[Infowarrior] - Microsoft 'Frees' Office Formats

[Richard Forno]

www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3728596

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Microsoft 'Frees' Office Formats
By Stuart J. Johnston
February 15, 2008

Microsoft this week officially gave developers the right to freely use code
and specifications for translating between its older proprietary Office file
formats and Office 2007's newer XML formats without fear of being sued.

At the same time, company officials must be sitting on pins and needles as a
key meeting over whether or not its newer formats will become an
international standard looms.

Microsoft officials announced today that they have placed the older Office
binary file format specifications for Word, Excel and PowerPoint (.doc,
.xls, .ppt) under the company's Open Specification Promise (OSP). The OSP is
a legal program whereby Microsoft promises not to sue developers who use
specifications that it puts under the program's aegis.

Documentation for the formats has been available by request on a royalty
free basis for a while, but putting it under the OSP gives developers cover
from lawsuits.

"By making these specifications easier to access, others will be able to
build products or tools that will be able to convert documents from the
binary file formats to Open XML," a Microsoft spokesperson said in a
statement e-mailed to InternetNews.com.

[cob:Related_Articles]Additionally, the company announced that an open
source project to produce free translator code to convert from the older
formats to the newer ones is now live on the SourceForge code repository
site. That project, which is being sponsored by Microsoft, had also been
scheduled to start this week. The code produced under the project will be
available under the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) open source
license, according to company statements.

Both moves are part of an effort by Microsoft to preserve its dominance in
the Office productivity market even as it evolves its products to reflect
its emerging software-plus-services strategy.

Billions and Billions

With a reputed 500 million copies of Office in use worldwide, a key
underlying issue for corporations and governments has become the literally
billions of documents that are stored in the original Office binary file
formats. For archive purposes, many users have a continuing need to have
access to those files, and thus a need to be able to translate them into the
newest formats, or into an industry standard interchangeability format.

Particularly in the case of governments, documents may be required to be
archived for hundreds of years. Indeed, many local, state, national and
international governments are actively in the process of establishing
policies that every document must be easily retrievable using standardized
formats.

In fact, as supporters like to point out, there is already an international
standard for document interchange.

Advocates of that standard, the OpenDocument Format or ODF, are pushing
governments virtually everywhere to adopt it as the only standard for
document storage and retrieval ­ and to reject similar standardization of
Microsoft's competing formats.

Among ODF supporters' arguments: massive numbers of existing documents are
stored in Microsoft's older proprietary formats and could become
inaccessible if, for instance, Microsoft went out of business sometime in
the future, or simply decided to eliminate support for the formats.

Indeed, that is a very real fear that ODF supporters say could easily become
a reality. When Microsoft released Office 2003 Service Pack 3 last summer,
it blocked access to those older binary formats for what officials said were
security reasons. Following an outcry in January, the company backed off and
restored access to those blocked formats.

Translators already exist to convert Microsoft's current Office formats ­
known as Office Open XML (OOXML) ­ into ODF and vice versa. In addition, at
least one converter is available from Sun Microsystems that can convert
Office 2003 and earlier binary formats into ODF.

These latest moves are primarily attempts for Microsoft to get a leg up in
the standards arena, according to one analyst.

"Getting translators out kind of undercuts the point that the older files
aren't accessible," Rob Helm, research director at analysis firm Directions
on Microsoft, told InternetNews.com. "Making sure there are translators
available will help Microsoft's standardization efforts," he added.

The existence of translators for the older binary format files may also help
Microsoft in its efforts to convince government customers not to mandate a
move to ODF which, of course, is what the company hopes to head off.

"In the case of governments Š it may make the [legacy] binary file format
documents more acceptable," Helm said.

The Standards Struggle Continues

Microsoft has been struggling to get OOXML adopted by the International
Organization for Standardization (ISO). However, a move to give it ISO "fast
track" approval fell short in balloting by ISO member countries in
September.

Since then, European standards organization Ecma International has been
shepherding OOXML through what is called the "ballot resolution" process.
That is, OOXML could still soon become an ISO standard ­ if a raft of
technical objections made by the voting countries can be resolved.

Ecma, which has already adopted OOXML as a standard on its own, and
Microsoft, have been working at a gallop since last summer's balloting to
address all of the objections. A weeklong meeting to decide whether all the
objections ­ more than 3,000 of them ­ have been resolved is scheduled to
begin in Geneva, Switzerland on February 25.

Once the objections are resolved ­ if they can be resolved ­ there will not
be another round of voting. Instead, each nation that voted in September
will have 30 days to notify ISO officials that it has changed its vote. If
enough countries change their votes against adopting OOXML, then it will
become a standard.

If not, Microsoft and Ecma can still resubmit OOXML through a longer more
formal process at another time ­ but it's unclear how long such a process
could take.