| |||||||||||||
Supporting OOXML in LibreOfficeSupporting OOXML in LibreOfficePosted Jan 11, 2011 3:30 UTC (Tue) by PaulWay (✭ supporter ✭, #45600)Parent article: Supporting OOXML in LibreOffice
I would have thought half the problem here is that OOXML isn't even obeyed completely or correctly by Microsoft. Microsoft has also said that it doesn't intend to keep to the standard if it thinks that it can get a competitive advantage by doing so (i.e. "in order to incorporate the latest features"). So even if you read and write OOXML, it's hardly going to make Microsoft strive for better compatibility. In that sense, I would support writing OOXML because then LibreOffice can say "we support the standard that Microsoft buggered ISO with and still doesn't actually support".
But ultimately I see these political gambles not working very well. Has GNU/Linux been a wonderful success story because it was deliberately incompatible with proprietary picture, video, audio, messaging, network and hardware formats? Or has it been popular because it has been able to be compatible without the associated costs or security problems and still provided people with an operating system and software they can share with others? I'd argue the latter. The Stallmans of this world, determined to live by their ideals and eschew every proprietary format and encumbered media, are few and far between.
I support the principle here, but enforcing that viewpoint via software is exactly what all proprietary vendors when they're (perhaps deliberately) not compatible with FOSS. If we rise above that pettiness and support a feature people are willing to program in and work on, then we avoid a kind of tit-for-tat feature-sniping that I think would only hurt us in the end.
Have fun,
Paul
(Log in to post comments)
Supporting OOXML in LibreOffice Posted Jan 11, 2011 9:45 UTC (Tue) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]
> The Stallmans of this world, determined to live by their ideals and eschew every proprietary format and encumbered media, are few and far between.
FLOSS is big enough to serve the Stallmans of this world too. They are perfectly entitled to use what some people might consider a restricted subset of what there is and to encourage others to use that too. (That said, the others are also free not to do so if they are not fully convinced by the arguments put to them.)
Supporting OOXML in LibreOffice Posted Jan 14, 2011 11:14 UTC (Fri) by arafel (subscriber, #18557) [Link]
Hi,
Not a response to the rest of your comment, but just one thing I wanted to comment on.
> The Stallmans of this world, determined to live by their ideals and
I haven't gone back to the original writing, but my understanding of Stallman's position is that he is willing to work with/on proprietary stuff if there's no other way and it furthers the goal of free software. H.264, Word and co are sufficiently dominant that this would probably fall into that category.
Cheers
Supporting OOXML in LibreOffice Posted Jan 15, 2011 7:50 UTC (Sat) by baldridgeec (guest, #55283) [Link]
Yes to the first part, no to the second. If Stallman wanted to record video, he would use a free format such as Ogg Theora. If he wanted to write a document, he could use ODF, but would probably use plain text instead.
But since there are alternatives, from what I understand of the man, there is no way he would produce content in any sort of proprietary or patent-encumbered format.
Read it using a Free software interpreter, maybe. But I think he would rather inform the person sending him an OOXML document that alternatives exist which are more community friendly. Unless constrained by circumstance, I doubt he would even open the file.
Supporting OOXML in LibreOffice Posted Jan 15, 2011 20:48 UTC (Sat) by amazingblair (guest, #2789) [Link]
I can't speak for Richard Stallman, but that's what I do when I get an attachment in .docx format.
It feels like my duty to explain to the sender why I cannot open his (surely clever or important) document. I tell him how to save by default in a format other than OOXML, and especially how WordPerfect, OpenOffice/LibreOffice, and even older Microsoft Word users are locked out of the OOXML files. (Note: I didn't realize until now that OOo & LibreOffice could handle them. Mea culpa.)
-Amazing Blair
|
|||||||||||||