Tuesday, October 17, 2006
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Credit where credit is due
A while back I blogged about where I thought the EU was overreaching and harming consumers. I still think that is the case, but I also believe in giving credit where credit is due, so here goes.

If the analysis in this article about a standards-based XPS format is correct, then the EU really may be helping consumers - whether intentionally, or through an unintended consequence. If the article is right, and Microsoft follows through with the changes to XPS licensing, the EU might have created a serious competitor to PDF in the form of XPS.

In my view, it is almost certainly the case that Microsoft would have otherwise been too restrictive with the licensing, and XPS would have become a mere footnote in the long list of would-be PDF competitors. It isn't like Microsoft hasn't tried before to compete with PDF, and simply failed by being too closed. It looked to me like they were headed down the exact same road with XPS - until the EU intervened (ironically at the behest of Adobe).

The end result is that the EU might have (presumably unintentionally) increased competition for PDF, creating a more open market in which consumers benefit. The fact that Microsoft will likely gain indirect benefit will undoubtably rankle many people. But frankly, those people have lost sight of the real goal, which is to ensure fairness to consumers, not fairness to Microsoft's competitors (or Microsoft itself for that matter).

Of course the proof is in the pudding. It does remain to be seen whether Microsoft follows through on their XPS promises. But if they do follow through, and we start seeing open source XPS readers for Wndows, Mac and Linux, there really may be a viable alternative to the PDF monopoly of today.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006 10:12:15 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)  #    Disclaimer  |  Comments [4]  | 
Tuesday, October 17, 2006 3:10:52 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
So what exactly did they do, that benefits MSFT?

In other words - what is the latest status?
Sahil Malik
Tuesday, October 17, 2006 9:56:48 PM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
At the risk of paraphrasing President Clinton: it depends on what the definition of "benefits" is.

Certainly in the short term it seems like the EU dealt a blow to Microsoft (and consumers) by preventing them from bundling support for PDF and XPS directly into Microsoft Office 2007. It is very hard to see where there's any value to consumers there at all, and it certainly didn't help Microsoft.

But Microsoft appears to be making lemonade out of lemons by submitting XPS as a standard and opening the licensing.

If you think about all the technologies Microsoft has tossed out in an attempt to compete with PDF (rtf, the office viewers, Microsoft Reader, etc.) it is reasonably clear that they would _like_ to compete with PDF. But even the superior Microsoft Reader (in terms of ease-of-use at least) never caught on; never even gave PDF a run for its money.

So it seems to me that the EU might have inadvertently forced Microsoft to rethink XPS in a way that could actually make it compete with PDF - something I really doubt would have occurred otherwise - I've always thought XPS was dead-on-arrival just like the previous attempts to compete with PDF. But as a standard, with an open license, XPS might have a chance - a good one - of competing with PDF.

As the originator, and shaper, of XPS, this will likely benefit Microsoft in the long run. Especially given the relationship between XPS and WPF (XAML), it may allow Microsoft to exploit some good synergies over time.

But that's only true if XPS does give PDF a run for its money, and does capture some reasonable amount of market share. And _that_ can only happen if it is open, so readers exist on every major platform out there - something the EU may have accidentally made possible.
Rockford Lhotka
Wednesday, October 18, 2006 10:39:56 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
I realize this is a nit, but I believe that the expression you want to use is "The proof is in the pudding". This rather meaningless phrase is an abbreviation of a quote from Cervantes "The proof of the pudding is in the eating"
Gordon Brown
Wednesday, October 18, 2006 10:50:06 AM (Central Standard Time, UTC-06:00)
Ahh, interesting trivia. I've repaired the mis-quote :)
Rockford Lhotka
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