A Letter to the Gnome Foundation

The answer to the Microsoft problem is not to help them get their not very openxml standard accepted but to face them down and insist they get into odf.

I presume that the "high level gnome developer" mentioned is Mr De Icaza?

Too glib, sal.

It appears that ODF cannot handle the full Office feature set, or, at least, that's what the Da Vinci folks claim, with Sun in agreement.

If ODF can't handle the feature set, Microsoft can't use it.

So...

There will be no "facing down" of Microsoft. If the DV folks are right, that would require a commitment by Microsoft to offer not features that OpenOffice doesn't offer.

That would be insane, even for a company I liked.

So odf is less than perfect, presumably because they can't get the necessary details from Microsoft to make it work with Office and therefore we should all abandon it and work with Microsoft to help them carry on?

It's not a war, it's not good versus evil, it's just that we have the better way and dealing with those who peddle shoddiness and aiding them to continue to do so, for money, is just crap.

Microsoft won't get better if people from the OSS world go and play on their terms. They'll just become more entrenched in their pettiness.

One world, one web, one program. That is the goal, this is just another step along the way, help it or hinder it - the choice is yours.

That is whose goal sal?

>One world, one web, one program.

Two out of three, I am with you. Number three, however, is idiotic.

Choice is good, pal.

>So odf is less than perfect, presumably because they can't get the necessary details from Microsoft to make it work with Office

Why do they need any details? Why isn't it extensible?

Quoting:Why isn't it extensible?

It is. But getting your extensions officially approved is a tad harder and more work. It's like the difference between you writing a patch for your own kernel, and landing that patch in the mainline kernel.

From what I gather, OASIS didn't feel like approving an extension that was solely focussed on MS-Office compatibility through DaVinci. I'm sure if you browse the OASIS archives you can find exactly why not.

As I am to tired to make sense at the moment I will simply link: http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/odf_ooxml_techn... The whole paper is worth a read but the relevant info is on pages 6 and 7 http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/odf_ooxml_techn... In short ODF is extensible to cover many of the strange tags OOXML uses. This can be done by utilising the configuration settings tag, examples are included. Unfortunately OOXML has no such mechanism.

Quoting:One world, one web, one program.

I believe what Sal meant is one set of standards, not multiple standards for the same purpose.

Quoting:Why do they need any details?

Because OOXML is governed by a schema that is not open and MS is not releasing all the info necessary to produce a fully complete and equivalent translation,

Quoting:Why isn't it extensible?

Who said it isn't? ODF is fully compliant XML implementation and there is no technical reason why it can't be fully extensible. ODF is maintained by a consortium (OASIS). "Founded in 1993, OASIS has more than 5,000 participants representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries."

So what prevents MS from participating to submit their requests of features they need to become part of the standard to fulfill its needs? Duh, everyone knows why.

Deary me. One world, one web, one program is the goal Bill Gates set for Microsoft. Did you all fall asleep in Internet History?

One world - arguably it is, at least physically. One web - not! One program - they can stick this bit where the sun don't shine.

It'll be one web when we can all access it freely, without hindrance or censorship, using the same open standards that no one company can then use as a stick to force the market to upgrade with. And where any one can develop new code without having to pay HUGE "license fees" for their trouble or having to sign absurd non-disclosure agreements.

Which is all a long way of saying that Microsoft intend to take us in the direction where all computers are diskless, all computers boot to the net where they connect with the MS "master server" and all applications and data are theirs and on their hard drives. The differences between the various mainline applications being seemingly transparent. I am not willing to see things go that way and certainly not with the redmond clowns at the helm. Nor with Mr and Mr Spineless Moral Coward at google.

>One world, one web, one program is the goal Bill Gates set for Microsoft. > Did you all fall asleep in Internet History?

Thanks for the clarification. As to Internet History, I don't take Microsoft-centric classes. Microsoft did not create the internet, and Microsoft does not define it.

Actually thanks Sal, even among the readership here I have seen similar comments tossed out WRT Linux as being preferable. I agree MS takes a "One ring to rule them all" approach, which I see as their right, I just don't like to see the OSS community using that failed concept and applying it to Linux instead.

Back on topic though.

Can anyone point me to anything that says that the Gnome folks aren't participating to keep things honest? Honestly it's not hard to think that the M$ folks wouldn't try some shenanigans to be able to declare "OK, everything is resolved, where is our acceptance?".