Microsoft Breaks the Plugins

Tiffany Maleshefski at eWeek Labs is giving the Plugins the once-over-twice and she kindly put up the slides of her experience with Sun's faulty attempt.

Observe the trouble Sun Microsystems' engineers are having getting their ODF plugin to work in MS Office. See the presentations here...

Sun is having trouble because Microsoft is breaking interoperability deliberately through hi-jinks with the Dynamic-Link Libraries ("dll") in Windows.

From Sun's Malte Timmermann's blog...

Q: Why doesn't it support Office 2007?

A: Well, basically, it does, but there is an issue in Word's 2007 Filter API handling. You can save to ODF, but when you try to open ODF, Word ignores the installed filters and tries to open with it's own filters. Of course Word can't, so you get an error message "The Office Open XML file <name> cannot be opened because there are problems with the content". This even happens if you explicitly select the ODF filter! I hope Microsoft will fix this issue with the next service pack. If not, we will work around this bug by doing the same kind of integration like in PowerPoint and Excel.

As marbux says, "Welcome to dll Hell!"

Microsoft's Brian Jones innocently says 'Gee I can't imagine how that's happening?'

You're making me laugh, Microsoft.

You went to the DoJ for this behavior in Netscape. This is going to add to your fines in Europe. We know how you're doing it; we're going to tell on you.

If Brian Jones is obviously looking in the wrong place and can't grok what's happening it's because his head is buried in XML (within the files) and it's the Windows Department who are playing fast & loose with interoperability: the file-association behavior of Office 2007 was working for the OpenDocument Foundation's da Vinci Plugin with Office 2007 Beta and broke in the Final version (yes, we've known about this for about 6 months).

Y'all are some dirty mutherfuckers.

Give me your markets, or I'll take them from you.

Comments

[Zaine Ridling]

Wow, the more things change....

I'll refer back to Sam's comment here for the direct consequences of this behavior.

By intentionally breaking every format but their own, Microsoft has truly gone batshit crazy (for lack of kinder term). Anyone else wonder if the one-hit IT wonders in Massachusetts were tipped off about this DLL-breakage in advance of their decision?

Quick exercise in word association:
ODF
— freedom from vendor whimsy
— unimpeded exchange of information; Open Access (OA);
— Open standard
— built for the future

MS-OOXML
— DRM
— proprietary
— lock-in
— chained to legacy binary formats

Users saw the first signs of this abuse with Vista's EULA, and Microsoft will keep tightening the noose until any data you create within Office 2007+ will require you to pay the Microsoft Tax to access it. People and businesses need to understand that using MS-OOXML is like loading up a credit card on a teaser rate, and then wondering what happened when it jumps up 22% on day 32. Too bad governments don't get this simple calculation also. Ignore Microsoft's history of bad and illegal behavior at your own risk.

Meanwhile, Microsoft rewards an entire nation (China) with ultra cheap bundled pricing for pirating their software! Oy.

[Roy Schestowitz]

This is truly amazing, but hardly surprising. The company used to be doing exactly that even in the 90s. Watch the Comes vs Microsoft (Iowa) exhibits.

[Sam]

"Anyone else wonder if the one-hit IT wonders in Massachusetts were tipped off about this DLL-breakage in advance of their decision?"

Zaine-

Not the case.

Of course we told them, but the news -- being expected -- tends to add like a drop in the bucket to a complex hurricane of forces, the signature component of which is the impossibility of migrating to OpenOffice.org/ODF without an interop bridge to the MS Office formats.

At some point y'all alt-software rebels will take your fingers out of your ears and grok that whatever Microsoft is doing is irrelevant so long as there is no viable alternative that can be implemented.

[Sam Hiser]

Guys-

Don't be so shocked.

There's a playbook here. It says "on Third & Two, fake the run off-tackle and Q takes the option over the right buttock of the tight-end."

There's a TRHEAt. Either make our ALTERNATIVE-to-TRHEAt free (Netscape:IE or Linux:Vista in China) and tie up all the other players in special-access-to-API's deals (Sun in 2004, Novell in 2006, Linspire, Xandros & others in 2007) and the book says these companies stay on a lifeline indefinitely out of the way but acting as B-citizens on the platform of the ALETRNATIVE-to-TRHEAt or go out of business, depending if they have other irons in the fire. Meanwhile, said TRHEAt is gone and market returns to coalescing around the Sociopath's ALTERNATIVE-to-TRHEAt.

Tuochdown!

[Troy]

I had a look at the Sun slides where they described the problem with Office 2007.The slide titled "DLL Bugs" states that msvcp71.dll and msvcr71.dll have to be relocated. These DLLs are the MS Visual C++ 2003 runtime libraries. It looks more like the ODF plugin had dependencies on libraries that were deployed with Office 2003 but not Office 2007?

Certainly if the issue is resolved by moving standard runtime libraries, then it is a bit rich to be calling sabotage.

This is just standard DLL Hell.

PS: I am no MS apologist - I am typing this on my MacBook :)

[Sam Hiser]

Thanks for the comments, Gentlemen.

And Troy, you're partly right, although the dll's also changed between Office 2007 Beta & Final. We'll reveal our experience fully in the appropriate mode & setting: conclusions cannot possibly flatter Microsoft's intent.

[Gordon]

Interesting. I have just opened an ODF file in Word 2007(SP1)with absolutely NO problems at all.....