|| On Tue, 12 Dec 2006 09:36:44 +0000 || Alex Hudson home@alexhudson.com 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.
But as the articles explain, I don't think that "more code" is always a good thing. Supporting OpenXML will mainly serve to undermine what has just become a truly Open Standard for that purpose.
Support for OpenXML will be a strong argument against ODF usage in various institutions, which will create inherent pressure to migrate to Microsoft Office for full OpenXML support.
Putting ODF into Microsoft Office is the much more interesting path, and people have been pushing for this on various levels. It seems that getting OpenXML into OpenOffice.org now is the pushback.
Regards, Georg