this needs wide distribution

[Georg C. F. Greve]

 || On Tue, 12 Dec 2006 09:36:44 +0000
 || Alex Hudson <home at 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

-- 
Georg C. F. Greve                                 <greve at fsfeurope.org>
Free Software Foundation Europe	                 (http://fsfeurope.org)
Join the Fellowship and protect your freedom!     (http://www.fsfe.org)
What everyone should know about DRM                   (http://DRM.info)
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