this needs wide distribution

[Alex Hudson]

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 <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.

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.