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I think the big reason OpenDoc failed is because it was completely steamrolled by Microsoft OLE 2. These are complicated enough APIs that a developer is typica

I think the big reason OpenDoc failed is because it was completely steamrolled by Microsoft OLE 2. These are complicated enough APIs that a developer is typically going to only implement one. To better understand, it helps to go back in time when this was going on. This was the early 90's, and Microsoft Windows was the dominant OS. In addition, Microsoft Office was also becoming the dominant office software. Microsoft put a lot of it's energy behind OLE 2. Office supported it. If you wanted your application to be certified for Windows 95, you needed to support OLE 2. OLE 2 was pushed at all the Microsoft Developer conferences. Every book and magazine about Windows development pushed OLE 2. Microsoft's Visual C++ MFC framework supported OLE 2, and in fact, their Scribble tutorial included a section on implementing OLE 2. Visual Basic supported OLE 2, and in fact their custom controls were OLE 2 objects. Thus if you supported OLE 2, you had a ton of documentation, tooling, libraries, dev environments that supported it. You could get Windows 95 application certification. You would be able to embed Office documents in your application, or have Office embed your documents in Office. IIRC, Visio started out as an independent application that had great OLE 2 support and was eventually acquired by Microsoft. And you could tell that OLE 2 was a huge priority for Microsoft. In fact, the rumored next generation successor to Windows 95 and Windows NT, Cairo was supposed to be built on OLE 2 from the ground up. (Cairo never materialized). On the other hand you had OpenDoc, which did not have nearly as big of a market. It was not the priority for any of the companies pushing it. Unlike with Microsoft Office and OLE 2, there wasn't a halo product that showed off the user benefits of OpenDoc. There wasn't nearly the documentation and tooling and libraries for OpenDoc. Given all that, I don't consider it surprising that OpenDoc failed.

Ansil849 5y ago
> This was the early 90's, and Microsoft Windows was the dominant OS. In addition, Microsoft Office was also becoming the dominant office software. Are both of these still not the case?
- dguaraglia 5y ago
  Arguably, the dominant OS nowadays is whatever your phone runs, plus whatever serves the websites you consume. Microsoft Office reigns unchallenged though.
- gamache 5y ago
  Windows may be the dominant desktop OS, but Linux (via Android) has a larger install base now. As for office software, G Suite took over the top spot from MS Office a few years ago.
  - scarface74 5y ago
    GSuite is nowhere near the “top spot”. It’s nowhere close. https://www.ciodive.com/news/g-suite-passes-2b-monthly-active-users-trails-microsoft/574084/ https://www.ciodive.com/news/g-suite-passes-2b-monthly-activ... > Microsoft owns nearly 90% of the office suite market, or email and authoring market, as Gartner calls it. Google holds onto just over 10%, but is gaining about 1% market share annually.
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      Perhaps GP meant "online office suite"
      - scarface74 5y ago
        Isn’t that a distinction without a difference? All of the office suites have both online and offline capabilities - even Apple’s iWork. On the other hand, I hardly ever use the online version of GSuite, I use the iOS versions that can all work offline.
  - philistine 5y ago
    And think of all the Linux user base on servers and the fact that macOS and iOS are somewhat like Linux. Unix is huge baby!
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      Anyone writing portable software across UNIX will painfully discover why stuff like autoconf was born.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Linux kernel is only an implementation detail on Android. Userspace is a mix of Java, Kotlin, ISO C and ISO C++ standard libraries, and Android specific native APIs. Nothing from Linux side is considered public API other than for OEMs providing their own device customisations, not app developers consumption. G Suite still has too much to learn from Office capabilities.
- jbandela1 5y ago
  In terms of dominant OS, I think Microsoft is no longer the dominant OS, even though it is the most used OS for laptops and desktops. Back in the 1990's, Windows was the center of the developer universe. Think how mobile developers eagerly wait to see what Apple will do. It was even more so for developers in the 1990's. There were huge Windows dev conferences. There was a ton of excitement for a new release of Windows or a new version of Visual C++/Visual Basic/Visual Studio. Now, although there are a lot of computers that run Windows, Windows is not the center of gravity for developers. A new iOS release or a new AWS service has far more impact on developers than any new Microsoft Windows feature. Joel has a great writeup on this from some time back: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost-the-api-war/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost...
  - scarface74 5y ago
    I work at AWS and even I admit that a new AWS feature doesn’t have as big of an impact as a Windows feature or an Office feature. Andy Jassy, the CEO of AWS (and soon Amazon), has said repeatedly in public statements that only 4% of all enterprise IT spend is on any cloud provider. Office is far more ubiquitous in the enterprise than AWS. Not to mention all of the home users who have Office 365 running on their computers and mobile devices.
    - Macha 5y ago
      I don't think that's what he's saying. Of course, Joe Small Business Owner is going to care more about new features in Outlook or Excel than about new features in AWS. But I don't think _developers, specifically_ are looking out for the new office extension APIs in the same way they're looking for e.g. improvements to EKS.
      - tester756 5y ago
        but it's the moment when Visual Studio Code steps in :P
      - scarface74 5y ago
mschaef 5y ago
> I think the big reason OpenDoc failed is because it was completely steamrolled by Microsoft OLE 2. I think the bigger reason may be this, from the original article: > Most folks at Claris, Apple’s application group, didn’t want it at all, seeing it as an enabler for competition to Claris’s office suite product, ClarisWorks. The trouble with composite documents is that it goes against the market's tendency to accrete power to the incumbent. * If you're WRITING document software, the composite document model adds a bunch of development complexity for (mainly) the purpose of opening doors for your competitors to eat away at your lock in. From a marketing perspective, If I'm writing document software I'd probably much rather you use _my_ spreadsheet than whatever spreadsheet you want. From a support perspective, it's easier if I own the code on both sides of an embedding. From a development perspective, it's easier to add more differentiated features if I don't have to force everything through a common document embedding model, etc. * If you're USING document prep software, the composite document model adds complexity to the way you install and buy software, the UX for the software, and then what you can do with the documents you create with your carefully curated software suite. There are ways that all of this can be addressed from a technical perspective, but the end reality is that the costs are too high and the return too limited to be useful. (As you point out, OLE2 has seen a lot of market acceptance, but a lot of that comes in the context of MS Office. Despite the availability of embedding technology within OLE2, The market didn't gravitate to hand-curated sets of best-of-breed office software. The market gravitated to MS Office with specific add ons for specific use cases. Even then, in settings where not everybody had those add on packages, there was a tendency to push documents to fit into whatever stock MS Office would support.)
- lurkerasdfh8 5y ago
  So both Microsoft and Apple, steamrolled the project with the money they were making by keeping users hostage.
  - mschaef 5y ago
    At the time it happened, I'd have been sympathetic to that phrasing. In the couple decades then, I'm grown much more sanguine about it. The notion that users are being somehow kept hostage by not being able to pick and choose their own suite of document components is almost completely contrary to the history of consolidation within this industry and others. Picking a collection of best of breed software components is asking way, way, way too much of the vast majority of users, who mainly had a specific set of goals, one of the most important of which is to get on with the rest of life. About the best that can be achieved with this sort of software architecture is add on components that fill specific gaps in existing suites (and then likely get rolled into the suites themselves).
pvg 5y ago
I think the big reason OpenDoc failed is because it was completely steamrolled by Microsoft OLE 2 For that to be true, OpenDoc had to first be deployed and successful somewhere so OLE 2 could be said to have competed with it and to have won. Microsoft's office apps crushed Apple's office apps in the marketplace, etc. OLE 2 never really competed with OpenDoc, though, because no working (in any practical sense) OpenDoc anything ever shipped with MacOS. All the OLE 2 context seems pretty orthogonal, OpenDoc didn't even 'win' within the Apple platform.
- duskwuff 5y ago
  > because no working (in any practical sense) OpenDoc anything ever shipped with MacOS Well, beyond that -- almost no OpenDoc software shipped at all. The first significant release was Apple's CyberDog web browser in 1996, and the OpenDoc project was cancelled in 1997. Mac OS never really embraced OpenDoc wholeheartedly, either. It wasn't included in the default install of Mac OS, so most users were never exposed to it.
  - pvg 5y ago
    Yes, I was mostly just being nice to OpenDoc.
overgard 5y ago
I was pretty young at the time, but I can't really remember much of a use for OLE outside of Visual Basic? (Which granted, was Big). Maybe databases also?
- skissane 5y ago
  People used it so you could stick an Excel spreadsheet inside a Word document. People also used it to attach attach Word/Excel/Powerpoint documents to emails as OLE objects, which would be stored in TNEF format. This worked fine within a local network when everyone was running Outlook and Exchange, but caused problems when people started sending emails out over the Internet (remember winmail.dat files?). More recent versions of Outlook+Exchange prefer to just use MIME.
EricE 5y ago
It didn't help that Apple was broke and Steve was more focused on keeping Apple alive than funding pie in the sky initiatives that may or may not work out - as Apple continued to bleed money. A little of column A, a little of column B - in the end it didn't survive. But don't take my word for it - from the man himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE
goto11 5y ago
> completely steamrolled by Microsoft OLE 2. But did OLE 2 succeed? I know this is the technology which allows you to embed a Word document in an Excel sheet in a PowerPoint presentation, but does this actually work across applications by independent vendors? And is it ever used?

Ansil849 5y ago

> This was the early 90's, and Microsoft Windows was the dominant OS. In addition, Microsoft Office was also becoming the dominant office software. Are both of these still not the case?

dguaraglia 5y ago
Arguably, the dominant OS nowadays is whatever your phone runs, plus whatever serves the websites you consume. Microsoft Office reigns unchallenged though.
gamache 5y ago
Windows may be the dominant desktop OS, but Linux (via Android) has a larger install base now. As for office software, G Suite took over the top spot from MS Office a few years ago.
- scarface74 5y ago
  GSuite is nowhere near the “top spot”. It’s nowhere close. https://www.ciodive.com/news/g-suite-passes-2b-monthly-active-users-trails-microsoft/574084/ https://www.ciodive.com/news/g-suite-passes-2b-monthly-activ... > Microsoft owns nearly 90% of the office suite market, or email and authoring market, as Gartner calls it. Google holds onto just over 10%, but is gaining about 1% market share annually.
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    Perhaps GP meant "online office suite"
    - scarface74 5y ago
      Isn’t that a distinction without a difference? All of the office suites have both online and offline capabilities - even Apple’s iWork. On the other hand, I hardly ever use the online version of GSuite, I use the iOS versions that can all work offline.
- philistine 5y ago
  And think of all the Linux user base on servers and the fact that macOS and iOS are somewhat like Linux. Unix is huge baby!
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    Anyone writing portable software across UNIX will painfully discover why stuff like autoconf was born.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Linux kernel is only an implementation detail on Android. Userspace is a mix of Java, Kotlin, ISO C and ISO C++ standard libraries, and Android specific native APIs. Nothing from Linux side is considered public API other than for OEMs providing their own device customisations, not app developers consumption. G Suite still has too much to learn from Office capabilities.
jbandela1 5y ago
In terms of dominant OS, I think Microsoft is no longer the dominant OS, even though it is the most used OS for laptops and desktops. Back in the 1990's, Windows was the center of the developer universe. Think how mobile developers eagerly wait to see what Apple will do. It was even more so for developers in the 1990's. There were huge Windows dev conferences. There was a ton of excitement for a new release of Windows or a new version of Visual C++/Visual Basic/Visual Studio. Now, although there are a lot of computers that run Windows, Windows is not the center of gravity for developers. A new iOS release or a new AWS service has far more impact on developers than any new Microsoft Windows feature. Joel has a great writeup on this from some time back: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost-the-api-war/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/06/13/how-microsoft-lost...
- scarface74 5y ago
  I work at AWS and even I admit that a new AWS feature doesn’t have as big of an impact as a Windows feature or an Office feature. Andy Jassy, the CEO of AWS (and soon Amazon), has said repeatedly in public statements that only 4% of all enterprise IT spend is on any cloud provider. Office is far more ubiquitous in the enterprise than AWS. Not to mention all of the home users who have Office 365 running on their computers and mobile devices.
  - Macha 5y ago
    I don't think that's what he's saying. Of course, Joe Small Business Owner is going to care more about new features in Outlook or Excel than about new features in AWS. But I don't think _developers, specifically_ are looking out for the new office extension APIs in the same way they're looking for e.g. improvements to EKS.
    - tester756 5y ago
      but it's the moment when Visual Studio Code steps in :P
    - scarface74 5y ago

mschaef 5y ago

> I think the big reason OpenDoc failed is because it was completely steamrolled by Microsoft OLE 2. I think the bigger reason may be this, from the original article: > Most folks at Claris, Apple’s application group, didn’t want it at all, seeing it as an enabler for competition to Claris’s office suite product, ClarisWorks. The trouble with composite documents is that it goes against the market's tendency to accrete power to the incumbent. * If you're WRITING document software, the composite document model adds a bunch of development complexity for (mainly) the purpose of opening doors for your competitors to eat away at your lock in. From a marketing perspective, If I'm writing document software I'd probably much rather you use _my_ spreadsheet than whatever spreadsheet you want. From a support perspective, it's easier if I own the code on both sides of an embedding. From a development perspective, it's easier to add more differentiated features if I don't have to force everything through a common document embedding model, etc. * If you're USING document prep software, the composite document model adds complexity to the way you install and buy software, the UX for the software, and then what you can do with the documents you create with your carefully curated software suite. There are ways that all of this can be addressed from a technical perspective, but the end reality is that the costs are too high and the return too limited to be useful. (As you point out, OLE2 has seen a lot of market acceptance, but a lot of that comes in the context of MS Office. Despite the availability of embedding technology within OLE2, The market didn't gravitate to hand-curated sets of best-of-breed office software. The market gravitated to MS Office with specific add ons for specific use cases. Even then, in settings where not everybody had those add on packages, there was a tendency to push documents to fit into whatever stock MS Office would support.)

lurkerasdfh8 5y ago
So both Microsoft and Apple, steamrolled the project with the money they were making by keeping users hostage.
- mschaef 5y ago
  At the time it happened, I'd have been sympathetic to that phrasing. In the couple decades then, I'm grown much more sanguine about it. The notion that users are being somehow kept hostage by not being able to pick and choose their own suite of document components is almost completely contrary to the history of consolidation within this industry and others. Picking a collection of best of breed software components is asking way, way, way too much of the vast majority of users, who mainly had a specific set of goals, one of the most important of which is to get on with the rest of life. About the best that can be achieved with this sort of software architecture is add on components that fill specific gaps in existing suites (and then likely get rolled into the suites themselves).

pvg 5y ago

I think the big reason OpenDoc failed is because it was completely steamrolled by Microsoft OLE 2 For that to be true, OpenDoc had to first be deployed and successful somewhere so OLE 2 could be said to have competed with it and to have won. Microsoft's office apps crushed Apple's office apps in the marketplace, etc. OLE 2 never really competed with OpenDoc, though, because no working (in any practical sense) OpenDoc anything ever shipped with MacOS. All the OLE 2 context seems pretty orthogonal, OpenDoc didn't even 'win' within the Apple platform.

duskwuff 5y ago
> because no working (in any practical sense) OpenDoc anything ever shipped with MacOS Well, beyond that -- almost no OpenDoc software shipped at all. The first significant release was Apple's CyberDog web browser in 1996, and the OpenDoc project was cancelled in 1997. Mac OS never really embraced OpenDoc wholeheartedly, either. It wasn't included in the default install of Mac OS, so most users were never exposed to it.
- pvg 5y ago
  Yes, I was mostly just being nice to OpenDoc.

overgard 5y ago

I was pretty young at the time, but I can't really remember much of a use for OLE outside of Visual Basic? (Which granted, was Big). Maybe databases also?

skissane 5y ago
People used it so you could stick an Excel spreadsheet inside a Word document. People also used it to attach attach Word/Excel/Powerpoint documents to emails as OLE objects, which would be stored in TNEF format. This worked fine within a local network when everyone was running Outlook and Exchange, but caused problems when people started sending emails out over the Internet (remember winmail.dat files?). More recent versions of Outlook+Exchange prefer to just use MIME.

EricE 5y ago

It didn't help that Apple was broke and Steve was more focused on keeping Apple alive than funding pie in the sky initiatives that may or may not work out - as Apple continued to bleed money. A little of column A, a little of column B - in the end it didn't survive. But don't take my word for it - from the man himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE

goto11 5y ago

> completely steamrolled by Microsoft OLE 2. But did OLE 2 succeed? I know this is the technology which allows you to embed a Word document in an Excel sheet in a PowerPoint presentation, but does this actually work across applications by independent vendors? And is it ever used?