On Wed, Nov 21, 2012 at 11:40 AM, Dave Fisher <dave2w...@comcast.net> wrote: > > On Nov 21, 2012, at 6:16 AM, Rob Weir wrote: > >> On Tue, Nov 20, 2012 at 8:16 PM, Ian C <i...@amham.net> wrote: >>> Hi All, >>> >>> saw this today >>> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9233890/German_city_dumps_OpenOffice_switches_to_Microsoft?source=CTWNLE_nlt_pm_2012-11-20 >>> >>> Maybe an upgrade from 3.2 would help them? >>> >> >> It is bizarre. They ran their desktops with both Microsoft Office >> 2000 and OpenOffice.org 3.2.1. Their old version of Microsoft Office >> fails to work well with recent Microsoft Office documents. So instead >> of blaming Microsoft, the vendor that they paid for Office 2000, for >> their non-backwards compatible file format changes, they blame >> OpenOffice.org, an open source product that they never paid a cent >> for. > > And MSFT does change their formats slightly in every minor release. Strict > compliance to OOXML should NOT be our goal. It should be flexible to allow > for variance. OOXML elements have been known to be added to BINARY formats by > MSFT Office. Some versions of MSFT Office have not even complied with OOXML > in first major versions. >
Right. Practical interoperability is what most users want, not conformance to a piece of paper. But you will see some government users for which the piece of paper is important. Or at least it is important on paper ;-) > AOO's intake of MSFT Office documents should be VERY forgiving or it will be > more difficult to convert institutions from Office. > That has certainly been the practice with the binary formats. We hear from many users how we're able to load a corrupted DOC file that Word will not open. In any case my point was that interoperability is a concern of systems, not of single applications. If everyone used AOO then interop would be perfect. If everyone used MS Office then interop would be perfect. In those extremes there is no "inter" in interoperability. In heterogeneous environments interop would be perfect if MS Office provided perfect ODF support. Interop would also be perfect if AOO provided perfect MS OOXML support. It is symmetrical. Freiburg putting the blame for the challenges of managing heterogeneous IT systems solely on an old version of OpenOffice.org is wrong and unfair, IMHO. But it is common. Even with the symmetry shown above, the application with majority marketshare is often considered the "center" and competitors are defined by the market based on how well they chase after file compatibility. It is the network effect, and with file format compatibility issues we are on the wrong side of that effect, and probably always will be. That's why I think it is important that we evolve in a way that offers other values, other benefits, beyond what MS Office does. IMHO we need "good enough" interop, but offer a value proposition to users that goes beyond "free". We need killer features. -Rob > Regards, > Dave > > >> >> -Rob >> >>> -- >>> Cheers, >>> >>> Ian C >
