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is it only me
is it only me
Posted Jul 6, 2006 17:43 UTC (Thu) by ccyoung (subscriber, #16340)Parent article: Microsoft to make an open source ODF translator
or is Microsoft capable of doing this without subverting the ODF (or any open) standard?
I will be anyone even money that:
- in many cases the same ODF document will not render the same on Open Office as on MS Word
- many instances of formatting an internal information will be dropped or incorrectly converted from .doc to ODF
- in order to save to ODF, there will be some sort of disclaimer "Information will be irrevocably lost if you chose to save your document in this format."
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is it only me
Posted Jul 6, 2006 18:02 UTC (Thu) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link]
That may be true, but if the already-in-progress plugin from the OpenDocument Foundation does a better job, then Microsoft would have to answer questions about why it did so poorly, especially when they have all the crown jewels when it comes to the Office format. Competition is a good thing...at keeping people honest. That's one reason why dishonest people love to have monopolies.
is it only me
Posted Jul 6, 2006 18:04 UTC (Thu) by vonbrand (subscriber, #4458) [Link]
No, it's just enough to have it as an "open source, ouside project" they can (rightly!) blame when things go south (they won't have the inside information to get it right in each nook and crany, will they?), being able to claim that they are "Open Source too", all whilst being able to say that even open source competition has enough access to their stuff to build compatible software.
A brilliant PR move, if you ask me. Won't be much else, for sure.