – but rather tens of thousands. ... Today, the demand is just not there for ODF. As always, the door is open to discussion with our customers."
- May 2006 Jason Matusow, Senior Director of IP and Interoperability, Microsoft

It is interesting to find out that the break point of what the term substantial customer demand is. According to Jason, it is "tens of thousands". So if the ODF community was to raise tens of thousands calls for ODF support, would Microsoft open the door to its inclusion in its Office suite? That seems like an easy task to achieve!

Already the existing NOOOXML petition has close to 35,000 signatures. This means that there are at least "tens of thousands" of end users who will not be using MSOOXML. What format they intend to use on a daily basis I am not exactly sure, but a strong correlation would be that they would prefer the more vendor neutral file format in ODF.

Not all of them would be using Microsoft Office, however I would assume that quite a majority of them author in ODF and would like the 90% of their friends who happen to use Microsoft Office to view their documents.

We can therefore safely extrapolate that there exists "tens of thousands" of potential customer requests with names and email addresses readily available for Microsoft to start work on a "Feature Request" to support ODF as a "read/write native file format in the Microsoft Office suite."

Is this petition substantial enough, or does Jason's "customer" differ from customers like you or I? Is it tens of thousands of ISVs who would prefer less vendor lock-ins to resell? If that is the case, then it would be true that he would only have the 1 or 2 "rogue" requests.

If his definition of customer remains with the ISVs, then Microsoft will stubbornly wait out the eventual migration of Governments like Malaysia to true Open Standards like ODF before relenting to severe customer pressure.

Conclusion

"Let us be clear. Whatever the merits of proprietary software, they are purely vendor-favoring. There is no customer reason to make software proprietary. None. There is no customer benefit that attaches to proprietary software. There is only a vendor's ability to temporarily monopolize a piece of software and thereby profit from it."
- January 2007 Matt Asay, VP of Business Development of Alfresco

The complex and "not-invented-here" attitude of the 6039 page MSOOXML specification is as good as it being released as a proprietary specification. Microsoft engineers themselves are finding it difficult to implement MSOOXML on different operating systems, as demonstrated by the delays of Microsoft Office for the Macintosh. Extrapolating the Microsoft's teams frustrations show that the resources required to implement MSOOXML from scratch would amount to:

"Back of the envelope, we’re now talking about 120 man-years."
- December 2006 Andrew Shebanow, Engineering Manager of Adobe Systems

Imagine the challenges of a small Malaysian MSC startup company. Would they have the resources to implement MSOOXML on a new platform? Although MSOOXML is now being called an Open Standard, the barriers of entry is way too high to be considered practical. Even the great Microsoft are finding the complexities too high.

" if we want to see Microsoft behaving in a way that respects customers and standards, they will need to be dragged kicking and screaming and FUDing all the way to that conclusion. "
- July 2006 Simon Phipps, Sun

Perhaps MSOOXML is an indication of a new Microsoft. Perhaps it is a good thing that they have finally opened up parts of their document specification after 20 years of obfuscation. Perhaps. Should we give them the benefit of doubt?

Well, just judge for yourself the recent manipulations of the ISO process and consider if Microsoft is changing for the better.

Think about the stacking of technical committees with large number of Microsoft ISVs to ensure that Microsoft's interests are preserved, and not the interests of the sovereign Nation nor her citizens. Why the need of these tactics if there really was (exponential) grass-roots support? Why the need for politicking around the standards process? Why the need for questionable tactics in an otherwise industry based on merit? Technical Committees who are paralyzed to vote because of re-interpretations of the rules, peculiar decisions and veto powers?

In Malaysia the Technical Committee has been requested not to deliberate on the MSOOXML issue. Undercurrents indicate that Malaysia's decision on MSOOXML may come from an unlikely decision process.

So Microsoft, if you really do care about your real end customer, please consider this:

1. Let the ISO process take its course, and improve MSOOXML as it really should
2. Listen to your real customers who would love your applications to succeed
3. Provide true and native support of ODF in your office suite, just like PDF, HTML and TXT.
   
4. Compete in the marketplace fairly and refrain from abusing your monopoly status
5. Your wealth will tempt developing nations' policy makers. Do not abuse it to the detriment of its citizens.

Do this if you really care for your customers. If you do not, within the next few years, your customers will eventually turn on you.

"You can't buy love. It's very irritating,"
- 2005 Warren Buffet

yk.

[I encourage the reader to look up the quotations to confirm if they have been taken out of context or misquoted. Emphasis are mine]