The GNOME Foundation on OOXML [LWN.net]

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

Posted Nov 25, 2007 19:37 UTC (Sun) by jdub (guest, #27) [Link]

I recommend reading the entire statement (as linked in the LWN snippet above) for a bit more
context... The quote was from point 5, pretty much the only part of the entire statement that
could be seen as "controversial" from the community's point of view, despite the rest of our
position. :-)

Erosion of trust

Posted Nov 25, 2007 21:20 UTC (Sun) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (21 responses)

Is erosion of trust in the standards process a bad thing when the standards process itself is
being corrupted?  We've already seen the whole ISO debacle from start to finish, and the
effective destruction of that committee by Microsoft manipulation.  With all due respect to
Jeff's coding skills, we've seen no evidence that he has the strategic awareness needed to
protect Free Software from Microsoft machinations.

Microsoft doesn't need education.  They understand perfectly what they want to obtain, and
they have people plenty smart enough to figure out how to get it.  We already know, whenever
it seems like they are behaving as if enlightened, that it is a trick, because we already know
their goal is (as it must be) the destruction of Free Software.

Erosion of trust

Posted Nov 25, 2007 22:43 UTC (Sun) by jdub (guest, #27) [Link] (20 responses)

Please don't respect my coding skills. :-)

The erosion of trust in the standards process is definitely a bad thing, and Microsoft should
be held accountable for the horrifying impact they're having. If I had more of a bent for
conspiracy theories, I'd suggest they were abusing the process not just to get OOXML through,
but to make the process laughable too.

Unfortunately, the community are helping them abuse the process by making OOXML a political
issue -- which actually helps Microsoft, because they can say all disagreement with OOXML is
"political" in nature. Instead, we should be aiming to defeat OOXML purely on technical
grounds (and repudiate Microsoft's actions in the process), in line with the standards
process.

Erosion of trust

Posted Nov 26, 2007 1:55 UTC (Mon) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link] (13 responses)

Unfortunately, the community are helping them abuse the process by making OOXML a political issue -- which actually helps Microsoft, because they can say all disagreement with OOXML is "political" in nature.

The problem here is that the major objection to OOXML is political -- that the world is best served by one standard document format, developed cooperatively between vendors, users and experts in a collegiate atmosphere, with technologies and intellectual property rights which allow care-free implementation by all.

Erosion of trust

Posted Nov 26, 2007 2:04 UTC (Mon) by jdub (guest, #27) [Link] (5 responses)

<blockquote>The problem here is that the major objection to OOXML is political -- that the
world is best served by one standard document format, developed cooperatively between vendors,
users and experts in a collegiate atmosphere, with technologies and intellectual property
rights which allow care-free implementation by all.</blockquote>

I totally understand that, and you'll find that almost all GNOME contributors are politically
against OOXML -- but that has no bearing on the ISO decision. In fact, the more "political" we
are, the more Microsoft can say that we're politicising the process... and that has done quite
a bit of damage already. We need to aim for the absolute rout of OOXML on technical grounds,
without all the shrill voices and politicisation. It doesn't make us look good, and it is not
at all convincing as part of the process.

I just hope that people think about and try to understand why we're doing this without making
emotional, dismissive judgements beforehand. Happy to agree to disagree, but highly offended
by the demonisation and insinuation from some quarters. (Not saying you're doing that, just
mentioning it.)

Erosion of trust

Posted Nov 26, 2007 19:16 UTC (Mon) by stevenj (guest, #421) [Link] (4 responses)

I totally understand that, and you'll find that almost all GNOME contributors are politically against OOXML -- but that has no bearing on the ISO decision. In fact, the more "political" we are, the more Microsoft can say that we're politicising the process... and that has done quite a bit of damage already. We need to aim for the absolute rout of OOXML on technical grounds, without all the shrill voices and politicisation. It doesn't make us look good, and it is not at all convincing as part of the process.

Your underlying assumption seems to be that "politics" is bad, and only "technical" discussions are good or appropriate. But politics (from the Greek πoλιτικα, "civic affairs") is simply the process of diverse interests trying to decide on common policy for the common good. The whole question of choosing an international standard is intrinsically a "political" process. It is nonsensical to deride those you disagree with as "political" and "politicizing the process".

With OOXML, as with any standards, the fundamental question is: does annointing this as an international standard serve the public interest? Will making it a "standard" improve interoperability and hence spur competition and communications?

This is not solely a question of whether the OOXML specification, considered in a vacuum, is an adequate technical description of a particular format. The context is also important: the fact that ISO has already recently standardized a document format for essentially the same task means that adding a second format, rather than attempting to fix any deficiencies in the first, will further splinter the market. It will force governments, companies, and vendors to support both formats and will reward Microsoft for ignoring what the rest of the world already agreed upon—an approach that is certain to have repercussions on future standards efforts (e.g. PDF vs. Silverlight).

Erosion of trust

Posted Nov 26, 2007 19:23 UTC (Mon) by stevenj (guest, #421) [Link]

(Whoops, I should have said "PDF vs. XPS." Silverlight is MS's competitor to Flash.)

Erosion of trust

Posted Nov 26, 2007 19:31 UTC (Mon) by jdub (guest, #27) [Link] (2 responses)

Your underlying assumption seems to be that "politics" is bad, and only "technical" discussions are good or appropriate.

Not on the whole. The political issues at stake are incredibly important -- I absolutely understand that (being a contributor to the FLOSS community for many years now, it is part of who I am). Microsoft are doing this to king-hit their competitors, most importantly to us, FLOSS.

But: Few of those issues are relevant to the ISO process. That is what I am referring to when saying that the politics are not productive. Microsoft gets to cry "zealot" when we attack OOXML on political grounds, we should not let them manipulate the process this way, on top of all the other ways they've done so already.

I am of a similar opinion to you. I don't want to see OOXML as an ISO standard. What I have been talking about in this thread is the method by which we fight it. I do understand the context of the battlefield.

Artificially limiting the debate in Microsoft's favor

Posted Nov 27, 2007 18:56 UTC (Tue) by stevenj (guest, #421) [Link] (1 responses)

But: Few of those issues are relevant to the ISO process.

To the extent that this is true, we should be vigorously pressing ISO (whose motto is "One standard, one test" after all) to acknowledge that they are relevant.

It seems to me that you've fallen hook, line, and sinker for Microsoft's main tactic to limit the debate: they want to exclude all consideration of whether ISO should have two incompatible standards for office-type documents (which is really the most serious objection to OOXML), and instead focus on extremely narrow technical questions. In much the same way, they reduced the "contradictions" phase of the process to the meaningless criterion that two standards only "contradict" one another if they cannot physically coexist on the same computer.

This is very similar, by the way, to how Microsoft tries to limit the debate about using free/open-source software in government procurement policies. In their "software choice" campaign, they insist that the procurement criteria be artificially limited to price and technical fitness for a short-term task—hoping you'll ignore the fact that vendor-independence, transparency, etcetera are also merits that can and should be taken into account.

Artificially limiting the debate in Microsoft's favor

Posted Nov 27, 2007 19:10 UTC (Tue) by jdub (guest, #27) [Link]

To the extent that this is true, we should be vigorously pressing ISO (whose motto is "One standard, one test" after all) to acknowledge that they are relevant.

That motto was used in 2002 and is not relevant to ISO's processes. There are plenty of ISO standards that cover the same ground. The crucial point is that they don't conflict with each other, and generally build upon standards that have gone before.

So let's not argue OOXML on these grounds. They're just irrelevant. The one area this might work for is us that OOXML reimplements absolutely everything and doesn't build on existing standards (ODF uses things like SVG, etc), but attack it under the terms defined by ISO.

I'm not falling for anything -- I'm certainly not falling for some of the uninformed but popular opinions about these things in the FLOSS community.

Erosion of trust

Posted Nov 26, 2007 4:31 UTC (Mon) by jwb (guest, #15467) [Link]

I'd say that a "care-free implementation" is exactly what we already get :)

Political vs. Technical Arguments

Posted Nov 26, 2007 10:04 UTC (Mon) by Felix.Braun (guest, #3032) [Link] (5 responses)

The problem here is that the major objection to OOXML is political -- that the world is best served by one standard document format

Sorry to be nitpicking, but to me it seems that the pre-existance of another standard capable of representing essentially the same information is an eminently technical argument. As far as I understand, an introduction of a new standard only makes sense from a purely technical standpoint, if no competing standards exist. Therefore, I took it that Microsoft was argueing that ODF was a technically inferior standard which could not be fixed to include all required information.

Political vs. Technical Arguments

Posted Nov 26, 2007 10:23 UTC (Mon) by jdub (guest, #27) [Link] (4 responses)

Sorry to be nitpicking, but to me it seems that the pre-existance of another standard capable of representing essentially the same information is an eminently technical argument. As far as I understand, an introduction of a new standard only makes sense from a purely technical standpoint, if no competing standards exist.

Possibly, but it has no bearing under the ISO rules. It's just not relevant. If OOXML contradicted ODF, then sure.

It's dangerous for us to take the "one standard" argument, because if we wish to introduce a fully Free, unencumbered technology as an ISO standard after setting the precedent (not that it can be set, and not that it's relevant) that there should only be one standard for a particular purpose, we'd be screwed.

Consider, for example, a fully Free, unencumbered video codec (such as the upcoming replacement for Theora) vs. MPEG4. An ISO standard already exists, and it's encumbered up the wazoo. Let's not make long term sacrifices for short term wins.

Therefore, I took it that Microsoft was argueing that ODF was a technically inferior standard which could not be fixed to include all required information.

Microsoft has defined OOXML as a standard for Microsoft Office document archival and interoperability, which cleverly allows them to suggest it is somehow different to ODF.

We need to nuke OOXML in ISO purely on its technical merits -- and there's definitely a lot of room for that!

Political vs. Technical Arguments

Posted Nov 26, 2007 10:51 UTC (Mon) by grouch (guest, #27289) [Link] (3 responses)

We need to nuke OOXML in ISO purely on its technical merits -- and there's definitely a lot of room for that!

Been there; done that. The irreconcilable technical deficiencies of MSOOXML have been thoroughly documented. The GNOME Foundation should cease apologizing for Microsoft's scandalous corruption of the ISO process, cease transferring blame for that corruption to the victims, and begin researching the historical record. I suggest Groklaw's ODF/MSOOXML page as a starting point. It provides a chronology of related news beginning in January 2005 as well as "Resources", "Objections" and "Blogs".

Political vs. Technical Arguments

Posted Nov 26, 2007 10:57 UTC (Mon) by jdub (guest, #27) [Link] (2 responses)

Been there; done that. The irreconcilable technical deficiencies of MSOOXML have been thoroughly documented.

I know, and we're facing them down around the world. I'm involved in that process here in Australia.

The GNOME Foundation should cease apologizing for Microsoft's scandalous corruption of the ISO process, cease transferring blame for that corruption to the victims, and begin researching the historical record.

Excuse me? Read the statement! We are nowhere near apologising for Microsoft's scandalous corruption of the ISO process. We raised this issue explicitly in our statement.

Political vs. Technical Arguments

Posted Nov 26, 2007 19:06 UTC (Mon) by grouch (guest, #27289) [Link] (1 responses)

Excuse me? Read the statement! We are nowhere near apologising for Microsoft's scandalous corruption of the ISO process. We raised this issue explicitly in our statement.

You're excused. I did read the statement, including the bizarre bit about "FLOSS implementations of OOXML". (What makes this bizarre is the fact that the specification for MSOOXML is so non-specific; see, for example, WordProcessing ML -- unspecified application behavior).

The 5th point in the "Position" section of the GNOME Foundation statement chastises "community" for the erosion of trust in the standards process and thereby transfers blame from the victimizer, Microsoft, to the victims. You are apologizing for Microsoft's corruption of the process and blaming those who exposed that corruption for the resultant erosion of trust. The process did not anticipate the calculated, deliberate attempts to subvert it which Microsoft used. To borrow the characterization from the GNOME statement, this most certainly is a "black and white" issue, or, more correctly, a good versus evil issue, in that a single vendor has and is attempting to subvert what is supposed to be a global consensus-building process into a means "to control and restrain" any who seek to extricate themselves or their data from utter dependency upon that single vendor.

By seeking the impossible goal of "FLOSS implementations of [MS]OOXML" at a time when there is only one partial implementation of that format, very few documents existing with even that partial implementation, and no established dependency upon that partial implementation yet, GNOME is assisting in creating a dependency on that as-yet deviation from standards and thereby undermining global efforts to produce a document format by true consensus.

Political vs. Technical Arguments

Posted Nov 26, 2007 19:13 UTC (Mon) by jdub (guest, #27) [Link]

You are apologizing for Microsoft's corruption of the process and blaming those who exposed that corruption for the resultant erosion of trust.

No, we pretty firmly blamed Microsoft, and also raised the danger of the community's adoption of similar behaviour, because this will fall straight into Microsoft's hands.

The community does have a role to play in uniting our efforts and the demonisation of GNOME has not been productive in that regard. (Let alone the non-practitioners who don't understand how the politicisation of the process -- by either side -- is damaging to us.)

I'm okay to agree to disagree here. There are clearly differing views on the topic.

Erosion of trust

Posted Nov 26, 2007 10:53 UTC (Mon) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (5 responses)

Unfortunately, the community are helping them abuse the process by making OOXML a political issue -- which actually helps Microsoft, because they can say all disagreement with OOXML is "political" in nature. Instead, we should be aiming to defeat OOXML purely on technical grounds (and repudiate Microsoft's actions in the process), in line with the standards process.

There's nothing political about rejecting a standard proposal that is unimplementable except by reference to code that is a trade secret. It's that way for an obvious reason: to help enforce a monopoly. Is helping to enforce a monopoly "political"? Is pointing that out "political"?

You're being played. Get advice from sound strategic thinkers before it is too late. Follow it even if that means admitting you did wrong. Follow it especially if that means admitting you did wrong.

Erosion of trust

Posted Nov 26, 2007 10:59 UTC (Mon) by jdub (guest, #27) [Link] (4 responses)

<blockquote>There's nothing political about rejecting a standard proposal that is
unimplementable except by reference to code that is a trade secret.</blockquote>

That's absolutely right, and this is one of the very effective *technical* criticism we're
using around the world to defeat OOXML. That is not a political criticism under the terms of
ISO, so it's not relevant to what I'm talking about.

<blockquote>You're being played. Get advice from sound strategic thinkers before it is too
late. Follow it even if that means admitting you did wrong. Follow it especially if that means
admitting you did wrong.</blockquote>

I think you misunderstand the situation.

Erosion of trust

Posted Nov 26, 2007 11:06 UTC (Mon) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (3 responses)

Could you give some specific examples of how it helps for you to be the representetive of the
GNOME foundation "on the inside"?

I think all the posts in this discussion have been over-generelizing ;-)

Erosion of trust

Posted Nov 26, 2007 11:18 UTC (Mon) by jdub (guest, #27) [Link] (2 responses)

Well, an easy start is that Jody has pursued our goal: He's worked hard to make sure Microsoft
document as much of the standard as he could get them to during the ECMA process. This will
help FLOSS products implement OOXML, so users can move to FLOSS without sacrificing their
documents or cutting off compatibility with their friends and colleagues. It has also helped
improve the implementation of the binary formats to a certain extent, owing to their
similarity with the XML dump of the format (OOXML). ;-) This is like being given the
opportunity to grill Microsoft about the CIFS protocol.

Secondly, Jody's work has increased the size of the OOXML specification, which has helped
cement a useful technical argument against OOXML as an ISO standard -- one that is
particularly relevant in Australia (where I live), because we're a small country, and 80% of
our companies are small businesses for whom understanding or implementing the OOXML spec is
hideously out of reach.

So there are some good outcomes that are obviously based on our objective for being there, but
there are also some amusing benefits that we didn't expect. ;-)

Erosion of trust

Posted Nov 26, 2007 11:53 UTC (Mon) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (1 responses)

How much is Microsoft actually commited to follow the changes in the OOXML standard? IIRC
there has been actually some statements of Microsoft seniors of the reverse.

If that is the case, interoperability with ISO-OOXML does not imply interoperability with
MS-Office 2007 (or later).

Erosion of trust

Posted Nov 26, 2007 12:16 UTC (Mon) by jdub (guest, #27) [Link]

How much is Microsoft actually commited to follow the changes in the OOXML standard? IIRC there has been actually some statements of Microsoft seniors of the reverse.

Yeah, they've already revealed some weaselly intentions on that front. I'm not too worried about that, we've fought a much tougher interoperability battle with them over the binary formats, but this time we'll be better prepared.

It will also be damaging for them to not be standards compliant (with their own standard!) from a government perspective, so we as a community can hold their feet to the fire there as well.

Note that I'm not suggesting that our participation in TC45-M solves everything, it's just another front in a much larger battle... of which the ultimate goal is Software Freedom!

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

Posted Nov 26, 2007 10:38 UTC (Mon) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (8 responses)

Not surprising but very disappointing. Point 5 has been Microsoft core argument all along, and
have been disproved on many FLOSS forums, so repeating it shows a singular lack of attention
and in-depth analysis of the whole issue (and that after being forced by public opinion to
make a statement).

> We accepted Jody's proposal to make sure that OOXML was documented enough
> such that FLOSS implementations were possible without a huge amount of pain 

... is also highly misleading and playing right in MS fud machine hands, as there are lots of
things in OOXML Jody has no intention of looking at. What Jody is looking at is documenting
the OOXML subset Gnumeric may use, and Microsoft usual "embrace and extend" tactic will mean
what Jody is not interested in will be used to blacklist FLOSS software, especially once it is
enshrined in an ISO document. In this case the extend part is already built-in so you really
have to play head-in-sand austrich not to see it.

The GNOME Foundation has tried a traditionnal cover-our-asses "balanced" statement, but
sometimes when issues are so polarized and clear-cut there is no way to make such a statement
without taking position de facto for one side. Which means you have to do careful analysis
before issuing a text, and the GNOME Foundation people obviously thought they could skimp on
this part.

Very sad.

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

Posted Nov 26, 2007 11:28 UTC (Mon) by jdub (guest, #27) [Link] (7 responses)

I'm sorry you feel this way, but we did carefully analyse our statement and stand by it -- we
took our time, which you interpreted as "after being forced by public opinion to make a
statement". We're not being used as pawns. We're keeping our friends close and our enemies
closer. Neither Microsoft or Novell had any role in our participation.

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

Posted Nov 26, 2007 12:42 UTC (Mon) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (6 responses)

So you stand behind that point despite the fact that ODF is used by various other things
besides the OpenOffice.org codebase?

The prime example is probably KOffice, which uses ODF as its native file format. Its
developers seem to be happy with that.

/me smells a gnome vs. kde flame :-)

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

Posted Nov 26, 2007 12:50 UTC (Mon) by jdub (guest, #27) [Link] (5 responses)

So you stand behind that point despite the fact that ODF is used by various other things besides the OpenOffice.org codebase? The prime example is probably KOffice, which uses ODF as its native file format. Its developers seem to be happy with that. /me smells a gnome vs. kde flame :-)

Which point is that? Sorry, I don't see any relevance to some kind of KDE vs. GNOME debate in this. I was replying to a comment that suggested we hadn't thought the entire statement through -- we have and we stand by it.

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

Posted Nov 26, 2007 13:34 UTC (Mon) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (4 responses)

First off, thanks for your detailed answers.

However, I referred to a specific point made in the first paragraph of the OP, which I feel
that has been left unanswered.

That last line was with a :-) 
Ignore it...

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

Posted Nov 26, 2007 13:49 UTC (Mon) by jdub (guest, #27) [Link] (3 responses)

However, I referred to a specific point made in the first paragraph of the OP, which I feel that has been left unanswered.

That "Point 5 has been Microsoft core argument all along"? Oh, was the first poster saying that in response to, "Both ODF and OOXML are very heavily influenced by their implementation heritage" from the statement?

No matter how much the KOffice folks contributed to making ODF better (and they did, no doubt about it), ODF is obviously heavily influenced by its software implementation heritage. I just don't see the point of trying to argue this.

It's more important to beat OOXML in ISO on its merits, within the terms of the ISO process, than bicker about the quality or heritage of ODF. Particularly because ODF is not relevant to the terms of the ISO process!

As we say in the GNOME project, "FOCUS, YOU BABOONS!"

(Which is a nice way of telling someone to get back to the point and keep their eyes on the prize, and also a self-deprecating reference to some of our shitty software creations in the past...)

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

Posted Nov 26, 2007 14:55 UTC (Mon) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (2 responses)

What you wrote in your statement is OOXML and ODF are basically the same and one should not
refuse one or the other.

This is true on a qualitative plan. There's been uglyness both sides, there are technical
weaknesses in both standards.

This is blatantly false on a quantitative plan. OOXML has several orders of magnitude more
problems than ODF (on every plan: FUDing, technical, etc). 

Pretending otherwise and refusing to argue problems because there are problems everywere has
been the MS party line all along. "What if we're evil, IBM is evil too, so disregard our
evilness. Everything is relative and basically equal, so being equal there's no reason to
refuse to make our format a standard, peace and love live and let live".

Of course once you've given up on a sane appraisal of the format in public forums like ISO,
the arguments radically change and it's not "live and let live" anymore. Except there is no
public scrutinity anymore, so once you've conceded the only place where FLOSS and proprietary
solutions can be compared on equal terms, FLOSS advocates can be quietly rolled over without
no one caring.

You don't have the luxury of playing nice when the other side is playing hardball and BTW owns
95% of the battle field already. Someone will pick up the tab for your moment of gratuituous
enlightened OOXML forgiveness and I hope for the GNOME project it will have better answers
then.

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

Posted Nov 26, 2007 15:02 UTC (Mon) by jdub (guest, #27) [Link] (1 responses)

What you wrote in your statement is OOXML and ODF are basically the same and one should not refuse one or the other.

No, that really is not the case. We did say that they were both products of their software implementation heritage, but that does not mean the same thing. We really don't see this as a black and white issue, nor do we see that it's healthy for us to approach it as a black and white issue. We do recognise others in the community see it that way, and we're willing to take the hit. There are plenty of others who see what we're doing as a clever way to hack Microsoft's otherwise totally controlled ECMA process. :-)

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

Posted Nov 26, 2007 15:40 UTC (Mon) by mgb (guest, #3226) [Link]

You talk like a judge, but you lack the power of a judge.  To the real judges you seem
confusing and ineffective.  You need to talk like an advocate.  This is not to say GNOME is a
bad person.  Just that you're out of your depth.  Please reconsider.

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

Posted Nov 26, 2007 14:07 UTC (Mon) by dulles (guest, #45450) [Link] (4 responses)

FIRST NOVELL AND NOW GNOME SELLS OUT TO MICROSOFT

These people can rationalize all they want about the details of their "partnership" with
Microsoft.

Just like Miguel de Icaza, a Microsoft whore, the Gnome developers are now selling out to
Microsoft.

I quit using Gnome years ago after Nautilus wiped out my research work. The Gnome GUI is not
only broken, it is retarded.

You'd have to be crazy to work on Gnome, much less join a Gnome project.

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

Posted Nov 26, 2007 14:26 UTC (Mon) by nhasan (guest, #1699) [Link]

Take this rant elsewhere please...is Slashdot not accessible right now?

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

Posted Nov 27, 2007 5:17 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (2 responses)

Gnome knows what most people here know.

ODF is going to lose. That's all. It's like a football game were it's the fourth quarter and
the score is 75 to 3.

Even if ISO caves into pressure and rejects Microsoft's OOXML outright.. it realy won't
matter. Microsoft won. OpenOffice.org isn't good enough. It doesn't do enough, it's not
compatable enough, the documentation is too poor. Adoption is too low. ODF is not supported by
enough people, by enough programs, by enough other companies.

There are not enough people that understand the issues that are in positions to make
decisions. Even out of the people that do know and understand the issues probably most of them
don't realy give a shit.

OOXML is here, and it needs to be delt with.

Do you know what happens if Open Source and Gnome completely ignores OOXML?

... Nothing. It doesn't matter. It'll only hurt Gnome, it'll only hurt the Linux desktop.

Does that mean ODF isn't important? Does that mean that people shouldn't protest the take over
of the ISO process?

No, of course not. What they do is critically important. When Microsoft controls the OS
everybody uses (95+%), controls the servers that everybody uses (75+%), and controls the
Office tools that everybody uses (90+%) then they dictate the file formats. They know this.
This is why they are doing what they are doing. They are leveraging their influance in ways to
keep themselves relevent, to keep their customer base locked in.

Microsoft knows what they are doing.

What is important right now is to have a way people can migrate away from OOXML 5 years from
now. It's important to get on the ground floor and get compatable enough that it's worth
people's time to consider it.

Look at it this way...

In Linux right now you have Koffice, then you have Gnome Office with it's Gnumeric and
Abiword.

Koffice can do much more then OpenOffice.org can. It's more pleasent to use.. it's also
faster. Gnumeric is better then OO.org Calc.. It does graphs better, it's faster, it's UI is
probably better. Abiword is also much faster then OO.org's Writer. It's much faster, it uses
less ram. It starts up faster then the splash screen for OO.org can. It's also more pleasent
to use and the UI is more consistant with the rest of the desktop.

But you know why OO.org gets all the attention?

Because it's more compatable with everybody's files and everybody's files are made, or are
made to read by others, using Microsoft Office. And people don't have to re-trained to use it.

That's all. Gnome will try to support OOXML not because they want to, but becuase they feel
they have to.

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

Posted Nov 27, 2007 9:52 UTC (Tue) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (1 responses)

Even if we took this pessimistic point of view, then why bother?

MS-Office de-facto document format will not be OOOXML anyway.

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

Posted Nov 29, 2007 9:50 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

> Even if we took this pessimistic point of view, then why bother?

It's not pessimistic, it's just reality; Microsoft dictates file formats because the vast
majority of people use their software and will use it irregardless of any sort of OSI
technical commity.

As to 'why bother?'.. Why bother at all making a Free and open source operating system? 

Answer: 

Because there should be one and people should be able to use it. That's all. It's the right
thing to do and if everything works out then everybody will be using open standards and open
formats and not be shackled to the whims of major corporations. 

Just because something does not have a likely success in the short term does not mean it's not
worth doing. The very fact that Microsoft is now forced to engage in, at least the pretense,
of documenting and establishing their formats as a standard shows how much of a impact ODF is
having. If it wasn't, ultimately, a danger to Microsoft's hegemony over the computer industry
then they would not of reacted at all. (another example.. after years of stagnation Microsoft
is forced to update IE in response to Firefox)

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

Posted Nov 27, 2007 0:08 UTC (Tue) by jensend (guest, #1385) [Link] (1 responses)

Both ODF and OOXML are very heavily influenced by their implementation heritage, neither are likely to deliver the "one true office format"

It's nice to see somebody acknowledge the fact that ODF is really not a very satisfactory format. The reason to be excited about it is not because it's a great format but because as an open format it's the lesser evil. Even WP6 is more sensible and flexible in a lot of ways than ODF is.

It seems that real interoperability between competing word processors, as well as a really good format which doesn't have all sorts of gotchas, will have to wait until people get their heads together to design a common format first and various implementations afterwards instead of having the specification of the format be largely an afterthought- designed around the way an application already works and foreign to any other word processor's way of doing things.

ODF _is_ based on multiple formats

Posted Nov 27, 2007 5:19 UTC (Tue) by dwheeler (guest, #1216) [Link]

Hmpf. I respect Jody's efforts to get OOXML more fully documented. And I agree that better documentation of OOXML is a good thing, because that will help people escape OOXML.

But the notion that ODF represents only one developer's system is nonsense. OpenDocument was certainly influenced by OpenOffice.org, but its co-developers include Corel (Word Perfect) and many others. KDE KOffice has had a heavy hand in its direction. And most of the OpenDocument developers were deeply familiar with Microsoft Office's format. Notice that the ODF group's charter permitted significant changes, to enable generalization and improvement - and it WAS changed. In contrast, OOXML was only permitted to document more or less - not to make any substantive changes. Anyone who thinks OOXML didn't NEED changes obviously hasn't looked at it :-).

OOXML is a single-vendor proprietary format. In contrast, OpenDocument is designed to enable interoperability between suppliers. Documenting OOXML is important, because it simplifies the transition from OOXML to OpenDocument, but that's all OOXML is really good for. There's no need for OOXML to become an ISO standard. Any vendor is free to document their internal format, and ISO doesn't need to rubber-stamp this.

I agree that it's terrible that there are two different competing specifications. But Microsoft was asked, repeatedly, to join the OpenDocument group. The fundamental problem is that Microsoft does not wish to cooperate with other suppliers to create a vendor-neutral format. I wish they did.

ISO's tagline includes "One standard, one test...". It's not clear that they really mean it; if they accept OOXML, it may mean the beginning of the end of ISO. If they accept OOXML, it's not clear why they should be trusted.

There are a lot of reports about suspicious activities at the standards body level, yet OOXML still hasn't been approved. OpenDocument didn't have to stuff the committees with dozens of new members. Instead, it got through OASIS and ISO _without_ these shenanigans. Somebody (I think it was Weir) documented that in the international committees, the experienced members tended to vote against OOXML (because of its many problems), and only the new members (paid to join SPECIFICALLY to vote for OOXML) typically vote for it. OpenDocument sailed right through, when only the experienced people were there to vote. Pretending that the two specifications are "the same" is ignoring reality.

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

Oh really?

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

Erosion of trust

Erosion of trust

Erosion of trust

Erosion of trust

Erosion of trust

Erosion of trust

Erosion of trust

Artificially limiting the debate in Microsoft's favor

Artificially limiting the debate in Microsoft's favor

Erosion of trust

Political vs. Technical Arguments

Political vs. Technical Arguments

Political vs. Technical Arguments

Political vs. Technical Arguments

Political vs. Technical Arguments

Political vs. Technical Arguments

Erosion of trust

Erosion of trust

Erosion of trust

Erosion of trust

Erosion of trust

Erosion of trust

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

The GNOME Foundation on OOXML

ODF _is_ based on multiple formats