Hi :) Sorry i just realised that i had hijacked another thread so i forwarded these emails to a new thread to break them free into a new thread of their own.
The FSF seems positively rabid and starts with the premise that people want to be free rather than to just get on with work easily. Your post makes a lot more sense and is a lot calmer. Can i use parts of it to present an argument to work-colleagues and a few other people outside of TDF? Regards from Tom :) --- On Fri, 25/11/11, Italo Vignoli <[email protected]> wrote: From: Italo Vignoli <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [libreoffice-marketing] pro-OpenDocument Format arguments To: [email protected] Date: Friday, 25 November, 2011, 11:12 On 11/25/11 11:03 AM, Tom Davies wrote: > Does anyone have a link to a calm, rational and preferably unbiased > article about why ODF is so much better and what the problems are > with MS proprietary formats? There is a huge amount of literature on the web, but unfortunately is either incomplete or strongly biased. I have just written an email that covers the subject on the users@ list, although partial in terms of scope. I know that you have read my email, but I attach the text for all the others that might have lost it. -- TDF developers are working hard to improve the level of interoperability with many file formats, because we want LibreOffice to be both the best implementation of ODF (a format that we want to be the standard for electronic documents) and the most interoperable office suite. Users are free to use LibreOffice to read and write RTF and DOC/XLS/PPT files (and even DOCX/XLSX/PPTX files), although they should understand that only ODF will provide the best level of document interoperability, as it is the native LibreOffice file format and it is also supported by the latest versions of MS Office for Windows. Of course, users should also understand that proprietary formats like RTF and legacy MS Office formats have been developed in order to lock them in into using MS Office, and should avoid the formats not because they are intrinsically bad (although they often are) but because they intentionally reduce their freedom. Although user habits could let many user think that MS Office legacy formats are the most practical for interoperability, they should not overlook the fact that by sticking to MS Office legacy format they perpetuate their lock in into Microsoft products. TDF is actively promoting ODF, which is the format of choice for all actual and future versions of LibreOffice. ODF is not only open and standard, but is also easier to implement than other ISO standard formats. For instance, OOXML has been approved as ISO standard in 2008, but after almost four years is still implemented in the non standard "transitional" version even by Microsoft (the company behind the original format) because of the incredible complexity of the format (confirmed by the length of the documentation of over 7.200 pages, i.e. almost six times as many as the ODF documentation). This incredible complexity is a new form of lock in, as it makes extremely difficult to reproduce the file format. LibreOffice, on the other way, represents the best third party implementation of OOXML. I think that LibreOffice advocates should promote ODF by suggesting them to install LibreOffice, in order to get all the benefits of a truly open and standard format as ODF, but should also respect the choice of people who are not willing to change their office suite. Of course, if these people are still using MS Office 2003, it is easy to explain that LibreOffice provides a very similar user experience while offering a large number of new features and security updates. -- The problem is more political than technical. ODF is not superior per se, under the technical point of view, but because is more accessible and easier to implement. OOXML complexity is the new lock in. Although the leap year bug has been known for more than 20 years now, solving it means rewriting Excel (not a trivial task). Because of this single bug, MS Office files - as of today - are not compatible with the Gregorian calendar, which is recognized as a reference standard by everyone (including Muslim and Far East countries, with their own calendars) but Microsoft. -- Italo Vignoli - [email protected] phone +39.348.5653829 - VoIP +39.02.320621813 skype italovignoli - gtalk [email protected] -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/marketing/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/marketing/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
