GNOME and OOXML [LWN.net]

GNOME and OOXML

Posted Oct 30, 2007 21:33 UTC (Tue) by jdub (subscriber, #27)
Parent article: GNOME and OOXML

Firstly, thanks for a balanced (and informed!) article. LWN rocks. :-)

The conclusion is a bit rough -- our participation was very much a matter of public knowledge,
as it was mentioned in the Board meeting minutes *and* discussed on foundation-list at the
time.

The issue Luis raised was that we didn't do some kind of broader PR announcement at the time,
so that folks *outside* our community could understand the context of our participation.
Guilty as charged (though, as noted on the mailing list, it's unlikely that this would have
had any impact on the ill-informed "open letter").

GNOME Foundation members (who bother to read our minutes and the Foundation mailing list) were
all very much aware that we were participating, so there was no transparency issue for the
Foundation itself.

- Jeff Waugh, GNOME Foundation

GNOME and OOXML

Posted Nov 3, 2007 12:53 UTC (Sat) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link]

It's a pity the GNOME Foundation still has not managed to communicate a readable position on
the new office formats, when KDE is cristal-clear on the subject:

http://dot.kde.org/1194021253/

All the "we participate in ECMA except we don't really support OOXML as an ISO format which is
what ECMA is working on and the slides published by our representant write OOXML should be
ISO-approved as do the quotes Microsoft spreads or what our Novell members say at every
opportunity and why are you flaming us anyway we understand ourselves" is not terribly
convincing.

The issue is big enough closing ranks to avoid contradicting old friends (that's how it feels
from the outside) may not be the best policy.