On 10/26/05, Ian Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Wed, 2005-10-26 at 11:40 -0400, Chad Smith wrote: > > You still around, Chad? I thought you would have taken the hint by now > seeing that everyone else apart from you in this group sees ODF's > success as important to OOo's success. If you can't be constructive in > supporting this you would be better of subscribing to a list supporting > the competition and not wasting our time.
Yep, still here. If you would bother to read my emails, you'd see that I support *OpenOffice.org* - not its file format. I want OOo to succeed. I have said, from the beginning, like a year or so ago when this whole "OASIS" thing got started, that ODF is not important, what *is* important is the program. OOo has existed for 5 years now without this "all important" file format. I think it will be able to continue that trend just fine whether anybody ever saves their files as ODF. And, if ODF is so all consuming, why would you *want* Microsoft to support it? If ODF is all that matters about OOo, as soon as MSO supports it, OOo is dead, right? I mean, if ODF success is the only key to OOo success - then if MSO has it, there's no need for OOo anymore. Right? That's the problem with tying all your hopes to ODF's star - if it blows up, as I for one believe it will, you're done. I believe there are plenty of other reasons to use OOo, and I just wish people on this list, and especially the marketing list, would realise that, and start *PROMOTING* that. You walk up to some college student in line at Wal-Mart with his $150 copy of MSO under his arm, and start talking about OASIS this and open standards that, he'll still buy his MSO and laugh at you. You start promoting other stuff - like one-click PDF export built in, enhanced MSO compatibility, no-monetary-cost, free volunteer tech-support, and whatever has been improved in 2.0 (I don't know because all I hear about is ODF ODF ODF! - it's like "Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers" except it's ODF, ODF ODF ODF ODF!) - THEN you might make him put down his MSO, and take your CD, or write down the URL for OpenOffice.org. Let's face it, most of the people who care about "open formats" already use Linux and/or OOo. They'd download OOo 2.0 no matter what. ODF is not a selling point to most people. And while it may be for some, we need to have more than one selling point for OOo 2.0 than that. I mean, isn't OOo more than an ODF application? -Chad Smith
