UK government backs away from Microsoft, moves closer to Open Document Format

Bad luck, Microsoft: no sign of any move back to .docx.

Read the whole story

 

[AxMi-24]

Excellent move. Would be very nice to have options for office software without sacrificing compatibility with others.

I already use libreoffice presenter for presentations as powerpoint insist that if I have swedish keyboard layout the only language I could feasibly write is swedish ignoring every single setting screaming UK english at it. Having to manually change language for every single object is somewhat annoying and this feature has been there for years and years.

 

[MartinHatch]

Doesn't Microsoft Office also support ODF though?

Which I'm pretty sure 99% of government orgs use. It just means they don't HAVE to use Microsoft Office (but most of them will, because the competitors, especially in the Excel space, simply can't compete)

 

[Deleted member 1068]

MartinHatch[/url]":91vcefqs]

Which I'm pretty sure 99% of government orgs use.

Use of Microsoft is certainly entrenched in Government but that is changing.
Central government are putting the Civil Service under enormous pressure to cut costs, some bits have moved to Google Docs already.

 

[Amiga500+]

Great to see.


@MartinHatch

Yes... microsoft supports its own bastardised version of ODF (which of course is not 100% compatible with other versions).

 

[Static and Noise]

MartinHatch[/url]":1dlvwwbs]Doesn't Microsoft Office also support ODF though?

Which I'm pretty sure 99% of government orgs use. It just means they don't HAVE to use Microsoft Office (but most of them will, because the competitors, especially in the Excel space, simply can't compete)

Making the switch to the alternatives (well. Alternative; it's essentially LibreOffice isn't it?) easier is probably not something MS wants. I mean, .docx compatible pretty much means "compatible with MS Office's implementation thereof". This could potentially change that, removing one of the big objections towards LibreOffice and other alternatives: "Not compatible enough with MS Office".

 

[AxMi-24]

Fotan[/url]":2m97j2i4]

MartinHatch[/url]":2m97j2i4]

Which I'm pretty sure 99% of government orgs use.

Use of Microsoft is certainly entrenched in Government but that is changing.
Central government are putting the Civil Service under enormous pressure to cut costs, some bits have moved to Google Docs already.

I'm not sure I want government data on google docs. That stuff should be secure not in the cloud where almost anyone can get hold of it.

 

[Overlord_Dave]

I thought I read recently (on this site?) that at least on European government were regretting their move to ODF due to compatibility issues... can't find any links from a quick Google unfortunately.

 

[glynmoody]

Overlord_Dave[/url]":fqpyrtq4]I thought I read recently (on this site?) that at least on European government were regretting their move to ODF due to compatibility issues... can't find any links from a quick Google unfortunately.

There were rumours that Munich was going to move back to Microsoft, but these have now been denied:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/new ... ndows-back

 

[Static and Noise]

glynmoody[/url]":36q3l3ge]

Overlord_Dave[/url]":36q3l3ge]I thought I read recently (on this site?) that at least on European government were regretting their move to ODF due to compatibility issues... can't find any links from a quick Google unfortunately.

There were rumours that Munich was going to move back to Microsoft, but these have now been denied:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/new ... ndows-back

Not read that link, but as I recall when I read about the "Münich going back to MS" articles, it was basically one guy who even admitted he was a very pro-MS guy who started it.

I think the Münich move was the thing that really got the snowball effect going. Not just changing from MS Office to Libre, but to Linux. Münich is a fairly important city, too large to ignore. Other cities/regions had done it before, but none near the size and scale of Münich. Heck, the city I live in has changed to Libre some years ago, but it's a small city of 50k or so in Sweden. Hardly international news.

 

[Overlord_Dave]

Static and Noise[/url]":2rqh3x8e]

glynmoody[/url]":2rqh3x8e]

Overlord_Dave[/url]":2rqh3x8e]I thought I read recently (on this site?) that at least on European government were regretting their move to ODF due to compatibility issues... can't find any links from a quick Google unfortunately.

There were rumours that Munich was going to move back to Microsoft, but these have now been denied:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/new ... ndows-back

Not read that link, but as I recall when I read about the "Münich going back to MS" articles, it was basically one guy who even admitted he was a very pro-MS guy who started it.

I think the Münich move was the thing that really got the snowball effect going. Not just changing from MS Office to Libre, but to Linux. Münich is a fairly important city, too large to ignore. Other cities/regions had done it before, but none near the size and scale of Münich. Heck, the city I live in has changed to Libre some years ago, but it's a small city of 50k or so in Sweden. Hardly international news.

Good to know. Although from personal experience I do prefer the actual Office interface (yes, even with the dreaded Ribbon) to the last time I used OpenOffice. So I'll personally be sticking with MS.

That said I fully support government working with an open format, makes sense for all sorts of reasons.

Is there a libre word processor with a ribbon-style interface around, or too heavily copyrighted?

Edit: or, of course, I might be the only person that doesn't hate it

 

[wicker_man]

This is excellent news.

Also, gov.uk is probably the best Government-run site in the world. Everything from UI to ability to find information is outstanding. This is one IT-related thing the UK government has done exceptionally well (and the people who have made it happen).

 

[HungryBadger]

Overlord_Dave[/url]":2nvqyibn]I thought I read recently (on this site?) that at least on European government were regretting their move to ODF due to compatibility issues... can't find any links from a quick Google unfortunately.

I would be unsurprised, ODF is hopelessly underspecified and full of all sorts of weird compatibility issues as a result.

 

[Overlord_Dave]

HungryBadger[/url]":2j9jq5ve]

Overlord_Dave[/url]":2j9jq5ve]I thought I read recently (on this site?) that at least on European government were regretting their move to ODF due to compatibility issues... can't find any links from a quick Google unfortunately.

I would be unsurprised, ODF is hopelessly underspecified and full of all sorts of weird compatibility issues as a result.

Did you not scroll down to literally the next comment before posting this?

In case your mouse is broken:

glynmoody[/url]":2j9jq5ve]

Overlord_Dave[/url]":2j9jq5ve]I thought I read recently (on this site?) that at least on European government were regretting their move to ODF due to compatibility issues... can't find any links from a quick Google unfortunately.

There were rumours that Munich was going to move back to Microsoft, but these have now been denied:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/new ... ndows-back

 

[Overlord_Dave]

wicker_man[/url]":31bn0cv6]This is excellent news.

Also, gov.uk is probably the best Government-run site in the world. Everything from UI to ability to find information is outstanding. This is one IT-related thing the UK government has done exceptionally well (and the people who have made it happen).

I could gush about gov.uk for hours.

 

[PhilipStorry]

HungryBadger[/url]":20tszrq3]

Overlord_Dave[/url]":20tszrq3]I thought I read recently (on this site?) that at least on European government were regretting their move to ODF due to compatibility issues... can't find any links from a quick Google unfortunately.

I would be unsurprised, ODF is hopelessly underspecified and full of all sorts of weird compatibility issues as a result.

As opposed to OOXML, which is hopelessly vaguely specified and full of all sorts of weird compatibility issues as a result.

I'm not going to get involved in a flamewar. I'm just going to point out that strict OOXML was only achieved two versions after the standard was first implemented by its own proposer. And even then there have been issues during ISO standardisation that meant previously valid documents under the ECMA were suddenly regarded as noncompliant (with invalid dates).

Remember, this is a multi-billion dollar company with a vested interest in maintaining a monopoly in this area and a format which is pretty much an XML transcription of a memory dump from their own applications. The fact that they can't do it quickly or right means that nobody is going to. End of discussion.

So now that we acknowledge that both have their technical and support issues, let's move on to the question of whether or not a government should require its citizens and suppliers to purchase software from a monopoly supplier in order to interact with it...

 

[HungryBadger]

PhilipStorry[/url]":2xv7vieh]
So now that we acknowledge that both have their technical and support issues, let's move on to the question of whether or not a government should require its citizens and suppliers to purchase software from a monopoly supplier in order to interact with it...

Which, since they're both ISO standards with multiple implementations, isn't actually an issue at all.

 

[PhilipStorry]

HungryBadger[/url]":1pqgy80o]

PhilipStorry[/url]":1pqgy80o]
So now that we acknowledge that both have their technical and support issues, let's move on to the question of whether or not a government should require its citizens and suppliers to purchase software from a monopoly supplier in order to interact with it...

Which, since they're both ISO standards with multiple implementations, isn't actually an issue at all.

Then why criticise the ODF spec?

I'm still a little surprised that the UK government has gone this far, but I approve. It will hopefully lead to improvements across the industry - albeit slowly, I'm sure.

 

[HungryBadger]

PhilipStorry[/url]":3ryfem09]

HungryBadger[/url]":3ryfem09]

PhilipStorry[/url]":3ryfem09]
So now that we acknowledge that both have their technical and support issues, let's move on to the question of whether or not a government should require its citizens and suppliers to purchase software from a monopoly supplier in order to interact with it...

Which, since they're both ISO standards with multiple implementations, isn't actually an issue at all.

Then why criticise the ODF spec?

I'm still a little surprised that the UK government has gone this far, but I approve. It will hopefully lead to improvements across the industry - albeit slowly, I'm sure.

Because OOXML Strict is compatible across pretty much every current implementation, whereas ODF causes endless problems because there are gaping gaps in the spec which make moving between implementations painful. You can use OOXML without ever touching Microsoft software, but ODF pretty much ties you to OpenOffice (or one of it's derivatives), if you want compatibility.

What the self congratulating FOSS crowd are missing is what the real outcome of this will be. All the quirks in ODF that differ between OpenOffice and Microsoft Office (even when both are "compliant"), coupled with the fact government offices will inevitably still being using Microsoft Office, will lead to less compatibility with FOSS solutions, not more.

 

[steabert]

HungryBadger[/url]":2y5s4kjc]

Because OOXML Strict is compatible across pretty much every current implementation, whereas ODF causes endless problems because there are gaping gaps in the spec which make moving between implementations painful. You can use OOXML without ever touching Microsoft software, but ODF pretty much ties you to OpenOffice (or one of it's derivatives), if you want compatibility.

What the self congratulating FOSS crowd are missing is what the real outcome of this will be. All the quirks in ODF that differ between OpenOffice and Microsoft Office (even when both are "compliant"), coupled with the fact government offices will inevitably still being using Microsoft Office, will lead to less compatibility with FOSS solutions, not more.

Can you gave some specific examples instead of "pretty much", "gaping gaps", and "all the quirks". It would be interesting to read about some of the techincal issues you bring up.

The vague (but maybe real) technical questions you raise are then washed away with "self-congratulating FOSS crowd", that doesn't make you sound very objective.

 

[davenz]

Excellent. However, this should also be framed as a win not only against Microsoft's document formats, but Google Drive/Docs – which features an arguably even more secret and welded-shut document format at its core.

 

[matthewslyman]

AxMi-24[/url]":2cqblr47]Excellent move. Would be very nice to have options for office software without sacrificing compatibility with others.

I already use libreoffice presenter for presentations as powerpoint insist that if I have swedish keyboard layout the only language I could feasibly write is swedish ignoring every single setting screaming UK english at it. Having to manually change language for every single object is somewhat annoying and this feature has been there for years and years.

I sympathise. I spent enough time trying to persuade Microsoft Word to accept my British English or even mid-Atlantic spelling and grammar, but MS Word wouldn't even meet me half way: though I had everything set to British English, older versions of MS Word kept trying to impose US English on me, and even within documents/templates that I'd switched to all British English settings, they kept reverting back to US English as though I had got it wrong! Inches and "twips" (twentieth inch-points, or twentieths of 1/72 of an inch) in MS Access/VBA, Fahrenheit and miles instead of Celsius and kilometres, "letter" paper size instead of A4 as default in older versions of Office, and various other cumulative (and in our time, totally unreasonable) irritations — the unjustifiable cultural chauvinism is just too much! And let's not even talk about the software they sold me that flat-out malfunctioned (with blocker issues), as soon as it was switched into British English settings and units of measurements — it worked fine as long as I pretended to be in the good-old US of A (apparently, their software testing department is so US-centric that they just don't seem to care.) Even with my user-interface display language set to "English (United Kingdom)" in Windows 10, Microsoft still imposes culturally biased grammatical errors on me, e.g. by informing me that "The install has completed." ("Install", "invite", etc.; are not nouns! You cannot use these verbs as nouns, without making yourself look like an idiot to any moderately educated speaker of English! The proper nouns here are "installation", "invitation", etc.) It's truly a wonder that Microsoft's lobbyists are so blind as to expect any love from this side of the Atlantic at all, after they have treated us so badly for so long!

So it's been just about tolerable while it lasted, but after graduating from primary school almost 30 years ago where they taught me the metric system alongside the imperial — and if Microsoft can't even meet me half way on this, then tough luck for them — there's a decent alternative now. They're very welcome to wall themselves in to the U.S. market and corral/ goad their remaining American customers and any other imperial-system-Luddites into a "cloud" "subscription" cash-cow model if they want, but with MS charging 50–60% more to their GB customers than what they charge American customers who are 50–60% richer than we are (so that their software is effectively 2× as expensive in GB before considering tax); that model is just not for me: I'm switching to open-source alternatives, and dumping the (for me very expensive) MAPS subscription.

Windows? Maybe (though I'm looking seriously at Fedora too). Excel? Truly excellent. Access? Crashes all the time with catastrophic data loss (or front-end corruption, if you use the excellent SQL Server as a back-end), and Access is also impossible to secure in any environment; resulting in me effectively working for months/years without pay (don't ask about MS' refusal to upgrade the graphing/charting component of Office, or to write a 64-bit version of their TreeView): so much for all that. Visio? I have LibreOffice Draw, and Inkscape, and HTML/CSS/Javascript (including the excellent and free "D3") for dynamic data-driven graphics. MapPoint? Was good (though far too expensive) until they stopped updating the maps/data, and discontinued the product in the face of competition from Google Earth and wonderfully enlightened governmental "open data" initiatives! I've finished with locking myself into a system that is going to charge me extra money while giving me inferior service, just because they can! I've finished with developing software for a platform where the vendor can just decide on a whim to stop supporting perfectly good features (like the VBA TreeView) that have existed since time immemorial (causing downstream developers to backtrack on many months of work!) I complained about some of these things to Microsoft years ago, but several versions of MS Office down the line, they are yet to do anything about it! Just a minute ago, I tried importing a UTF-8 encoded CSV file into Excel (via Windows Explorer context menu) — no joy, the Czech language characters were garbled since Excel just presumed the wrong encoding (Excel only managed to do it, when I first opened Excel, and then imported the data "from text" via the Data menu). LibreOffice Calc? No problem at all! Much less fiddly, importing CSV via the Windows context menu. Obviously, this wouldn't have been any problem for an English-speaking American, right? So it's not worth fixing for Microsoft, apparently…

OTOH, I applaud the largesse of Microsoft in creating equitable (perhaps, competitively shrewd) entry-level options for SQL Server (Express), Visual Studio (community), free Windows with Bing, etc. (I only wish that they had the vision to carry this strategy a little further.) I have nothing against commercial software. I make my money writing software and selling "cloud" based calculation services. But at least, give us a level playing field!

 

[Morris von Habsburg]

MartinHatch[/url]":2ocuqnm2]Doesn't Microsoft Office also support ODF though?

Which I'm pretty sure 99% of government orgs use. It just means they don't HAVE to use Microsoft Office (but most of them will, because the competitors, especially in the Excel space, simply can't compete)

Yes, rudimentary ODF support was added in SP2 for Office 2007. It had its issues but has gradually gotten a lot better. Especially now Microsoft can't hide anymore behind the statement that ODF1.2 was still going through ISO certification. ODF 1.2 now fully certified and obviously Microsoft doesn't want to lose lucrative government contracts by having poor ODF support. OpenDocument support is part of the tender now.

The core thing to understand is that this is not some description about which software package to use. It's not about software, it's about file formats.

Many system administrators at various levels of government can just push an MSO Policy out to all their MS Office installations changing the default save format from .docx to ODF and their office suites are compliant.

 

[Morris von Habsburg]

davenz[/url]":3w3e20uu]Excellent. However, this should also be framed as a win not only against Microsoft's document formats, but Google Drive/Docs – which features an arguably even more secret and welded-shut document format at its core.

While Google was fairly quick to join the OpenDocument camp years ago they have let it slip in recent years and their implementations weren’t always up to scratch. However, as of last December Google seems to be on the ball again when it comes to ODF support. They obviously don’t want to lose out on any government contracts either.

 

[Morris von Habsburg]

What I am most excited about in this development is not just MS and Google being forced to play ball, it’s also the ecosystem effect. Currently any company developing hardware of software that uses or produces files will have to support OpenDocument if they want to sell to various UK governments. And that goes far beyond some office suite use, it also includes online services where citizens need to upload or download documents, custom built enterprise systems that import or export data in readable formats, planning applications databases etc. etc.

And that is just the first ring of companies selling product or services directly to the government. The second ring are companies and organisations regularly working with the government, from recruitment agencies to house builders, from charities to pressure groups. All will start receiving plenty of OpenDocument files and will to some degree be expected to send ODF files to the government.

The third ring is ordinary users. A company selling email clients, document viewers, smartphones, tablets, SAAS etc. etc. to anyone that can open/preview .docx but not .odt files will be missing a trick in a world where OpenDocument use is growing.

It’s a slow burner but with the world moving to mobile and online Microsoft’s dominance is less of a given now…

 

[davenz]

Morris von Habsburg[/url]":ztplpa2u]

davenz[/url]":ztplpa2u]Excellent. However, this should also be framed as a win not only against Microsoft's document formats, but Google Drive/Docs – which features an arguably even more secret and welded-shut document format at its core.

While Google was fairly quick to join the OpenDocument camp years ago they have let it slip in recent years and their implementations weren’t always up to scratch. However, as of last December Google seems to be on the ball again when it comes to ODF support. They obviously don’t want to lose out on any government contracts either.

Their implementation however needs a tonne of work:

http://lodahl.blogspot.co.nz/2014/12/fu ... g-odf.html

I've used it, and it's as kludgy as Leif describes.

 

[Morris von Habsburg]

davenz[/url]":2f26l7mr]

Morris von Habsburg[/url]":2f26l7mr]

davenz[/url]":2f26l7mr]Excellent. However, this should also be framed as a win not only against Microsoft's document formats, but Google Drive/Docs – which features an arguably even more secret and welded-shut document format at its core.

While Google was fairly quick to join the OpenDocument camp years ago they have let it slip in recent years and their implementations weren’t always up to scratch. However, as of last December Google seems to be on the ball again when it comes to ODF support. They obviously don’t want to lose out on any government contracts either.

Their implementation however needs a tonne of work:

http://lodahl.blogspot.co.nz/2014/12/fu ... g-odf.html

I've used it, and it's as kludgy as Leif describes.

Ouch! That is terrible indeed.

I wouldn't be surprised if Google Docs' ODF implementation is hampered by a lot of legacy code. IIRC they originally supported the OpenOffice .sxw format which they probably later revamped into code to try and support ODF.

While it's often made out as if ODF is the format of OpenOffice that is not exactly true. OpenOffice didn't support ODF until OpenOffice 2.0. Prior to that OpenOffice used the StarWriter inspired .sxw format.

It's true that OpenDocument is based on the old StarWriter format but it was so significantly overhauled in the process that starting from a StarWriter compatible codebase and traying to shoehorn ODF support into it can cause quite a lot of headaches.

 

[HungryBadger]

steabert[/url]":ce5rc62d]

HungryBadger[/url]":ce5rc62d]

Because OOXML Strict is compatible across pretty much every current implementation, whereas ODF causes endless problems because there are gaping gaps in the spec which make moving between implementations painful. You can use OOXML without ever touching Microsoft software, but ODF pretty much ties you to OpenOffice (or one of it's derivatives), if you want compatibility.

What the self congratulating FOSS crowd are missing is what the real outcome of this will be. All the quirks in ODF that differ between OpenOffice and Microsoft Office (even when both are "compliant"), coupled with the fact government offices will inevitably still being using Microsoft Office, will lead to less compatibility with FOSS solutions, not more.

Can you gave some specific examples instead of "pretty much", "gaping gaps", and "all the quirks". It would be interesting to read about some of the techincal issues you bring up.

The vague (but maybe real) technical questions you raise are then washed away with "self-congratulating FOSS crowd", that doesn't make you sound very objective.

The lack of real conditional formatting in a spreadsheet (i.e. where the value is dependent upon values across an entire data range), various aspects to deal with how whitespace should be collapsed, the ability to set odd/even page breaks, poor handling of bibliographies, the entirely ridiculous inability to distinguish between a basic table and a spreadsheet, fuzzy semantics on basic spreadsheet functions like IF, unspecified ordering of colour filters....

 

[MartinHatch]

Fotan[/url]":3hmjjd4y]

MartinHatch[/url]":3hmjjd4y]

Which I'm pretty sure 99% of government orgs use.

Use of Microsoft is certainly entrenched in Government but that is changing.
Central government are putting the Civil Service under enormous pressure to cut costs, some bits have moved to Google Docs already.

Ye godz no.. government data on Google servers?

And even then I don't really understand. Office 365 is free for not-for-profit organisations (e.g. government). So not exactly a price saving.

And apart from that, any government org worth it's salt is going to have (hugely discounted, like ~90%) license agreements for things like Windows, Office, Server, SharePoint, Exchange, SQL, etc. So moving a single product into "compatibility minefield" land isn't exactly a win

 

[launcap]

MartinHatch[/url]":1ifjsw9i]

Fotan[/url]":1ifjsw9i]

MartinHatch[/url]":1ifjsw9i]

Which I'm pretty sure 99% of government orgs use.

And even then I don't really understand. Office 365 is free for not-for-profit organisations (e.g. government).

Err - no it isn't (I work for a Government body - not core Civil Service but a non-Departmental Gov body) and it's most definately not that heavily discounted..

And apart from that, any government org worth it's salt is going to have (hugely discounted, like ~90%) license agreements for things like Windows, Office, Server, SharePoint, Exchange, SQL, etc. So moving a single product into "compatibility minefield" land isn't exactly a win

Again - not true. Sure, we do get discounts, but it's by no means 90% (more like 20%). Charity bodies pay next to nothing for O365 and licenced software but we pay a whole lot more. And more now than we did 5 years ago.

 

[Morris von Habsburg]

The license cost is rarely relevant for these sort of decisions. Especially not office suite licenses as they are not that expensive in the first place. At my previous employer we would estimate the cost of an employee at £10k a year in overheads (salaries excluded). A £200 office software license is hardly worth registering.

The main reason to standardise on a limited set of open formats is to streamline the procurement process, prevent vendor lock-in, guarantee long-term access for archival purposes and limit interoperability issues. License cost might be part of it but it won't make the top three. Especially not in this case where most government admins will keep on using Microsoft Office but just switch the default file format to ODF.

 

[MartinHatch]

launcap[/url]":1uov4c8e]

MartinHatch[/url]":1uov4c8e]

Fotan[/url]":1uov4c8e]

MartinHatch[/url]":1uov4c8e]

Which I'm pretty sure 99% of government orgs use.

And even then I don't really understand. Office 365 is free for not-for-profit organisations (e.g. government).

Err - no it isn't (I work for a Government body - not core Civil Service but a non-Departmental Gov body) and it's most definately not that heavily discounted..

And apart from that, any government org worth it's salt is going to have (hugely discounted, like ~90%) license agreements for things like Windows, Office, Server, SharePoint, Exchange, SQL, etc. So moving a single product into "compatibility minefield" land isn't exactly a win

Again - not true. Sure, we do get discounts, but it's by no means 90% (more like 20%). Charity bodies pay next to nothing for O365 and licenced software but we pay a whole lot more. And more now than we did 5 years ago.

My local council, school and charity ALL have completely free O365 subscriptions. I know because I set them up...

http://www.microsoft.com/about/corporatecitizenship/en-us/office365-for-nonprofits/