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Gary Edwards

Excellent Sam!

One of the things that fascinates me about ECMA MSXML is that there's very little deception here. Least ways not the kind of outrageous misleading and slight of hand that has long been part and parcel of Microsoft's embrace-extend-extinguish business practice. ECMA MSXML is an in your face like it or lump it entanglement of platform specific systems level dependencies, interfaces and communications protocols. They don't attempt to hide anything?

Whence the source of this unbounded hubris? The presidential pardon they got in 2001 from the Bush administration? The fact that Chairman Bill's bag man in those years leading up to the pardon was none other than Jack the Knife Abramoff, who is now hell bent on taking down the entire house of corruption that is the marriage of unbounded corporate influence and power and a political system with the kind of thirst for money that shatters the second law of thermodynamics? While Chairman bill laughs at the havoc his dollars, once ours, have wrought? Or did they just take ODF for a chump – the ultimate diss being that Charmian Bill didn't even consider the challenge worthy of his best embrace and extend prodigies attention?

The ECMA MSXML specification isn't just a peak under the grand kimona. It's laid bare for all the world to see that Microsoft seeks far more than ECMA ratification of a somewhat, at least it appears at a glance to be, an almost XML file format. What they seek with this wrapper of proprietary systems level dependencies is nothing short of the global ratification of MS Vista as a standard, including 15 years of legacy warts and wobbles. It's almost like they dare us to object, to assert our rights, to say this isn't right.

ODF and MSXML are clearly moving in opposite directions. ODF is a wrapper of Open XML technologies and standard Open Internet methodologies, protocols and practices. Read the license, read the patent disclaimers of the contributors, read the charter that pledges rigid adherence to and rapid embracing of Open XML technologies, read the fiduciary promises of OASIS, the ODF steward, and you'll see that in every way, ODF is setting the high bar defining all future open standards. The specification is highly portable, redefining in every way what it means to be an application and platform independent standard.

Now, drop your jaw 180 degrees, and look at MSXML. It's a pseudo XML wrapper of proprietary technologies that are notably platform specific and systems level dependent - all under the control of single monopolist with a reputation and conviction record for ferociously ruthless, illegal, and reprehensible business practices. MSCML offers us zero interoperability, zero fidelity of transformation, and being locked into the MS Vista – XP platform one hundred ways to Sunday, offers zero portability, and zero application independence.

I'll give Microsoft this; MSXML has fought ODF to a standoff on the desktop. But that's such a small part of the digital information story. ODF on the other hand hits the Open Internet trifecta with all cylinders pumping.

The ODF Trifecta is of course:

The Desktop Productivity Environment ....... where traditional local bound documents are transitioning to intelligent compound documents, connecting and wrapping content, data, and streaming media into Open Internet ready highly portable documents.

SOA ... Service Oriented Architectures where disparate legacy systems and desktops are horizontally connected and wired into next generation information management systems using Open XML- Open Internet methodologies. The model here is Doug Alberg's Boeing implementation of ODF as a common "universal transformation layer".

The Open Internet ...... ODF as successor to HTML and XHTML. ODF is ready to bridge a wealth of unstructured content to into the next generation model of highly structured - metadata centric portable documents. ODF is also currently being worked to bridge the XML data model with the relationship model of RDF. Which is to say, ODF will be at the heart of the Semantic Web.

Notice that it is only on the desktop that MSXML can compete with ODF. When it comes to SOA and the Open Internet, MSXML is a no show. Totally useless. So one of the things that interests me is moving the discussion from the desktop, away from competing vendors, away from the norm of having to struggle with many different file formats and compromised reverse engineering efforts, and pushing forward to SOA and the Open Internet where ODF wins in a walk.

I know some will argue that Microsoft still controls a monopoly base of over 450 million hapless Windows users. The truth is that only 8% of that user base has upgraded to the XP 2003 platform, and can make use of MSXML as a proprietary channel for information moving through the desktop, devices and suite of MS servers that define the XP integrated stack model.

Microsoft is more intent on force upgrading the vast herd of non XP Windows users than they are protecting that monopoly base. The amount of money they stand to make with a forced march upgrade is so incredible that i think they've lost sight of the fact that they have in effect cut the great herd loose. The monopoly base is now up for grabs, with cross platform multi Windows distro enabled OpenOffice.org and Mozilla.org having a great shot at intercepting the great migration.

If OOo and Mozilla can deliver to the great herd, now set adrift and abandoned, a good measure of the collaborative computing functionality Microsoft has promised and reserved exclusively for the XP integrated stack, then all bets are off regarding the future of MSXML. ODF can today run on 100% of the 450 million desktops locked on some version of Windows. MSXML is only available to 8%. Time to fork the great herd if you ask me.

Thanks for putting yourself and your respect for the truth at the front lines of freedom Sam. Beware the treachery, stay the course. ODF is going to prevail.

~ge~

Sam

There's a lot of your fine work with OASIS ODF TC in this, Gary.

You make some intriguing points with the momentum of a Beat poet who's pants are on fire!

One among many that I find interesting is Microsoft's attitude about opening. Indeed they have published the MS XML spec, and yet their best-trained disinformation officers (Alan Yates, for one) continue to repeat the "open" messaging.

One only imagines the orthodox view inside that company is that no one reads the 2000-page technical memoranda.

Yet we talk, here on the Twilight Bark.

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