On Mon, 2006-01-02 at 11:15 -0500, Chad Smith wrote: > > An end to lock-in will over time lead to a decline and an end to the use > > of proprietary formats but it will take a while. After all some people > > still use typewriters. > > Okay, but what I was asking was how does this instance demonstrate > that. I've heard Sam's answer, so I've got it now. It's not the > final nail in the coffin - it's just a little glimpse of what life > after MSO lock-in would be like.
I don't really think anyone knows for sure how things will turn out. If there were universally accepted fully open formats for the common and most used data structures I should think that there would inevitably be greater variety in the tools that operated on the data. Usually greater variety means more innovation. It should also improve interoperability of the tools. I guess the downside (if there is one) is that more variety and choice means people have to make decisions. >From an OOo marketing point of view, being allied to an open format is a good selling point while the main competition is on a closed format but if OOo starts to become the dominant office suite, an open format would be less good (from the OOo marketing point of view) because it would tend to promote competition from other software that also adopts the open format. I guess some people would say that would be good as a driving force for improving OOo and it would probably ensure that OOo was never as dominant as MSO is now. -- Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ZMS Ltd --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
