1) A bit of an irrelevant, somewhat dramatic start which doesn't really lead into anything relevant to ODF. All of his concerns (OMG they lost the DVDs! OMG the network storage may not be there!) apply to anything regardless of the document format.
2) Face it, 90% of the world uses Office, and soon more will be using Office 07. It's a difficult task to evangelize when people don't even change the default save format for documents in Office. And, frankly, passing OpenDocument formatted files around most workplaces will do nothing but frustrate people who suddenly find they can't open this "open" format without going and installing yet more software on their computer (and depending on their IT department policies, this may be something they aren't allowed to do). The best way to combat a lingua franca is not to try to beat it into the ground ("hey! our open format is more open than your open format! so there!") but rather to find ways to coexist. That's what open formats and open (or at least well-enough reverse engineered...) lingua franca formats do...they allow people using different applications to coexist.
3) The only true standard is death.
( (2) is why I believe it is very important for us to incorporate read/write capabilities for OpenXML, regardless of what the politics of OOo or Sun dictate, particularly as the lack of editing and content creation tools for Macs is particularly lacking right now)
Posted: Sat Feb 24, 2007 9:27 am Post subject: Re: Schwartz bangs the drum of OD
OPENSTEP wrote:
2) Face it, 90% of the world uses Office, and soon more will be using Office 07. It's a difficult task to evangelize when people don't even change the default save format for documents in Office. And, frankly, passing OpenDocument formatted files around most workplaces will do nothing but frustrate people who suddenly find they can't open this "open" format without going and installing yet more software on their computer (and depending on their IT department policies, this may be something they aren't allowed to do). The best way to combat a lingua franca is not to try to beat it into the ground ("hey! our open format is more open than your open format! so there!") but rather to find ways to coexist. That's what open formats and open (or at least well-enough reverse engineered...) lingua franca formats do...they allow people using different applications to coexist.
Well, my open format's father is bigger than your open format's father.
Seriously though, I totally agree with Ed on this one. It really seems to be pure fantasy to assume that by having your file format blessed by some standards group is suddenly going to change the behavior of the group of users who don't use your product when that group is an order of magnitude larger than the group of users who use your product.
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