On Thursday 26 April 2007 10:02, Alex Hudson wrote:
Sean,
On Thu, 2007-04-26 at 00:50 +0200, Sean DALY wrote:
It *will* help their monopoly -- that's why they are going to such lengths to slow ODF and push their format to ISO. Ask yourself this question: why, since 1987, has Microsoft never submitted their Rich Text Format pseudostandard to any standards body? Or Excel CSV?
I don't understand that point at all. Neither RTF or CSV are terribly important, so whether or not they standardised them seems neither here nor there: that's not what their monopoly is based on.
Yes, they are pushing to standardise their XML format. I just simply don't believe it does much to help their monopoly. In the world of office suites, their monopoly is basically total at this point: you can't really improve on 100%.
Although I agree with your 100% market share statement, you should consider other reasons for Microsoft's ISO campaign. Microsoft Office is still one of the two cash-cows (the other is Windows), which bring in the $$$ they need for their extra-ordinary profits. Do not forget that Microsoft makes losses in many other markets.
Given this, the actual goal of this ISO theater is to defending the current market share. There are already laws and policies in public authorities all over the world which require open or even ISO certified standards for document exchange. This implicates that users are going to install an additional office suite that fits these requirements. (I don't think Microsoft wants the majority of its user-base to know that other suites do exist :) By doing so may make the MSO installation superfluously, increasingly erasing the market-share and so drying out Microsoft's first-class source of profits.
Even though there is an Open Document add-on for MSO (which is inconvinient for their typical users), Microsoft has no control over this format. And even if OOXML would really become the most ridicolous standard in the history of ISO: Microsoft has a good track record making sufficient marketing (or propaganda)... they assume that most deciders wouldn't care how good or bad that ISO standard would be, if there would be just one (and as a plus-plus-good it would be from the market-leader). I'm afraid, that Redmond is likely right with such assumption.
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Greetings, Anastasios