7 ms·
How proprietary formats have become Microsoft’s main tool for lock-in
- whatever1 3mo agoAn ms shop wanted to share a folder from their onedrive with me. I could not access it until I signed up for a Microsoft account and forced to download their authenticator app.
- vladvasiliu 3mo agoWell, at least you got to access it. We use OneDrive at work, so I have all the right apps and accounts and whatnots. When I wanted to download a folder with a lot of files in it, it would regularly crap out. There's no way to download the files as files unless you do it one by one. If you select multiple files, it produces a zip, which sometimes fails to transfer properly. The Windows app is somewhat better, in that at least you can move the files as files. But even so, it's unreliable. The tray icon says everything is synced, but in the explorer some files still have the "syncing" icon. And of course, when I look on the browser, said files are missing. But there's no network activity, so it just... does nothing. I have also not found an easy way to confirm all files are synced from the web. I haven't found an equivalent to the right-click -> properties to get the number of files and the actual size. So if you have a structure with several folders, you're SoL.
- consonaut 3mo agoI mean, I'm not going to defend Onedrive (aside form saying it "mostly works just like the rest") but how is it the app or the vendors fault that someone send you a link that required an account to access? There is an "anonymous access through this link" sharing option that does work as advertised. This works the same for Google drive and most of the other services. The problem is that most users don't understand that the link they create still has access controls attached (that they can change).
- preisschild 3mo agoThe problem is also how much MS pushes Onedrive. In Outlook for example its very easy to accidentally upload your attachment to onedrive and sending a link instead of attaching the file to the email.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- wazoox 3mo agoIn case it can help, you don't need to install Microsoft authenticator. FreeOTP+, Aegis etc will do just as well.
- mexicocitinluez 3mo agoAnd if they haven't disabled it, clicking "I can't use authenticator" and relying on SMS is always a backup.
- venzaspa 3mo agoTo be entirely fair though, this is a policy set by the organisation and not Microsoft themselves.
- inigyou 3mo agoWas your account banned the next day for "suspicious activity"? That's the full Microsoft experience.
- Someone 3mo ago> and forced to download their authenticator app AFAIK, that’s not forced, ‘only’ strongly directed towards. You certainly can use a third party authenticator with Microsoft accounts, and I expect that to work with OneDrive, too.
- notabotiswear 3mo agoTo be fair, that’s 50% the shop’s fault. They could have probably provided access via a link like GDrive allows. But of course, some moron on the other end would probably find it incomprehensible why you don’t already have an MS account or why you’re not willing/hesitant to create one, “it’s free!” Of course, even if they did give an “insecure” link, you’d probably have suffered a terrible experience of failed downloads, partial and corrupted downloads, random snail speeds, etc. (Sorry, I had to vent)
- mexicocitinluez 3mo ago> To be fair, that’s 50% the shop’s fault. They could have probably provided access via a link like GDrive allows. But of course, some moron on the other end would probably find it incomprehensible why you don’t already have an MS account or why you’re not willing/hesitant to create one, “it’s free!” Not if you're in enterprise dev. You have 2 types of accounts: Microsoft and Google. Not because you want to, but because that's reality and it's practical. What I'm saying is if you're an enterprise dev and you don't have a Microsoft account of some type that's a failure on your part. It's part of the job.
- mexicocitinluez 3mo agoThis is a configuration issue. Onedrive also supports OTPs. But regardless, what alternative would you propose? Did it contain any sensitive information? Does the alternative integrate with your current system? Do people need to create accounts for it like Dropbox? Do I have to teach all of the employees how do use this new service instead of just right-clicking and sharing the file? SFTP is a no-go for obvious reasons. I can't even get people to stop clicking birthday initiation links from Australia (we're in the US) let alone teach them how to use FTP. Dropbox would require a dropbox account. 100% not going to push another piece of softare on them when our current software already does.
- whatever1 3mo agoA link and password communicated to me would suffice.
- badlibrarian 3mo agoI just had GPT reverse engineer, from scratch, some ancient Corel Draw documents and turn them into perfect PDFs. None of the open source libraries helped. In fact, GPT didn't make any progress until I told it to ignore them. LibreOffice was a big part of the problem. Their import code was half-baked, and silently changing Arial to Liberation Sans wasn't particularly liberating, either.
- AndyMcConachie 3mo agoEmbrace, extend, destroy. This has always been MS. They basically haven't changed since 1990.
- anonzzzies 3mo agoThis has always been the case , for most companies, but MS is very well known for it. Play along until you have enough market share and then break things in undocumented ways.
- bayindirh 3mo agoOr look like you're opening things by writing open standards which point out to Microsoft internal documents of closed file formats. Then, try to standardize them.
- h4kunamata 3mo agoThis is one of the things the community is pissed with https://github.com/euro-office https://github.com/euro-office They are using Microsoft formats instead of the open-source one.
- tpoacher 3mo ago> Open Source is a global effort, but current political situation makes collaboration hard and trust difficult to earn. Especially when development is not transparent and open. I find this an odd statement. I would understand an explanation that forking was chosen on ideological grounds, but, how is development "not transparent and open" in an open source project? Sounds a bit contradictory. Plus doesn't the fact that a fully functioning fork was performed effortlessly show that the project was indeed truly transparent and open?
- thayne 3mo agoOpen source doesn't necessarily mean the development is open and transparent. For example, sqlite is open source, but the development process isn't very open. Development is done entirely by the sqlite team.
- samrus 3mo ago> how is development "not transparent and open" in an open source project? Im guessing cathedral rather than bazaar?
- RetroTechie 3mo ago> how is development "not transparent and open" in an open source project? Please have a look at how Android is developed, and how each new version is released. It's far from the only example of "open source but closed development process". Never mind "shared source" like QNX where people can pass through hoops to view source, but code is not open in the libre sense.
- mcv 3mo agoI think now would be an excellent time for an EU directive that all government documents must at all times be stored in an openly standardised format. So no OOXML Transitional.
- efitz 3mo agoThe 90s called. They want their article back.
- Leonard_of_Q 3mo agoMore "Microsoft called, they want the 90's back".
- RobotToaster 3mo agoTo be fair, I wouldn't mind having the 90's back either.
- whateverboat 3mo ago"Have become"? Always have been. It's like people have forgotten Halloween Documents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents > In discussing ways of competing with open source, Document I suggests that one reason that open source projects had been able to enter the server market is the market's use of standardized protocols. The document then suggests that this can be stopped by "extending these protocols and developing new protocols" and "de-commoditiz[ing] protocols & applications". This policy has been internally nicknamed "embrace, extend, extinguish". Document I also suggests that open source software "is long-term credible ... FUD tactics can not be used to combat it", and "Recent case studies (the Internet) provide very dramatic evidence ... that commercial quality can be achieved / exceeded by OSS projects."
- tonyhart7 3mo agoits been 20 years, their strategy now is to incorporate open source into their product offering
- nemo136 3mo agoYeah, and block as much as possible the possibility to include their cash cow (office) in open source: the desktop Microsoft Office apps are impossible to run under Linux without a VM, and the web versions are a PITA and lack many necessary features.
- samrus 3mo agoWhat i absolutely love is that this exact strategy is why coding agents dont work with proprietary tools. Open standards have so much context out in the open that any harness/agent can work effortlessly with it. But things like excel and word need manual integration which will be slow and painful and wont offer the same seamlessness for a feasible amount on effort. Its an amazing schadenfruede, and im revelling in it
- AnthonyMouse 3mo agoThat strategy is over 20 years old: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
- est 3mo agoI think people should get over with "file formats" Cloud/browser based office tools were already a thing decade ago. Do we have an open format except .md ? Sadly no. Afterall, format is just a way to serialize features.
- preisschild 3mo agoAnd what if those "cloud based office tools", which would be using proprietary file formats internally, shut down? Or heck, what if they announce to raise their pricing? All of your docs gone. No possibility to migrate.
- est 3mo agoHmm, I believe there're many open-source self-hostable office solutions. And they don't share a universal format.
- AnthonyMouse 3mo agoWhen the original application is open source, its format is public and anyone who wants to create a converter to another format can either use the original code or inspect it to see how the format works. When the format is proprietary, you get a blob of binary data that you have to reverse engineer through guesswork, made orders of magnitude more difficult if the original service isn't even available anymore.
- est 3mo agoThe problem reminds me of pdf, the format is well known, there are tons of third-party readers, but they all glitch somewhat differently. Also PDF is turing complete. Modern rich content formats are hard. Open formats solves only small part of the problem. I think the universal interchangable format is static HTML.
- AnthonyMouse 3mo agoPDF is a mess because it's an ancient originally-proprietary format based on a proprietary language and the Adobe "standard" didn't actually specify a lot of important things for a long time, leaving other implementations to try to reverse engineer them. Meanwhile you look at actual standard formats like PNG or UTF-8 or, as you say, HTML, and the implementations generally do a lot better because there is a proper spec.
- muglug 3mo agoFWIW, LLMs make this 95% less of a problem. It’s possible to create read-only viewers for Word, Excel & PowerPoint files that are more-or-less pixel accurate on 99% of files, so long as the user has the correct fonts installed (or, in the case of the PowerPoint, they come embedded).
- greazy 3mo agoThere's plenty of viewers, I think even MS used to offer free MS Office readers. We need interoperability between MSOffice and everything else. But were stuck with MSOffice because even the so called open format is not well documented. MS Office is the last roadblock for Linux desktop. It's literally the last thing holding back many users from moving to anything else.
- pjmlp 3mo agoSo many things holding the Linux desktop back. No support from OEM vendors to sell pre-installed devices on consumer stores, even if they do support it, it is a custom OEM distro, because differentiation, like on the netbooks, Android, or drivers tied to a specific Ubuntu release, with shovelware. Games, no studio cares about Linux native games, thus Proton. Game studios keep happily using Windows, Visual Studio, up to Valve to do the needful, at least as long as current management is around. Governments, plenty of jurisdictions still have software that requires either Windows or macOS desktop software. And then we have the whole desktop fragmentation, that makes people don't care and ship shitty Electron apps or command line software.
- crabbone 3mo agoI'm sure this is a serious problem, but I'm not sure it's the main problem. The other one, that might be an even bigger problem is the way Microsoft sells its products. While, technically, most of the stuff they sell appears as B2C products, they are sold as B2B, and increasingly more so since the emphasis shifted towards the Web versions. What this means for the users is that their interests are overpowered by the interests of the organization supplying them with the software. An organization can be more easily bribed both "legally" by offering a (temporary) discount and straight-up illegally by paying the procurement officer. Microsoft is known to do both. This is not a battle one can win on technological merit alone, unfortunately...
- dannyw 3mo agoThe second part is alarming, but offering a temporary discount is a routine and standard pricing strategy; not a 'bribe'.
- crabbone 3mo agoI didn't mean to say it was illegal, I meant to say it was an advantage in competition against the open-source counterparts because those usually cannot afford to make discounts of any kind. More concretely, Microsoft used to claim that the price of their software is compensated for by the operational costs (which is false, but they managed to convince a lot of people). In the same way, due to having deep pockets, Microsoft can, temporarily, operate at a loss only to out-survive the competition only to crank up the price to the ceiling once the competition is gone.
- junto 3mo agoAnd yet they still can’t break the holdfast of the PDF format.
- FailMore 3mo agoI've been building SmallDocs [1], a fairly fully functional office suite (text, formatting, presentations, spreadsheets) which is based in markdown (and mainly written by agents). Given my experience building this, I think the idea of "a truly independent document": > one that displays identically on any system, in any country, for any user, regardless of the software used Will be very difficult to achieve in practice. Building software is an expression of opinions. And one of the main drivers of building an app is to innovate or improve the user experience vs. what exists today. These things combine to result in new features, and new features breaks the open standard. If I wanted to build a new Excel, I might want to add something to spreadsheets which a basic open source reader cannot, or even Excel itself, might not be able to handle. With SmallDocs, I built on the standard rendering of markdown, but then added a bunch of properties which traditional markdown renders would ignore. For example, styles front matter: --- styles: fontFamily: Lora baseFontSize: 17 h1: { fontSize: 2.3, fontWeight: 700 } p: { lineHeight: 1.9, marginBottom: 1.2 } ... --- Which means you can create colorful files like: https://smalldocs.org/s/v_CHCaQHdGNVlsQtk6skEY#k=ZajP0oeiW86gF4tcHECy_A6wRMmaFkbNqSeApn2ZWQE https://smalldocs.org/s/v_CHCaQHdGNVlsQtk6skEY#k=ZajP0oeiW86... And slide blocks like: ~~~slide grid 100 56.25 bg=#0b1220 r 6 9 82 4 text=caption color=#fbbf24 align=left | LAUNCH REVIEW - Q2 2026 r 6 18 84 16 text=title color=#f8fafc align=left | Atlas 2.0 shipped to every customer r 6 37 78 6 text=subtitle color=#94a3b8 align=left | What changed, what it cost, and what we learned l 6 47 24 47 stroke=#fbbf24 strokeWidth=0.2 ~~~ Which means you can generate slides like: https://smalldocs.org/s/EKnIk-YdUBZeDA9yQs97mh#k=Eo-p46k-k6QT6M6fZrmgKcPr5iHDCXFrnCQJPRE5oW0 https://smalldocs.org/s/EKnIk-YdUBZeDA9yQs97mh#k=Eo-p46k-k6Q... All this means SmallDocs markdown files only render correctly through our rendering engine - but this enables me to add something new to an existing document format. [1] https://smalldocs.com https://smalldocs.com; https://github.com/espressoplease/smalldocs https://github.com/espressoplease/smalldocs
- okanat 3mo agoI think TDF tries to push a wrong narrative here for their lack of engineering and funding. Competitive products like Google Docs, WPS or Euro Office solve proprietary file format problem very nicely. Microsoft themselves had to solve that exact problem for Lotus 1-2-3. Proprietary file formats are an industry standard. It is the lowest resistance way to deliver features and you cannot blame your competitor to have more features or hidden features in their formats. ALL strongly competitive software for the desktop workstations have proprietary formats: Autodesk, Altium, Adobe, Corel, Apple. All of them serialize their featureset on their own format since it is the easiest to do. FOSS won't get the marketshare pie by complaining about it. LibreOffice has to provide feature parity before complaining here and TDF needs to find the funding source to hire the engineers to achieve that. They need to have convincing arguments and consistently delivered features. Otherwise it will not get adopted. Microsoft hasn't actually selling their product on the premise of proprietary file format support. They sell it with the promise of total platform integration for every single software an office needs. You not only get an office suite but IT Admin tooling integrates with the computers and the office suite, e-mail management, SSO and licensing management software and Cloud storage all in once. To compete with the Microsoft (or Google Workspace) you need to be selling all of that at a very competitive price. Otherwise all private companies and many government departments will continue to choose Microsoft. If a change is wanted in the government, governments need to start investing Microsoft levels of money in hiring engineers.
- mangecoeur 3mo agoThis is not true. In my company I decided we would not depend on Microsoft products. We use kSuite that offers everything MS does, ~90% cheaper. The one real problem we run into is PowerPoint decks that look different or get corrupted when used across different Office suites, including ones that are focused on Microsoft compatibility like OnlyOffice. Proprietary formats are a clear lock-in tool, because the cost of dealing with incompatibility is higher than the cost of paying the piper. (Although me being stubborn I made claude rewrite the OOXML to behave, but that's an absurd thing to need to do!) If open formats were the standard and could be reliably exchanged, it would remove a big reason to ever use Office products.
- Havoc 3mo agoOutside of corporate I think the world will just abandon MS. Their tactics has become so aggressive and their software so broken that it’s getting harder to ignore
- Sharlin 3mo agoI mean, outside of corporate (including governments, universities, etc large organizations because what’s the difference) the world has largely already abandoned MS. The vast majority of personal conputing on the planet happens on devices that don’t run Windows or other MS software.
- surcap526 3mo ago[dead]
- ariamailclient 3mo ago[dead]
- smackeyacky 3mo agoEntra is their lock in. They have little need for office other than customers expect it but if you look at the direction where they wholesale throw out Outlook for it’s worse web version you can see where they are headed
- xtiansimon 3mo agoFirst, not an IT pro. What about driver and media licensing? It’s the first thing your learn installing a minimal Linux distribution like Arch. Never could get my Nvidia chip to fly right.
- daft_pink 3mo agoI feel they are pushing their own narrative without really having any evidence. We use Microsoft at work because we would either use Microsoft or Google for email. The email service is critical to the choice. We can’t run our own reliably and other vendors just don’t interoperate the same way. Microsoft Office simply isn’t that expensive and it’s very easy to hire people who know how to use it and are comfortable with it. We don’t usually libre office because it’s really not practical to spend hours retraining expensive knowledge workers. Payroll is over half of our budget and our largest single expense. Software is cheap and isn’t even close.
- red_admiral 3mo agoMicrosoft managed to build office online, which saves to DOCX etc. - the online version may have reduced functionality, but you can edit the same document with the full office at work and the browser version at home and it won't mess things up. So building a new office on top of the MS formats seems possible. You could probably even use AI for the things the other (open/libre/...)Office developers can't or don't want to do.
- inigyou 3mo agoGhidra-MCP is allegedly really good for reverse engineering. Haven't tried it myself.
- zombot 3mo agoAnd don't forget the bugs! You have to do a bug-for-bug replication if you want to emulate reading MS file formats.
- jonathaneunice 3mo ago~~have become~~ became, 30+ years ago The office-document format wars played out _at least_ twenty years ago. The path dependence and "everyone uses it" (installed base) inertia of Microsoft's formats continue to benefit Microsoft (and its OOXML formats), despite ODF being more open and, in many ways, superior--not least because it's easier to implement, manipulate programmatically, and reason about. But refighting that battle seems pointless. Users and the market have moved on, not least toward cloud-based tools; file formats no longer seem the primary barrier to competition.
- Grimeton 3mo agoSounds like a rendering problem to me. In the end Word & co are nothing else like fancy browsers rendering the file's contents. As we all know from the early days of the Interwebz, each engine renders it differently...
- hulitu 3mo ago> become No. They always were. Even today, Microsoft distorts formating if you paste in LibreOffice. But, as long as they cooperate with the CIA and pay the lobby money to politicians, this will continue undisturbed.