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RE: Results of Open XML balloting at INCITS

• From: "Len Bullard" <cbullard@h...>
• To: "'Michael Kay'" <mike@s...>, "'Jim Melton'" <jim.melton@a...>
• Date: Sun, 12 Aug 2007 21:14:08 -0500

Economics:  switching costs are most expensive for the first adopters.  Find
the distribution of the install base and that tells you which systems absorb
the costs of initial peaks.  Convergence isn't free.  

Switching costs are absorbed by the users.  Until the vendors make that
free, users absorb the costs.   It is exactly as you say:  the users
preserve it.

My problem is the OOXML vs ODF choice is a choice between two white
elephants.  Editing of complex information is moving away from document
formats (pages) and into control types (boxes).  The sustaining costs are
related to the content types, eg, legal docs, financial docs, contract docs,
and so on.  Unless we keep insisting on page fidelity as the measure of
legal faith, we keep paying those high document costs.

The cost of high value information has moved to the framework development
toolkits.  The XML of the GridView.  I'm mystified that there is so much
continued focus of standards work on the same formats we were using before
we had the web.  

Tell the holy scrollers that the cardsharks are back. :-)

len

From: Michael Kay [mailto:mike@s...] 

>It would seem to be clearly in the interest of American economics that the
US vote for OOXML.

I would challenge the "clearly". I think it's a very complex argument and
the answer isn't at all clear.

Although the people making the most noise are probably the vendors, who have
most to gain or lose, the economic argument needs to be made in terms of
costs and benefits to the user community. This community is currently paying
a very high price for the near-monopoly enjoyed by Microsoft - a cost
measured both in the high price of software and in the cost of data lock-in.
Equally, the user community is largely comfortable with this monopoly
(indeed, the user community is responsible for it), because it significantly
reduces training costs and document interchange costs, as those of us who
were around when there was real competition for office software will
remember.

So the questions are (a) will making OOXML a standard affect the level (or
duration) of Microsoft's near-monopoly in office software, and (b) will it
reduce the costs or increase the compensatory benefits of that monopoly to
the user community. I certainly can't predict the answers to those
questions.

My instinct tells me that if it's good for Microsoft then it must be bad for
everyone else. But I suspect I'm falling into the trap of assuming that it
must be a zero-sum game, which may not be the case. Certainly one would like
to think that the standards game is not zero-sum in general!

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/ 

• Follow-Ups:
  • PAX: Why OOXML and ODF are inadquate bases for a forward-looking general purpose office format
    • From: "Rick Jelliffe" <rjelliffe@a...>

• References:
  • RE: Results of Open XML balloting at INCITS
    • From: "Michael Kay" <mike@s...>