January 2007

More Matter with Less Art

January 31, 2007

I wish to discuss a recent blog post, a vigorous defense of Microsoft’s Office Open XML and XAML from Novell’s Miguel de Icaza. His post is so wrong, on so many levels, that I am somewhat at a loss for words. Miguel is not stupid, and I find it hard to believe that he is [...]

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Defining Deviancy Down

January 30, 2007

Kai Erikson, in his classic study of deviant behavior in early New England, Wayward Puritans, made the important observation that: …the amount of deviation a community encounters is apt to remain fairly constant over time. To start at the beginning, it is a simple logistic fact that the number of deviancies which come to a [...]

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Microsoft on Standards

January 29, 2007

There are many delicious morsels in the many exhibits in the Iowa Comes v. Microsoft case. Maybe that is why the official website containing the exhibits was taken down within hours of the case being settled? Luckily websites like Slated Antitrust filled the void and host backup copies of these candid insights into Microsoft’s internal [...]

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Adobe to Standardize PDF

January 29, 2007

According to the press release, it sounds like Adobe will submit their PDF 1.7 specification to AIIM, where it will be reviewed and refined before submission to ISO, likely to TC 171 . AIIM, if the name isn’t familiar to you, is the Association for Information and Image Management. They have been around since 1943, [...]

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A Review of the Wikipedia Article on ODF

January 27, 2007

As I had done last week with the Wikipedia article on Office Open XML (OOXML), I have taken a read through the article on OpenDocument Format (ODF). My aim was to do some fact checking and make some suggestions on some additional references that might be included. In some case I’ve made additional usage or [...]

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Crocodile Tears

January 25, 2007

By now everyone on the planet with an internet connection knows about Rick Jelliffe, the blogger Microsoft offered to pay to make the Office Open XML Wikipedia page “more objective”. (It is unclear what criteria Microsoft uses to determine which bloggers are given free laptops and which ones get offered cash.) In any case, I [...]

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Linus’s Law Applied to Standards Review

January 23, 2007

Eric Raymond’s famous formulation in the Cathedral and the Bazaar was “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”. Since Code is text and Spec is text, so it is reasonable to ask if this same law might apply to reviewing a specification as well. This proposition was put to the test this last weekend at [...]

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Document Format Punditry

January 23, 2007

Rick Jelliffe, Mr. Schematron, who blogs for O’Reilly, recently announced that he had been contacted by Microsoft to see if he would be interested in a contract to edit the Office Open XML (OOXML) and Open Document Format (ODF) Wikipedia pages. As Rick says, So I was a little surprised to receive email a couple [...]

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The Parable of the Solipsistic Standard

January 22, 2007

Winter is finally here. It is dark and dreary, the ground hard, unyielding. I’m getting over a cold. My feet are never as warm as I’d like them to be. But still, I look forward to spring. The seed catalogs have arrived. I’m starting to review possibilities for the garden next year. It is Winter, [...]

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Opportunity Knocks

January 21, 2007

There are a number of us commenting on issues related to open standards, in particular ODF. My blog roll has a list of several who regularly cover these topics. I’ve recently added a new link to that list, and I’d like to highlight it for you today. Walt Hucks and Opportunity Knocks blog has been [...]

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