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How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in

blog.documentfoundation.org

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Re: How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in

#111

Post by RetroTechie »

misswaterfairy wrote: post #101
h4kunamata wrote: post #8

This is one of the things the community is pissed with https://github.com/euro-office They are using Microsoft formats instead of the open-source one.

> They are using Microsoft formats instead of the open-source one. They will need to focus on Microsoft's formats for the foreseeable future because of the sheer amount of archaic, but still vitally important, government processes which depend on them. Once Euro Office gains a significant foothold in those government processes, then they'll have the market power to influence. And, hopefully, force change in Microsoft…

They need to focus on archaic government processes which rely on document formats that require proprietary software to view properly, while good open source software for the same task exists. And where lacking, focus on improving open source support for a particular task.

A good start would be to cut use of this OOXML Transitional format entirely. Default to LibreOffice's default formats, and (perhaps) support OOXML Strict where it helps transition.

That way any government employee saving their work in OOXML Transitional or other proprietary format, would automatically stick out as a dumbass who failed to do their job. Pass documents that are published through some validators / allowed-format checkers, and the public only gets stuff that's viewable with software of their choosing.

None of this is hard. It's mostly about changing defaults & a bit of employee training.

Re: How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in

#112

Post by [deleted] »

consonaut wrote: post #9
whatever1 wrote: post #2

An ms shop wanted to share a folder from their onedrive with me. I could not access it until I signed up for a Microsoft account and forced to download their authenticator app.

I mean, I'm not going to defend Onedrive (aside form saying it "mostly works just like the rest") but how is it the app or the vendors fault that someone send you a link that required an account to access? There is an "anonymous access through this link" sharing option that does work as advertised. This works the same for Google drive and most of the other services. The problem is that most users don't understand tha…

[deleted]

Re: How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in

#113

Post by RetroTechie »

tpoacher wrote: post #19
h4kunamata wrote: post #8

This is one of the things the community is pissed with https://github.com/euro-office They are using Microsoft formats instead of the open-source one.

> Open Source is a global effort, but current political situation makes collaboration hard and trust difficult to earn. Especially when development is not transparent and open. I find this an odd statement. I would understand an explanation that forking was chosen on ideological grounds, but, how is development "not transparent and open" in an open source project? Sounds a bit contradictory. Plus doesn't the fact tha…

> how is development "not transparent and open" in an open source project?

Please have a look at how Android is developed, and how each new version is released. It's far from the only example of "open source but closed development process".

Never mind "shared source" like QNX where people can pass through hoops to view source, but code is not open in the libre sense.

Re: How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in

#114

Post by cozzyd »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #92
inigyou wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are a lock-in tool but they are also completely natural and available to everyone. Have you ever written any software that saves files? Is its file format proprietary? Some are more complicated than others, but I'd bet dollars to donuts you didn't make your format an ISO standard. At best you wrote some Markdown explaining it broadly (and some of your code has drifted so that is incorrect now), at worst maybe yo…

> There are still differences between PDFs in different viewers Most obvious when viewing PDFs in Adobe Reader versus in Chrome's built-in viewer. The former has subpixel anti-aliasing. The latter doesn't.

I think it's better now but PDF viewers used to ignore the interpolation method for bitmaps, resulting in colormap histograms turning super blurry depending on how they were saved. Oh and 0 width lines...

Re: How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in

#115

Post by applicative »

okanat wrote: post #42

I think TDF tries to push a wrong narrative here for their lack of engineering and funding. Competitive products like Google Docs, WPS or Euro Office solve proprietary file format problem very nicely. Microsoft themselves had to solve that exact problem for Lotus 1-2-3. Proprietary file formats are an industry standard. It is the lowest resistance way to deliver features and you cannot blame your competitor to have m…

It violates elementary, ABC, read-it-in-Rousseau principles of legitimate state operation if government documents of any kind whatsoever are in a proprietary format. This is why EU courts forced .docx on Microsoft. .doc files were found to be simply invalid binary blobs with no meaning whatsoever in a democracy. I dimly remember a US court - maybe Minnesota? - tending to the same.

It was only the magical atmosphere in which Microsoft and ‘tech’ must succeed that made this flat out obvious conclusion invisible.

I remember beginning writing a pandoc writer the minute it happened but some bright young brain beat me to it.

The XML if I remember, had manifold curiosa probably meant to impede other implementations, but it was real.

My impression is that his complaints, which echo those of the doc period in detail, arise from users’ failure to adopt best practices.

Re: How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in

#116

Post by applicative »

inigyou wrote: post #83
mangecoeur wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true. In my company I decided we would not depend on Microsoft products. We use kSuite that offers everything MS does, ~90% cheaper. The one real problem we run into is PowerPoint decks that look different or get corrupted when used across different Office suites, including ones that are focused on Microsoft compatibility like OnlyOffice. Proprietary formats are a clear lock-in tool, because the cost of d…

They are a lock-in tool but they are also completely natural and available to everyone. Have you ever written any software that saves files? Is its file format proprietary? Some are more complicated than others, but I'd bet dollars to donuts you didn't make your format an ISO standard. At best you wrote some Markdown explaining it broadly (and some of your code has drifted so that is incorrect now), at worst maybe yo…

It doesn’t matter that you like them, a democratic state must burn them all utterly the ground. No state document in a proprietary format has legal significance. This was obvious before but it now settled law across most of the world

Re: How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in

#117

Post by Lord-Jobo »

ariamailclient wrote: post #62
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they? They extended DNS, LDAP and Kerberos to make Active Directory so that now every Microsoft-locked corporation is stuck using Microsoft as their internal DNS. They do the various things they do to get everyone stuck using their email instead of any other standard IMAP/SMTP/webmail provider. Azure is "somehow" one of the three major cloud providers.

Truth be told, IMAP & SMTP are wildly obsolete in today's needs. Have a look at this: https://jmap.io/

Jmap is a desperately needed upgrade, but email as a whole needs to be rebuilt. The fact that it’s so core to our current infrastructure, but is really poorly suited for maybe 75% of its usage, is a bad situation that’s only going to get worse.

Of course it’s ridiculously hard to change something that’s so foundational, and I don’t trust any of the players with enough juice to pull it off (besides Google if they actually put their whole ass into it)

Re: How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in

#118

Post by whatever1 »

mexicocitinluez wrote: post #85
whatever1 wrote: post #2

An ms shop wanted to share a folder from their onedrive with me. I could not access it until I signed up for a Microsoft account and forced to download their authenticator app.

This is a configuration issue. Onedrive also supports OTPs. But regardless, what alternative would you propose? Did it contain any sensitive information? Does the alternative integrate with your current system? Do people need to create accounts for it like Dropbox? Do I have to teach all of the employees how do use this new service instead of just right-clicking and sharing the file? SFTP is a no-go for obvious reaso…

A link and password communicated to me would suffice.

Re: How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in

#119

Post by [deleted] »

inigyou wrote: post #84
frollogaston wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Microsoft hasn't actually selling their product on the premise of proprietary file format support. They sell it with the promise of total platform integration for every single software an office needs." Idk, the entire reason I've ever used Office was because someone gave me files I'm afraid to screw up.

You could just open it in libreoffice, make your changes and send them back an ODT, see how they like it. Or demand a PDF and list out the things you want to change so they can change it themselves.

[deleted]

Re: How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in

#120

Post by crabbone »

dannyw wrote: post #91
crabbone wrote: post #21

I'm sure this is a serious problem, but I'm not sure it's the main problem. The other one, that might be an even bigger problem is the way Microsoft sells its products. While, technically, most of the stuff they sell appears as B2C products, they are sold as B2B, and increasingly more so since the emphasis shifted towards the Web versions. What this means for the users is that their interests are overpowered by the i…

The second part is alarming, but offering a temporary discount is a routine and standard pricing strategy; not a 'bribe'.

I didn't mean to say it was illegal, I meant to say it was an advantage in competition against the open-source counterparts because those usually cannot afford to make discounts of any kind.

More concretely, Microsoft used to claim that the price of their software is compensated for by the operational costs (which is false, but they managed to convince a lot of people).

In the same way, due to having deep pockets, Microsoft can, temporarily, operate at a loss only to out-survive the competition only to crank up the price to the ceiling once the competition is gone.

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