[OpenDoc Announce] Letter to Commissioner Kroes regarding ODF in Interoperability Undertaking

Mon Sep 28 16:07:35 CEST 2009

Dear members of OpenDoc Society,

as you may have seen in the press recently there have been significant 
developtments regarding the Interoperability Undertaking between the European 
Commission and Microsoft Corporation, which also involves the inquiry into 
office file formats. The Commission is currently steering towards an 
settlement on all or parts of the areas of this investigation. 

Please find the letter attached that was just sent on behalf of OpenDoc 
Society regarding this Interoperability Undertaking. The European Commission 
has a historical opportunity to help restore the IT market to balance, but 
only if it demands adequate in support of open standards. We hope our letter 
will contribute to that, and invite you to send your own statements to the 
Commission about this case.

Please feel free to forward this information to people you think might be 
interested. Any press can be directed to our spokesperson Michiel Leenaars 
(+31 627050947, mleenaars at opendocsociety.org).

Kind regards,

Bert Bakker,
President of OpenDoc Society

----------  Forwarded Message  ----------

Subject: Suggestions for Microsoft Interoperability Undertaking
Date: Monday 28 September 2009
From: Bert Bakker <... at opendocsociety.org>
To: Neelie Kroes <... at ec.europa.eu>
CC: comp-greffe-antitrust at ec.europa.eu

                                           The Hague, September 28th 2009

Dear Commissioner Kroes,

We read with interest the article in several media published last week [1] 
where you were quoted as saying that the Commission is near to closing a deal 
on a number of issues in the case against Microsoft. We think that this 
inquiry is of great importance, and that restoring a level playing field in 
this area is essential for the future ambitions of Europe. On behalf of 
OpenDoc Society we would like to respond to the "Interoperability 
Undertaking"-proposal [2] from Microsoft that was made to the European 
Commission, hoping that this will be of help to you in finding effective 
remedies to the issues that matter most in this case. 

OpenDoc Society is an international member-based not-for-profit organisation 
headquartered in Europe, with individual and organisational members around 
the planet. Our organisational members range from large software vendors and 
open source communities to small and medium sized enterprises, from (also 
European) government organisations to academia and research, and from 
education and cultural institutions up to special needs groups, registered 
charities and the military. Our goal is to promote best practises for 
productivity applications, most notably in the area of open standards, 
document exchange and processing. In this document, we will respond to the 
Undertaking from our expert knowledge in this domain and make a number of 
proposals to improve that document in order to make it effective given the 
purposes it is drafted for. We hope you will forgive us  the sometimes deeply 
technical nature of these comments.

From our perspective it seems that good progress has been made in several 
other areas of the European Commission's investigation, e.g. in the browser 
part where the use of web standards will soon be the default. Yet, in the 
field of productivity applications (probably economically and societally the 
most important area) many serious issues unique to that domain are still 
likely to remain if the Undertaking were to stay limited to the current 
proposal. These issues may not be the most eye-catching in this situation 
where different investigations are on top of each other, yet they are 
essential if we want real solutions that work for the customer and for the 
market. Office file format lock-in is probably the single strongest 
impediment to customer choice in IT. In the area of personal productivity 
applications we have a long way to go before the market can restore itself to 
health, because issues are densely interwoven across different levels and 
across time. With the current proposals it is unlikely that we will see a 
level playing field: the use of open standards (even those with a large 
traction in the market, such as ODF) does not stand a fair chance, which 
hampers choice and makes real competition almost impossible. That in turn 
will remain to have a huge effect on the IT market in general for many years 
to come.

It is to be commended that Microsoft is thinking about giving people an active 
choice to choose ODF as their default file format. But in contrast with the 
browser it is only currently promising this for a very small minority of 
their users – excluding an estimated 80% of users that use a version other 
than the last version of their Office for Windows product. While Microsoft 
has been delivering 'Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and 
PowerPoint 2007 File Formats' adding support for its newly developed 
(non-standardised) Office 2007 for Windows file formats [3] for all its 
legacy versions on all platforms for a number of years, ODF would be 
supported only on Office 2007 SP2 for Windows and subsequent versions. In 
fact, in versions before Office 2007 for Windows ODF is currently still not 
officially supported under warranty, even though the software to do this has 
been available for years in an outsourced project coordinated and funded by 
Microsoft. Also there has not been any sign of supporting ODF for Microsoft 
Office for Mac, let alone its legacy versions. Its free Office Viewers for 
the Windows platform don't support ODF as of yet. We consider that 'second 
class citizenship' of ODF to be extremely harmful to choice and competition. 
We note also that the actual proposed 'file format ballot screen' has to 
undergo significant scrutiny, because the actual wording and interface 
usability can have a huge impact on the outcome. Our organisation is very 
willing to help the Commission and Microsoft strike the right chord in this 
respect.

There are of course many other issues. To this day there are still no complete 
specifications of Microsoft's legacy formats (from the various historical 
binary formats to the Office 2007 for Windows default file formats). [4] The 
amount of documentation compared to the available specifications for ECMA 376 
and IS29500 is rather small, and many embedded elements are not even covered 
in those – posing a risk with regards to patents. Since there is also no 
authoritative mapping of the Office for Windows file formats on ODF or even 
on ECMA 376 or IS29500, fully reliable real-world interoperability with 
current and historical Microsoft products remains impossible. Providing a 
smooth transition between old and new file formats is a key element in 
realising a migration scenario where applications supporting a new standard 
interact with existing applications. Writing an implementation to reliably 
support the legacy Microsoft file formats is currently like hitting a moving 
target in the dark, and often involves trial and error in the black art of 
software reverse engineering. Since there are no official test suites for the 
legacy file formats, competitors can verify nor prove to customers they 
handle these formats in the right way. The absence of complete specifications 
and mappings to standards (and vice versa) and the lack of a test suite puts 
other implementations at a major disadvantage in any practical scenario which 
involves interaction with older Microsoft products – which still have a 
dominant market share by themselves.

At an implementation level there is still much to be desired in the current 
Office 2007 for Windows  implementation of the ODF standard. Currently 
Microsoft Office 2007 for Windows fails to retain all revision history 
information when saving to an ODF file. There is no practical reason for 
this, and fixing that unnecessary information loss is crucial to the 
Microsoft user base that want to make the switch to application-independent 
and future-proof ODF. In addition, Office 2007 for Windows behaves without 
much respect towards other ODF applications - destroying many data elements 
on import which the ODF specifications say should be kept. This effectively 
disables many of the innovative uses of ODF and foreshadows immediate 
incompatibility with future versions of ODF. This is a good demonstration of 
the fact that the promise as made under the 'General Provisions' in 
the 'Interoperability Commitments' of the Undertaking will not suffice: the 
publicly available implementer notes for ODF published by Microsoft state 
that these elements are not supported, and that would be sufficient according 
to the principles (set out under point 8 of the Undertaking). The fact that 
the Office 2007 for Windows software is able to handle custom XML as part of 
its Office 2007 for Windows native file format proves that this behaviour is 
unnecessary. Clearly, a complete, faithful and trustworthy implementation of 
ODF by Microsoft matters a great deal – one only needs to make a small step 
aside in this dossier to look at the browser case where barely noticeable 
implementation deviations from the standard in Microsoft products had immense 
effect on the outcome of the browser war. 

With regards to future versions of the ODF standard we are also concerned 
about the huge delay in supporting any new ODF version. Please note that the 
next expected updates of the standard will contain functionality such as 
OpenFormula spreadsheet formula's which are essential for the professional 
market and already now offer full interoperability with many products already 
on the market. Any delay in full support by Microsoft has a huge impact on 
the market. The Undertaking proposal talks about waiting for nine months 
after publication by ISO in order to support it. Since Microsoft participates 
in OASIS within the ODF technical committee, there is no reason why they 
should wait for final ISO publication before supporting a new ODF feature. 
Currently, Microsoft already like most vendors has chosen in its current 
implementations to support a version of ODF published only by OASIS (ODF 1.1) 
rather than wait for the adoption of ISO of that same standard which is now 
in the pipeline. Note also that in the case of IS29500, no such caution to 
await the publication of the standard was taken by Microsoft (even shipping 
the product before the standard was halfway finished) with as a result the 
severe differences between Office 2007 for Windows file formats, ECMA 376 and 
IS29500. Unless Microsoft commits to the same type of caution for all of the 
file formats it supports, this would put ODF at a definite disadvantage. The 
fair solution is to require that within a period of nine months after a 
feature is approved in either OASIS or ISO it is implemented by Microsoft in 
all relevant products. In addition it would be reasonable to to require that 
all features of a future specification as published by the ODF TC in a 
publicly available committee draft or beyond which are implemented by at 
least three different products in a separate namespace and which are not 
substantially different from existing constructs in either Office 2007f for 
Windows file format, ECMA 376 or IS 29500 will be supported by Microsoft in 
that same nine months time frame.

Because productivity software is at the core of our processes, that list of 
relevant products requiring a change is much longer than merely the personal 
productivity applications. Since ODF was standardised in 2005, many Microsoft 
products were upgraded to work with newly introduced proprietary Microsoft 
Office 2007 for Windows, Office for Mac and Works file formats, with ECMA 376 
and possibly IS 29500. There is a web browser plug-in funded by Microsoft for 
viewing the Microsoft Office 2007 for Windows file formats [5], but none for 
ODF - which puts ODF at an important disadvantage on the web. There is no 
adequate support for ODF in Microsoft's document management environment 
Sharepoint, while there is ample support for the other formats mentioned. 
Development tools (like Microsoft Visual Studio) are providing export 
controls for reports that have the choice of file format hard coded - 
excluding ODF, that is. Probably there are many more, and Microsoft needs to 
provide a good overview of which applications need to be adopted.

Standards are not optional if we want to restore a healthy software market 
that again will allow competition on features, software quality, 
customisation and price. Microsoft should as a rule of thumb enable the user 
to choose ODF across the board at the exact same support level it has for 
similar file formats created after 2005 (the year ODF was first published as 
a standard). This means any application that works with application specific 
formats such as Office 2007 for Windows formats, as well as ECMA 376 and in 
the future IS 29500. We think that everywhere where Microsoft offers a 
solution or feature for one of those formats in any application, it should do 
the same for ODF at the same time – unless there is a very solid technical 
reason for not doing so, which it needs to explain in detail and which should 
not prevent it from making a best effort to support what is possible. And it 
should do so in a reliable and complete way.

One final issue that impacts portability is not related to the format in which 
the document is saved, but the font resources that are referenced in it. In 
all versions prior to the release of Office 2007 for Windows the default 
fonts the software would use were a set of system fonts that was and is 
available free of charge. This meant that these fonts were automatically 
available to competing products on the Windows platform, but also to open 
source projects and other competing products on other platforms. In Microsoft 
Office 2007 for Windows a new set of copyrighted (third party) fonts are 
installed alongside the application (and the Windows-only viewers), and these 
are set as the default fonts when a file is saved in any format that handles 
fonts. User that want reliable rendering of these documents on other products 
or platforms (including the web), or don't want to burden the recipients of 
their documents to buy these (very expensive) fonts have no easy way to 
switch off the use of the new proprietary default fonts in Microsoft Office 
2007 for Windows. 

We hope you consider this contribution to be useful,  and we remain at your 
service should you require so. This is a critical case and the outcome of 
your agreement will severely impact the future possibilities of European 
consumers, companies and governments in the knowledge economy that Europe is 
gradually turning into. Only parity of support for ODF from Microsoft will 
guarantee that the market can work as it should. Without equality of arms 
regular competition does not stand a chance. We want to see the best possible 
outcome of this Undertaking for the end user, creating a fair and open supply 
side that meets the demands of many different types of users in a future 
proof way. 

Kind regards,

Bert Bakker						
President OpenDoc Society	

OpenDoc Society secretariat:
Wibautstraat 150
1091 GR Amsterdam
The Netherlands
info at opendocsociety.org

--------------------------------------			
** Proposals to amend the agreement text **

Insert the following text under 2.2 (before point 28)

Microsoft will in principle enable the user to choose ODF across the full 
range of all its products at the exact same support level it has for any 
format it has introduced itself since the initial publication of the ODF 
standard in 2005. Everywhere where Microsoft offers a solution or feature for 
one of those formats, it will do the same for ODF at the same time. For 
applications and services where this is currently not the case, it will do so 
before March 1st 2010. If there are any solid technical reason for supporting 
ODF less than any other format, Microsoft will seek input from external 
experts appointed by the European Commission to find a resolution. Meanwhile, 
Microsoft will make a best effort to support what is possible. 

New proposed point 32:

Microsoft shall support the ODF Standard in the following way. For ten years 
from the effective date of this Undertaking, within 9 months of final 
publication by either OASIS or ISO of a new version of the ODF Standard 
Microsoft shall support such a version of ODF together within all relevant 
software and services that have been created or updated to support similar 
formats that published after the initial publication of ODF 1.0 in 2005. This 
means Microsoft will provide full ODF support for current and legacy versions 
for Microsoft Office for Mac, as well as for any web-based or on-line 
applications that read and/or write to legacy Microsoft Office for Windows, 
Office for Mac and Works file formats, ECMA 376 or IS 29500. Microsoft shall 
provide a warranty as specified in the general provisions outlined in Section 
B.I of this Undertaking, effective at the time of release to manufacturing of 
such updated support. This provision is subject to the following 
pre-requisites for each version of the ODF Standard: (i) the version of the 
standard must be developed and available for implementation under 
substantially similar terms as ODF 1.0, including for a substantially similar 
purpose and under substantially similar (no less than reasonable and 
non-discriminatory) licensing terms covering all intellectual property rights 
in the standard; (ii) the version of the standard is not substantially more 
difficult to implement technically than the previously supported version; and 
(iii) the standards development process for that version of the standard has 
not been manipulated or otherwise subject to misuse. Irrespective of the 
termination of this Undertaking Microsoft shall maintain the then existing 
level of ODF support over the commercial product lifetime of the existing 
version release of the applications and services involved including any web 
and cloud based services. In this respect Microsoft shall provide a warranty 
in line with the general provisions outlined in Section B.I effective as of 
the date of the termination of this Undertaking. 

Insert the following after point 33:

* Microsoft will update the current installed base of Microsoft Office 
Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats and the 
free viewers (Word Viewer, PowerPoint Viewer and Excel Viewer) to include the 
ODF add in (or functionally equivalent) through Windows Update as a mandatory 
update to all current users within 2 months after this settlement will become 
effective. Any major updates to the add-in will be delivered in the same way. 

* Microsoft will actively reach out to it's OEM partners to assist them in 
servicing their customers with support for ODF, both in any trial versions of 
products and through an ODF-enabled Word viewer, Powerpoint viewer and Excel 
viewer. 

* Along with the complete specifications of Microsoft's legacy formats 
Microsoft will include an official test suite for all historical versions of 
its own file formats, so that competing applications can prove to customers 
that they comply with them.

* Microsoft will provide an authoritative and up to date mapping of all legacy 
Microsoft Office formats on ODF, ECMA 376 and OOXML/IS29500.
Microsoft will provide documented conversion software for Microsoft Office 
2007 for Windows file formats to ODF, as well as documented conversion 
software for ECMA 376 and IS 29500 file formats to ODF.

* Microsoft will improve all relevant ODF implementations in any Microsoft 
software and services to contain revision history and retain all data 
elements the ODF specifications require applications to keep.
Microsoft will make it possible to cut and paste well-formed ODF on the 
operating system clipboard by default in Office for Windows and Office for 
Mac, in order to support real-time interoperability between applications 
without information loss. 

* Microsoft will add adequate support for ODF in all versions of Microsoft 
Sharepoint, equal to the level of support for any of its own historical file 
formats, ECMA 376 and (future versions if any) of IS29500 within six months 
of the publication of this Undertaking.

* Microsoft will create and maintain an open source browser plug-ins for ODF 
functionally equivalent to the Microsoft Office 2007 for Windows browser 
plug-ins that were already created under the name of OpenXML viewer, and 
provide these as an automatic update to users of those plug-ins through the 
appropriate mechanisms in the various browsers that are targeted. 
Alternatively this may be done through a Microsoft-specific tool such as 
Windows Update or equivalent.

* Microsoft will create a complete public inventory of development tools and 
other relevant current services and software in its product portfolio that 
deal with any of Microsoft's proprietary Office for Windows file formats, as 
well as with ECMA 376 and IS 29500. Microsoft will update these and 
guarantees that none of its products discriminate on the basis of file 
formats, or hinders the use of open standards in any productivity 
application.

* Microsoft will actively inform its customers through its website and 
newsletters with adequate and balanced information about the possibilities 
for using ODF, especially in the context where it already discusses or 
promotes any file formats created after the publication of ODF in 2005 – 
including but not limited to the Office 2007 for Windows file formats, ECMA 
376 and IS29500.

* Microsoft will make it possible for users of its productivity applications 
to change the default fonts used in its productivity applications to use 
freely available fonts across all predefined templates in its applications. 
Alternatively Microsoft may come to an agreement with its suppliers to 
release all relevant fonts under the same conditions as the system fonts that 
were used as default prior to Office 2007 for Windows. [6]

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/23/business/global/23kroes.html
[2]_http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/eu-msft/docs/Microsoft_Interoperability_Undertaking.doc 
[3] These 'final' legacy formats were created midway the drafting of ECMA 376, 
the precursor to IS29500. The differences with both these formats are not 
publicly known.
[4]_http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=3657CE88-7CFA-457A-9AEC-F4F827F20CAC&DisplayLang=en 
[5] http://www.openxmlviewer.com
[6] Please note that the fonts are already installed for free alongside the 
free Word Viewer, PowerPoint Viewer and Excel Viewer, but that the 
accompanying license mandates the use of Microsoft Windows.

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