On Tue, 2006-12-12 at 10:49 +0100, Georg C. F. Greve wrote: > || On Tue, 12 Dec 2006 09:36:44 +0000 > || Alex Hudson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > ah> I have to confess to being worried about asking people not to > ah> improve free software applications for specific political > ah> purposes. > > That sentence is based on the assumption that adding OpenXML support > to OpenOffice.org is an improvement of OpenOffice.org.
Not really. Adding extra file format compatibility is pretty obviously an improvement to an application. The assumption is that by withholding (or, equally, by pushing for) certain features, political goals can be achieved - that, by direction, some greater good can be attained. I outlined to you at least one practical scenario where the political goal would not be achieved with that tactic: in fact, it would do entirely the opposite - it would enshrine Microsoft Office further. I can think of other ways in which this tactic would be entirely damaging to OpenDocument migration. I don't believe that OpenOffice.org, or any other free suite, inability to read OXML will have any effect on the take-up of OXML. I also don't believe that their lack of support will detract in any way from OXML being seen as an open standard, if/when ISO approves it. On the other hand, I could readily believe that by asking OOo not to support OXML, we are preventing people from using OOo in scenarios that it would otherwise be suitable for. I personally believe the "open standards" thing is more or less a red herring. My Government already specifies Word 97 for interoperability and accessibility purposes. They define their technical standards not on the whimsy of some international standards org, but on the marketplace reality of what software is on offer. For OpenDocument to succeed in this marketplace, the ISO marque is vastly less important than OpenOffice.org being seen to be a reliable and credible competitor - and we have one Council actually using it now. Asking OOo to be less competitive in the future is commercial suicide IMHO. Cheers, Alex. _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list [email protected] https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion
