Electing the GNOME Foundation board

Behdad Esfahbod: "As for the issue of single standards, I hate it when 
people use standardization as a tool to take advantage over their 
competitors. "I got here first, so you can't" is exactly what's broken 
about the patent system right now. Think about it."

Okay, I've thought about that. I can't figure it out what he means, 
though. Is he talking about the way Microsoft is using OOXML to make sure 
that they don't lose their first-comer advantage of their binary office 
file formats -- or does he try to insinuate that the ODF effort somehow 
tells anyone "I got here first, so you can't"? If Behdad meant the 
latter, then that's a pretty crap position, 
given that Microsoft was invited to participate, and it also reads like a 
preample for the old "ODF is just OO's file format" crap. Everyone is 
free to implement ODF, everyone is free to participate in the ongoing 
development of ODF. The important thing is to work as hard as possible to 
make it clear that OOXML should never become blessed as a standard, and 
to never give anyone the impression that deputing someone to the OOXML 
process can influence what is actually produced by Microsoft software in 
any meaningful way.

George Kraft: " I would like to bring to everyone's attention that GNOME 
accessibility could be positioned as a clear winner over Windows's MSAA 
and KDE accessibility, but instead GNOME's accessibility is on the 
defensive. From an accessibility perspective, GNOME could be winning the 
hearts and minds of corporations and government agencies; however, GNOME 
accessibility is being threatened by the deprecation of Orbit2 & its 
migration to DBus, and the migration of Microsoft's UIA to GNU/Linux. Why 
regress and/or re-engineer when we can beat the competition now?"

That's a really bad attitude. At least since I first got interested in 
making KOffice accessible (not, you know, to "beat" gnome or openoffice, 
but because I feel that accessibility is something really important), 
I've met people trying to cooperate across the whole free software 
landscape on accessibility. And then you get this -- "we're winning, 
let's trample on everyone else!". How about some cooperation and making 
the world a better place? Especially in this area, where common protocols 
and infrastructure can make such a difference for the ordinary user.

Hi Jon,

The bylaws weren't changed to allow us to nominate a President from among the directors. That
has always been available, but we haven't had the resignation from our long-term, symbolic,
inactive, previous President (Miguel wouldn't disagree with this description of his
"presidency"). What was described by the board as the "Chairman" (a position described in the
bylaws) was for all intents and purposes operating as the President.

There's a description of Miguel's participation in GNOME in my blog entry about the
relationship between GNOME and Novell:
http://perkypants.org/blog/2007/11/27/gnome-and-novell-th...

The recent bylaws change was about allowing the board to specify the length of the next term,
so that we could make sure new boards could have a GUADEC face-to-face meeting very early on
in their term.

I very rarely ask journalists to correct articles, particularly if there's a method of
commenting, but your description of Miguel as president and the way in which the presidency
was changed is somewhat sensational, suggesting that Miguel was participating or had influence
over the board during his time as president. This is not the case.

- Jeff

Belguim voted No for OOXML, following it their ONLY comment:

1) The Belgian mirror group finds it very unfortunate for ISO to support and develop different
office document description standards (such as ISO/IEC 26300 and ECMA 376) offering a number
of similar functionalities. The group furthermore has been informed that for some of these
standards future extensions are being proposed, which should further increase the overlap
between their functionalities. The group therefore urges the organizations promoting those
separate standards to work together, to develop a common set of functionalities and to
integrate them into a unique common base that every document description standard should
understand.

So when MS as a member of OASIS declined to partcipate in the development of ODF, even after
repeated invitations, they broke the basic policy of ISO Global Relevency Policies.

One can move onto interporatiblity, implementation, fair market rules and many other reasons
why OOXML simply does not qualify as a ISO.

OOXML does not have any specifications to ensure interoperability for ISO/IEC 26300 approved
as the international standard to exchange office documents without any limitations. If DIS
29500 is approved without securing interoperability, it would give confusion to both markets
and users. From the overall document contents, it is acutely clear that no effort has been
made in OOXML to start from the existing ISO standard for the representation of documents in
XML, that is ODF 1.0, ISO/IEC 26300:2006. We can see no reason for that deliberate departure
and contend that unneeded differences are harmful. We therefore request that the OOXML
proposal be rewritten starting from the existing standard.

One solid reasons why OOXML does not meet ISO standards and is neglected to be mentioned is
the effect on poor people with no access/limited to the internet and the abiltiy for
Thirdworld countries to implement and be innovative with OOXML is "ISO Action Plan for
Developing Nations" Simply put, they do not have access to convertors, it restricts their
ability to communicate and forces them to upgrade. OOXML as an ISO standard will supress 10s
of millions of people.

The support for two standards in the case of OOXML vs ODF is in complete contradiction to
every value the FOSS community stands for PERIOD. There can be cases in a new field with no
competition, an even playing ground to have similar standards ISO.

Please let me know if you want more reason why OOXML does not meet ISO policies and should not
be? 

"Two Standards, One tested, Rejected by many Worldwide” makes it likely that something bad is
going to happen!

 

It is not like lwn to post these insinuations about Miguel de Icaza and leaving the readers at
that. A rift between someone as notable as Miguel de Icaza and Gnome is definitely worthy of
print, even if it is on the negative side - that hasn't stopped lwn from publishing news in
the past, and shouldn't now.

I don't use Gnome so I'm not directly concerned but some declaration are worrying:

<<Brian Cameron: I think it would add value to spend more on marketing and on evangelical
community building opportunities. For example, Windows and MacOS have flashy "Welcome to the
desktop" presentations. Perhaps it is time for the GNOME community to find ways to better
advertise>>

But do users like these Welcome to the desktop? Personally I hate these stupid branding: I
already paid for the software, why should I be inflicted ads?

- I disliked George Kraft comment about accessibility: given that Unix desktop is 50% GNOME,
50% KDE, a common solution would be very nice for users..

-About OOXML, Luis Villa remark is self-contradictory: "(A) it needs to suck as little as
possible (B) it needs to not be an ISO standard.": if you help Microsoft make an OOXML suck as
little as possible then you help making it an ISO standard. And standard fragmentation doesn't
help users quite the contrary.