Is Microsoft Running Scared of OpenDocument?

PDF Zone ^ | 10-3-2005 | Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

[N3WBI3]

Opinion: It's not coincidence that after Massachusetts made it clear that it would support open formats, Microsoft is now going to include PDF in the next version of Office.

What is Microsoft up to, anyway, with its sudden plan to finally support PDF?

It wasn't announced by Bill Gates loudly to the world at the Professional Developer Conference a few weeks ago. It also wasn't proclaimed to the Microsoft faithful at its recent Most Valuable Professional Global Summit.

No, instead, Microsoft quietly squeaked out the news on a Saturday afternoon in Microsoft Office Program Manager Brian Jones' Weblog.

Could it be that it's because Microsoft is backing its way into ever so reluctantly supporting an open format after Massachusetts decided that it would only use office suites that supported open formats like PDF and OpenDocument?

It certainly looks that way to me.

For all of its talk about being an innovator, Microsoft is really just a follower.

PointerClick here to read more about Microsoft's decision to build PDF support into Office 12.

Sometimes, of course, the company is a very, very reluctant follower. It took Microsoft's leadership forever to live down the fact that they had initially dismissed the Internet. Now, I see Microsoft slowly and painfully embracing open standards.

Mind you, this move is just a beginning. I recently pointed out that it would be trivial for Microsoft to add OpenDocument support to Office.

I don't see that happening anytime soon now though.

With PDF support alone, Microsoft can still try for Massachusetts government contracts without having to add OpenDocument.

Well, until StarOffice, OpenOffice.org and WordPerfect's support for OpenDocument force Microsoft's hand anyway.

After all, PDF is much more of an end-result format than one that most people actually want to edit in. As OpenDocument and the applications that enable it gain more support, Microsoft will find itself forced into supporting it too.

Now, some might say that this is just Microsoft giving the people what they want. Many users have been asking for a PDF option from Microsoft since Adobe Acrobat 4 appeared in 1999.

eWEEK Special Report: Office Politics

But, if that's all there was to it, then why was Microsoft banging the drum for its own PDF substitute, Metro, only a few months ago?

Still others might say that is part and parcel of Microsoft's recent efforts to compete against Adobe in other ways: Sparkle vs. Flash, Acrylic vs. Photoshop and so on.

To which, I say, "Why now? Why announce it in such a subdued way?"

No, all those other things play a role, but at the end of the day, Microsoft felt that it must make at least a concession to open standards by adopting PDF.

After all, it's not like Massachusetts is the only entity that is seriously considering making supporting open standards a requirement for its software purchases. Massachusetts was just the first to make it official.

Microsoft would love it if it could make everyone stick to its proprietary formats. That forces customers to keep buying its products. But it can't. And, much as Microsoft may hate it, its executives know it. So it is that as quietly as the company could, Microsoft is, once more, making concessions to open standards.

eWEEK.com Senior Editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has been using and writing about operating systems since the late '80s and thinks he may just have learned something about them along the way. He can be reached at sjvn@ziffdavis.com.

[EricT.]

Correction: They copy what the smaller, more innovative companies do. And more often then not, patent it and run the smaller businesses out of business.

MS is not alone in doing this. Kodak and GE have been doing this for decades, though most of the time they just buy the small innovators, keep the brains and toss out the rest of the company.

[EricT.]

They may be running down Google, but I use it almost exclusively. All the computers in the office still use the default MSN homepage and I will still go to Google instead. I have no use for a cluttered up search engine. Too many distractions when I want specific information.

[Golden Eagle]

I can't believe that anyone would be so incredibly ignorant as to believe that because keys are kept secret, it is some kind of argument for or against public disclosure of encryption algorithms.

Quit twisting the argument. The original claim was that obscurity and security can't co-exist. Encryption was the example. You can whine and spin all you want, but the facts remain that effective encryption is DEPENDENT on the OBSCURITY of the "private" key. That's why it's called a "private" key, and the idiots claiming that obscurity and security can't co-exist don't have a clue as to what they're talking about. Don't let that stop you from rushing to your defense. Or ignoring the fact I've repeatedly admitted public scrutiny of the algorithm is a typical practice. It's just not REQUIRED, like the privacy of the key is. Dingbat.

[Boundless]

> I think I read somewhere that MS is moving its Word format to XML.

A proprietary XML format, protected by patent and a
binary header. Might as well not be XML at all.

[antiRepublicrat]

Meanwhile, you bozos run around saying

No, some bozos were. The rest of us were waiting to see what Google has up its sleeve that could eventually threaten Microsoft's monopoly.

[antiRepublicrat]

" It is telling that the press release didn’t even appear on Google’s website, only on Sun’s. "

You quote a reporter who is just as incompetent at Web surfing as you are? As usual, you're wrong. Google did put out a press release about the alliance, contrary to your statement that it didn't, no matter how hard you try to spin it. It's there. Read it.

[antiRepublicrat]

Quit twisting the argument. The original claim was that obscurity and security can't co-exist.

In this thread, that original claim was made by you, misquoting me, who said in another thread that obscurity provides no real security. You should not depend on it.

You can whine and spin all you want, but the facts remain that effective encryption is DEPENDENT on the OBSCURITY

As you have been told, quite confusing secrecy of a key with obscurity of the system. But, hey, if you want to put your private key out in the public, security guaranteed because it's obscured by ROT-13, be my guest.

[N3WBI3]

Eric,

Im the same way. I was a long time Yahoo holdout until I started needing a useful search engine and not a bunch of advertisements, animated gifs and other crap cluttering my screen.

I find Googles interface rather elegant, so much so that Microsoft the search engine has copied googles search engine. I made the switch over to google complete by dumping my own email server in favor of theirs, though I do use fetchmeail to pull it down locally.

Google is everything yahoo and early web portals could have been they found a way to make it work and it works well. No matter how often our more controversial tech thread visitors run them down they can not take way from their success..

[zeugma]

This is typical trollish picking of nits that I was talking about. A claim that because your private key material has to be kept confidential somehow supports the concept of "security by obscurity" is nothing but assinine wordplay.

It's good to know that you admit that disclosure of algorythms is "typical practice". Now, for homework, go read Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier so you can actually comment intelligently about cryptography.

[zeugma]

algorythms=algorithms
maybe it was biorythms?

[for-q-clinton]

Hey we agree on something :-) Google has done a great job of offering cool, quick, and reliable searches.

Although as of late I find Yahoo getting me better results than google as everyone knows google's logic and they are bombing it to get their pages on top.

I also use froogle as a quick way to find prices for items. It's not 100%, but it is quick and gives me what I need.

I used to use the google desktop search, but on a Windows system MSN has a better desktop search (wiht a ton of plug-ins) and it's more secure. Plus you get tabbed browsing within IE.

[Golden Eagle]

Bottom line, without properly applied obscurity, encryption can't be effectively secure. The rest is nothing but your laughable hysterics.

[antiRepublicrat]

Now, for homework, go read Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier so you can actually comment intelligently about cryptography.

Remember when it was legal to export the book, but not the accompanying disk, even though the disk only contained what was listed in the book? ITAR's encryption controls produced some extremely strange and downright nonsensical results.

[N3WBI3]

Google has done a great job of offering cool, quick, and reliable searches.

And one has to admire who well they have started to diversify themselves. Hardware (Search Appliances), the Google Earth Software, and much of the work going on at google labs (http://labs.google.com/). Really clever guys running that company.

Although as of late I find Yahoo getting me better results than google as everyone knows google's logic and they are bombing it to get their pages on top.

Supposedly yahoo has a bigger database now, but I just cant get over how cluttered their page feels. Usually if MS copies you it means you're doing something very right, and search.msn.com shows it.

[antiRepublicrat]

Bottom line, without properly applied obscurity secrecy, encryption can't be effectively secure.

There, that's better. But then even secrecy isn't necessary, as you could generate a key from biometrics. Then there's no secrecy, only security (e.g., making sure no one forces you up to the retinal scanner).

Any encryption that relies on obscurity is doomed to fail. And unlike the secrecy of a key, which would compromise one person's communication, compromise of the system due to penetration of the obscurity would compromise everybody.

[Golden Eagle]

But then even secrecy isn't necessary, as you could generate a key from biometrics.

Normal bunk. Then the digitized biometric key must be kept secret. You guys are beyond a joke.

[zeugma]

Remember when it was legal to export the book, but not the accompanying disk, even though the disk only contained what was listed in the book? ITAR's encryption controls produced some extremely strange and downright nonsensical results.

Oh, yes. They ended up printing the source code for PGP in book form in an OCR font (with barcode checksums) to get around the stupid export restrictions.

For a long time I had the "RSA in 3 Lines of Perl" signature on my emails. I figured every single message I sent ot the Cypherpunks mailing list was worth about 10000 years in a federal pen.

Sometimes FedGov is dumber than a bunch of rocks. (Actually, I figure most times FedGov is dumber than a bunch of rocks.)

[zeugma]

Any encryption that relies on obscurity is doomed to fail. And unlike the secrecy of a key, which would compromise one person's communication, compromise of the system due to penetration of the obscurity would compromise everybody.

Good point and well said.

BTW, referring back to my previous message, the department of commerce officially classified the following as a munition, subject to export restrictions:

     -export-a-crypto-system-sig -RSA-3-lines-PERL

#!/bin/perl -sp0777i<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<j]dsj
$/=unpack('H*',$_);$_=`echo 16dio\U$k"SK$/SM$n\EsN0p[lN*1
lK[d2%Sa2/d0$^Ixp"|dc`;s/\W//g;$_=pack('H*',/((..)*)$/)

[Knitebane]

Bottom line, without properly applied obscurity, encryption can't be effectively secure.

confidentiality != obscurity

My private encryption key is named secring.gpg and lives in ~/.gnupg

There you go, no obscurity. You know where it is and you know exactly what to look for. Now you can try to decrypt my encrypted communications.

Let me know how that works out for you.

[antiRepublicrat]

Then the digitized biometric key must be kept secret.

Actually, no. If you normalize the biometrics to get the same end mathematical result every time, then the biometric itself can be the key. No stored digitized key necessary, you provide it every time you provide the biometric.

But you get a gold star for finally recognizing the difference between secrecy and obscurity. Your education continues...