OK, call me a reactionary or whatever. But really...so one of the big pushes of OOo has been for open document formats and this has made great strides with the OASIS acceptance, ISO, and others. One of the major "stumping" points of the OOo community for the last 5 years has been that its format is "open" and this should drive adoption of OOo.
So now someone allows MS Office users to use this format and they're mad? The leader of the NLC has to spread FUD that trying to integrate this format with another tool wouldn't even work properly? WTF? How is it possible to call somthing a "standard" if you argue that only one program implements it "correctly"?
Every day it seems to me that there is a growing group of people who, despite what they say, do not believe that OpenOffice.org is the torch bearer of freedom or choice at all. They now believe *OpenOffice.org* should be the only solution that everyone uses. Any other solution, open source or closed, is inferior to their own one true way.
Didn't Microsoft already do this 20 years ago?
I can only hope these people are in the minority and that the experience Mac users have unfortunately had to endure is not a harbringer of a widerspread vitriol yet to come.
Joined: Apr 25, 2006 Posts: 2315 Location: Montpellier, France
Posted: Sun Sep 24, 2006 12:30 pm Post subject:
Charles-H.Schulz wrote:
In doing this, Microsoft breeds the seed of doubt and comfort in the mind of many governmental buyers, if not in any potential users of an alternative solution to Microsoft Office. A plugin supporting ODF doesn't actually help a migration towards those alternative solutions such as OpenOffice.org.
Charles-H.Schulz wrote:
there will be unexpected loss of data inside the documents themselves. This is exactly what the users do not want. But maybe is this after-effect exactly what Microsoft wants? Comments and notes from the software vendor spread throughout the press about the risk for the users to lose data by using the plugin. How interesting. If you are really in favour of interoperability, implement and use one format that is both standard and open, don't play games with plugins, converters, macros, and other post-modern scissors and shovels. But that just won't do it for Microsoft. How could you believe they were on our side?
Indeed, how could you believe Microsoft would be on "our" side ? And how could you think they would do something that would "help a migration towards those alternative solutions such as OpenOffice.org" ? Of course, Microsoft doesn't want to help people to migrate, how can someone be so stupid as to think that ? The only purpose of the plugin is to allow MS Office users to read and write (exchange) ODF documents with users of other office suites, because it has been adopted as a standard by many administrations and that the sender (using ODF) will not always want to make sure he converts his document to OpenXML before he sends it to a recipient who uses (or might be using) MS Office (or the reverse, if OOo decided not to support OOXML) ...
Again, how could you think that Microsoft would support a plugin that would allow people to migrate to another office suite, when the plugin is there (as seen by Microsoft, since AFAIK then didn't start the project) to ensure that people don't migrate because of the lack of ODF support in MS Office.
Personally, I don't really care which software you use.
If the format used is open, you can use M$ if you can afford it, or you can use OpenOffice if you want FOSS. Everybody happy, because they work seamlessly. After that, market forces will figure it out.
I love NeoOffice (especially now that I have prettified it), and I will continue to use it, but I would be so much more happy if the rest of the world works in ODF.
best wishes,
Oscar _________________ "What do you think of Western Civilization?"
"I think it would be a good idea!"
- Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Someone (Simon Phipps, perhaps?) linked to the blog of the people writing the converter, and there they described some conversations with representatives of OOo and with OASIS, and they were very telling (in a bad way)....
(Sadly, I think a large part of the OOo "community" sees Neo in the same light....)
I'm about in the same place as Oscar...open standards and open formats are the key to the survival and exchange of information, and so long as we standardize on free/free, open, and non-pervertible formats, I don't care if the app you use comes from Redmond, Cupertino, Hamburg or Sydney....
Smokey _________________ "[...] whether the duck drinks hot chocolate or coffee is irrelevant." -- ovvldc and sardisson in the NeoWiki
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Mon Sep 25, 2006 8:57 am Post subject:
I too think the primary thing is that the documents are in a more open format and really it doesn't matter if you're using KOffice, Word with plugins, Pages, or the upcoming MS OpenXML format. Everyone should be free to use whatever application that best fits their needs. The point behind open formats is that it's now possible to legaly create a symbiotic application ecosystem that removes the cost overhead and difficulty of information exchange.
The application shouldn't matter and the file format itself shouldn't matter, provided it's an open format. The information and ability to access it is really the important thing.
Joined: May 25, 2003 Posts: 4752 Location: Santa Barbara, CA
Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 9:57 am Post subject:
jakeOSX wrote:
well, also the mass gov, which has decided to with ODF, has also decided they will stay with MS office _IF_ it can save to ODF format.
Yup. And I bet several consultants who were gearing up to help fund this and other government transitions to OOo are suddenly crying foul due to their lost revenue streams.
well, as someone who has ms works files, appleworks files, lotus smarte suite, ms word starting at 6.0 up through 2003, sxw (made with staroffice!!), sxw (made with oo.o beta on windows), wordperfect, lots of wordperfect, abiword (though those are now ODF), and ODF files on my computer, i have to say that i could give a flying rat's ass about your choice between MS office, OpenOffice.org, etc etc. (mainly because wordperfect is the best, but that is another rant)
what i want is to be able to hit 'save' and then a few years later come back and hit 'open' and not have to go 'oh shit.' which i do. a lot.
i wrote a rant, which i didn't post, but may still, about this. short version, ODF is the only thing that kept me from going pure rtf files.
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