The social contract


Earlier this month Massachusetts' CIO announced a strong move to use the open-standard OpenDocument file format for all government-produced documents. Peter J. Quinn, the CIO, immediately came under attack by Microsoft, which argued, predictably, that not only was the OpenDocument format not really open, or at least not as open as Microsoft's proprietary format, but that such a move was not only ill-considered and ultimately a disservice. (Tim Bray wrote an excellent analysis of Microsoft's argument in his blog.)

MS's claims are nothing new, of course, though they do represent an evolution of sorts. When Craig Mundie, MS's hatchet man of several years ago declaimed against Linux and other open-source efforts, he argued on the grounds that it was un-American, for open source, according to him, violated the principles of free enterprise and personal innovation: principles that, implicitly in Mundie's argument, have made MS great. FOSS, in contrast, works not by producing works based on personal enterprise but by disseminating free copies (read: stolen goods) that sap the vigour of proprietary works.

What is frightening about this argument is that MS is necessarily committed to maintaining its version of the status quo. Change, radical or not, represents risk. Just as auto makers must evolve their products so as to seem different while in fact being the same--otherwise they believe they will alienate consumers, or worse, scare and intimidate them--so must MS do the same year in and year out, with only cosmetic changes. And when it does deploy something relatively new, like XML (which OpenOffice.org has been using now for years by default), it has to ensure that its introduction satisfies the banality of expectation *and* the needs of its shareholders. Status quo ensues.

Of course, OpenOffice.org is not leaping into new UI frontiers, though it should. But that is because its primary sponsor, Sun, must also hew the line and produce code for StarOffice (same codebase) that satisfies *its* customers, so change comes slowly. But I think its time that OpenOffice.org diverges here and accelerates the deployment of radically interesting and exciting UI changes to complement its very interesting code.

How would this work? As long ago as 2003, I had the notion that functionality would be the same, keyboard commands the same, but that one could ideally select superficial or even deeper UIs. These could work like skins, which alter the look of the application, but they could also go a little deeper, and even introduce new menus, etc. OOo is free, it is open source, it is a field waiting for the experimentation, testing and innovation of developers. There is no reason in OOo's structure not to deploy these and other similar ideas.

But what has this to do with the social contract? Well, like any blog, drift is part of the code. I began with the Massachusetts decision and I want to go back there. What the decision represents is the acknowledgement that it is the duty and responsibility of government to provide citizens with public material that is universally accessible. This ought not to be controversial in any way. Until the advent of e-government and the widespread use of electronic documents, both as records and as forms, it was always the case. All a citizen had to do to access public documents was go to the archives and read them. But with the advent of electronic documents, a new circuit of implicit secrecy was established, for many of these public documents were created and archived using proprietary formats, such as those of Microsoft Word. And if a citizen did not have MS Word (let alone a computer), she was unable (is unable) to read the documents online. Furthermore, the problem extends not just horizontally in the present, but into the future.

What I mean is that years, decades from now, archives created using proprietary formats may--*will not*--be legible, and thus will be inaccessible, at least if the history is any guide. Already material that was created electronically decades ago is lost, in part because the company that created the system producing the format went out of business or abandoned the format.

In contrast, something stored using an open standard, like the OASIS OpenDocument, will not, cannot, suffer that fate. Never hidden, always in plain sight, always there for reference and modification (if needed), the format preserves history both horizontally and vertically. It is a definitive gesture towards political as well as business openness and rationality.

Massachusetts is but the largest US political body to choose OpenDocument but it is not the only one in the Americas nor the only one in the world; Australia has stored its national archives using the OOo format (on which the OASIS format was modelled) for several years, now, I believe, and other governments are following suit. I anticipate that this time next year there will be many, many more governments that have chosen OpenDocument.


In other things...

I was recently interviewed by the Decatur Daily for an article on OOo and Microsoft. The resulting article also included an interview of Eric Raymond, which puts me in fancy company indeed. But, as is often the case, my full responses were much edited down and altered slightly to fit the needs of the reporter. Below, is what I wrote, sans (the much) editing:
Thanks for responding. I'll jot down a few questions below. My hope is that some or all of you will respond. An emailed response is fine for my purposes. My main fascination with Open Office is that it lacks financial motivation, which boggles for-profit companies like Microsoft. I am also interested in how you incorporate what must be thousands of software tweaks into a program that needs to be stable.

Actually, OOo does not lack financial motivation, at least if you take the OOo community as a whole, and include not only Sun, the primary sponsor, but also Novell, Red Hat, etc. It's a common mistake to think that open source is a version of a charity. It isn't, especially for a project like OOo, which has such obvious commercial appeal. In fact derivatives are sold, eg, StarOffice. Most of our developers are associated with companies who benefit from OOo, especially Sun. But many contribute freely of their labour because they get emotional or technical satisfaction out of it, or because they believe in the project and the change in producer/consumer relations it implicitly represents. Or they contribute because they can eke out an even a better résumé :-). I get tiresome on this issue... sorry... should save it for blog :-)


That said, I think that MSFT can fairly easily comprehend what we are about, and has learned quite cannily to copy us in just about everything :-)

Oh, btw, our proper name is OpenOffice.org and we insist it be used, as others have trademark on "Open Office", "OpenOffice" and so on.

So here are a few questions:
1. Is Open Office management paid and, if so, by whom?

By "management," you can mean a lot. I am paid by CollabNet (http://www.collab.net), a software services and consulting firm that Sun pays to host and manage OOo. Sun also pays the salaries of several other technical managers, and they are in charge of managing Sun's portion of the OOo effort. John and Jacqueline donate their services to OOo.
2. Why do people donate so much time to Open Office improvements? Is anti-Microsoft sentiment a significant factor, or mere altruism?

I think I addressed that more or less obliquely above but I'll give you the pleasure of reiterating it, with a caveat: not all open-source projects are the same. In the case of OOo, there are commercial stakeholders: Sun, Novell, Red Hat, etc., as well as employees of smaller companies that will benefit from a better OOo, government-sponsored contributors, and volunteers and other independents, who contribute because they perceive that OOo is not just a product or a project but a revolution. Altruism is not a real factor and certainly not the rock upon which OOo is built. Anti-Microsoft resentment... hm. There is some of that but not much among developers, really. Rather, they find our code, which is there for them to see and work on, simply interesting and challenging, and MSFT's code, which is a black box, uninteresting. And they find our project interesting, b/c it is a community spanning the globe and filled with remarkably interesting people from all walks to be more fascinating than working in a cubicle for a same-old boss. Our project is doing something new; Microsoft is making sure companies and people do something old. Which would you rather work on? :-)
3. What steps do you see Microsoft taking to prevent you from grabbing increasing market share?

The usual: FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt), suits, humongous media blitzes about the evil dangers of open source not only to the American Way (remember Craig Mundie?) but also to software's value, and, most dastardly, giving away their product. The last is the most recent effort and it is pernicious, not for us--it's a feeble and unsustainable strategy--but because it effectively gets countries and companies to agree to MSFT's too-good-to-be-true deals and forsake the real value of open source. I refer to the practice in which MSFT will lower the price of Office to ridiculous levels, say, 37 USD, as it did in Thailand, or even less, in order to suade CIOs or gov't. officials to buy it. They think that cost is everything, but it is not. To give an example, Munich chose open source not because it cost more (the package they accepted did not) but because it was more valuable. MSFT is in the terrible position of having to persuade its misbegotten clients that its Office is worth the money. We are in the enviable position of merely needing to show the worth of our Office.
4. Microsoft claims Open Office is less stable than MS Office. Is this true? Have any independent tests evaluated stability?

I think some have made an effort at this, but absent knowing which version, which platform, which environment, who can say? More to the point: Which Office corrupts files more? Which fixes corrupted files? The answer is OOo. Both Jacqueline and I, and I imagine John, too, receive innumerable emails from happy users who extol OOo for fixing files corrupted by Microsoft Office. And I do know that if there were instabilities, the open-source community would fix them, as they can. In both cases, Microsoft Office loses, for not only is the process by which a file becomes corrupt mysterious in MSFT Office but as a black box it can't be fixed, except by a Microsoft employee, who has *no* motivation to do so, unless he is specifically instructed to do so by his boss.

5. Has Microsoft incorporated any Open Office code into its products? Would you be disappointed if it did?

I would not know if it has done so. Why should we be disappointed? I have in fact suggested to Microsoft that they support the open standard OpenDocument, which OOo uses. They ought to; after all, they make the claim about using "open XML," whatever that means.
6. Aside from function, is Microsoft Office better in terms of user interface? Your group tends to attract techies, who I would expect to be somewhat less attentive to the rabble's difficulty with computers.

Actually, our group does not attract just techies, and I'm curious why you think so. Over 45 million people have downloaded the application, not counting those who have obtained it through Linux distributions, such as from Red Hat, Novell, Mandriva, Linspire, Debian, Yellow Dog Linux, etc., or have bought derived products, such as StarOffice, NeoOffice/J, Magyar Office, Red Office, Star Suite, SOT Office, and so on, or have obtained it through CDROMs (one can do a million) or through our new P2P system. And that is not even counting all those who have downloaded it directly from regional distributors, as in Brazil (at least 2 million), India (probably hundreds of thousands), and son. But, let's be conservative and say that 50 million use it. Most are not techies. They are regular people, students, business people, homemakers, grandmothers and grandfathers, Basque speakers, Czech speakers, and so on: communities on the one hand that MSFT cannot afford to make a product for -- "orphaned markets"-- and on the other, consumers who have begun to realise that the emperor wears no clothes.

See, in the old days, there was no choice, really. Once WordPerfect had been vanquished--and it was a sad day, especially for lawyers and publishers (btw, 2.0 reads WP files)--there was only Microsoft Office for most people, especially corporate users. But then along comes open source, and especially OOo, and there is suddenly choice. So, what you are seeing now is the act of choosing, and it's a strange act and a wonderful act but it is now all about choosing. Not being a techie.
7. Do you envision a time when you will say, "There. We're done." Or will Open Office evolve perpetually?

OpenOffice.org will evolve perpetually. The current state is but a way-station and a clumsy one at that. I envision an on-demand office suite, for instance, and a suite that can work on cell phones; a suite that can be customised ad hoc. And these are merely my own fantasies. Open source allows us to share our wishes and also to make them come true, at least, with a bit of work ;-)
8. Open Office is increasingly popular with cash-strapped local governments. Do you anticipate Open Office branching into similar but specialized products for different user classes? Is that a customization you would expect to be performed by the individual consumer, or do you anticipate creating multiple versions of the product?

If there is a developer base willing to create, say, an OpenOffice.org Lite, that would tax systems less, yes. The key logic would be to establish a set of core functionality and ideally technology and then to let users and developers to configure as they need. The old concept of a static product and commodity are *so* 20th century. There can be evolution and flow with no sacrifice of stability.
9. Open Office can create .doc and .pdf documents. Why is this not an infringement on the proprietary rights of Microsoft and Adobe? I am confused as to how this relates to proprietary code.

I believe there is a concept called, "reverse engineering."
10. Is there any resentment by developers when corporations package and sell the product that evolved from their efforts? Specifically, how does Sun Microsystems fit into the mix?

Not really. Sun sponsors most of the development.
11. Do you believe a time will come when proprietary software becomes extinct?

No. Lots of things do better as proprietary. Open source is a strategy, a production and marketing strategy and can represent a change in the dynamic of producer/consumer. But it is not a panacea.
12. How many paid employees does Open Office have?

Not sure how many, as many contribute to the project who are paid by their companies. Think: a lot. But they are not paid by OpenOffice.org; they are paid by their respective companies.


And with a follow up or two:
My reference on "techies" was to OOo's developers, not users. Are there participants in the programming process with expertise in the interface needed for, say, secretaries with a high school education and no interest in computers?

Depends what you mean by the programming process. Let's say the process of making OOo. For what it is worth, OOo is remarkably inclusive. Our contributors range from those who do documentation and art and marketing to those who have degrees in English (moi) and art.
One of the triggers for my article is that a town in our coverage area is considering a switch from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org. The reason they have not made the switch is that their IT director believes OOo to be less stable. I think underlying that is his perception that he will have trouble getting tech support if there are problems. How do you respond to such concerns? (I guess I'm asking you to be a salesman on this one.)

There is a lot of professional support for OOo. Go to http://support.openoffice.org. Sun offers StarOffice level support for OOo, as do many other companies. In short: it's easy to get tech support.
















Posted: Sun - September 25, 2005 at 02:50 PM          

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