kipster wrote:
i tend to agree with much of what Chad says--ODF is not going to change the computing world this year, or even next year.
No one said that the change would be this year or next year. We are looking 5-10 years down the road (5 years for most people to be able to read and write ODF and 10 for ODF to become the de-facto standard).
betting against MS is generally a bad financial activity.
Betting for MS is also a bad financial ativity. It is very hard for anyone involved in IT to make a lot of money because MS software takes up a huge portion of the income, so there's very little left for eveyrone else in the supply chain. And whenever that changes, MS moves into your territory and consumes your business.
Betting for MS means perpetuating the monopoly that keeps you learning tiny margins, keeps competition out, and inhibits innovation.
Betting against MS means that you are working to improve the situation.
whilst i agree you have been jumped on,
If you knew Chad longer you might not feel that he was jumped on. His behaviour this week is typical, not an isolated incident.
anyways, its tough to argue that an almost universally installed base is hard to crack by simply offering something better.
Ah, but you see, everyone will have to move away from .doc anyways. Microsoft too is moving away from .doc and towards their own propietary XML format.
So the current install base of MS Office means zilch. None of those can read and write the new Propietary-XML format (no, Office 2003 is using yet another XML format that is nothing like the one MS is moving to).
Everyone will have to move away from .doc. The question is what they will move *to*. Hence, the real competitor then is MS XML, not .doc. And for once, we have an upper hand. The market share of OpenDocument is inmensey larger than that of MS XML. The one for OpenDocument is a few percent and the one for MS XML is around 0% (just a few alpha testers in Redmond - not even beta testers, that's planned for November).
if 'better' ruled, we'd have all had betamax videos,
You're absolutely right. But you see, this isn't merely a technical merit. We know that "better" doesn't always rule. We have strategy here. Getting support from OASIS and ISO is also strategy.
the attitude conveyed in your writing shows a complete and utter lack of empathy for your audience.
This is typical. Cheers, Daniel. -- DEMAND __ __ __ http://opendocumentfellowship.org/petition/ | ||__)|__|\ | - Tell Microsoft to support it |__|| |__| \|DOCUMENT - Sign the petition
