this needs wide distribution

[Alex Hudson]

On Tue, 2006-12-12 at 15:48 +0100, Georg C. F. Greve wrote:
>  || On Tue, 12 Dec 2006 11:35:36 +0000
>  || Alex Hudson <home at alexhudson.com> wrote: 
> 
>  ah> You're arguing that, but you're not addressing the concerns I'm
>  ah> raising.
> 
> I did address your concerns in the first article
> 
>  http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/novells_danaergeschenk


To be honest, you didn't - you're looking just at potential danger of
supporting OXML. You're ignoring the potential danger of _not_
supporting it, and I don't see how you can reach a conclusion without
doing so.

But, this isn't an argument about OXML in general. I may or may not
agree with your points about OXML being undermining as an international
standard; but I don't think that has any bearing on OpenOffice.org.

I don't see people walking away from OOo in droves because the OXML
filter isn't amazing; we have that problem already (.doc) and people
live with it.

I also don't see that ISO or a Government or anyone else is going to
give two figs as to whether or not OOo implements OXML when deciding
whether or not OXML is an international standard. They don't care about
a single product.

What I *do* see is that opportunities like Bristol Council in the UK,
who deployed StarOffice, would be missed in the future if OOo didn't
have generous multi-file format support.

Out of, "I can't use OpenXML because OpenOffice.org doesn't support it",
and "I can't use OpenOffice.org, because it doesn't read OpenXML" - I
know which one is more likely.

OpenDocument is a lovely file format, and has many things going for it.
It won't succeed, however, just because public organisations mandate it
and because software which uses it doesn't interoperate. If nothing
else, we'll get half-assed situations like MA where they stick with
Office and try to use an ODF plugin.

What we _need_ is people using free software which talks OpenDocument
natively. Like Bristol, not MA.

>  ah> OXML doesn't open up a new migration route away from free
>  ah> software: we already have one, the binary formats. The support
>  ah> will be basically equivalent.
> 
> See above. I also addressed the difference between those situations in
> the wrap-up, available at
> 
>  http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/openxml_wrap_up_after_d12k

You're addressing a different argument.

My point is that if you think OXML is simply a migration path, then
we're already in that situation and OpenDocument is already undermined,
because we have the binary formats.

The corollary to that is that I don't believe OXML is only good for
migrating people to Office. 

Cheers,

Alex.