[odf-discuss] Microsoft and Novell cooperate on document formats

[M. Fioretti]

On Fri, Nov 03, 2006 01:25:56 AM -0800, marbux (marbux at gmail.com)
wrote:
 
> I think we're drifting. The discussion started with Marco saying:
> 
> "If the OO.o shipped with SUSE (and that only) got plugins that
> render MSO files (complex ones, with macros etc..) correctly, it
> would be for many users a powerful reason not to bother with ODF."
>
> I understood "correctly" in the context of "complex" documents as
> meaning full support.

Yes, that's what I meant. There are many complex documents (nested
tables, macros, formulas...) that aren't rendered correctly by OO.o if
in MS Office formats. AND, such documents _already_ exist. Billions of
them. If the OO.o shipped with one Linux distribution became the only
one to correctly render such existing files and the future MOOX ones,
and it were tuned to "save as MOOX" by default:

* all the other Linux distros could lose any hope to be widely accepted
  as corporate/public sector desktop (or servers, wherever document
  processing is concerned)

* the majority of employees and managers would see no reason to use or
  require ODF (lazyness and the wish to *ignore* what software is are
  very powerful)

* government pressure to require/migrate to ODF would be much easier
  to fight or ignore ("why migrate, that is spend public money on
  training, deployment and so on, now that even Linux can open
  successfully deal with the formats of 99.999% of the existing office
  files? See how good we were to encourage competition and give you
  choice?")

until ODF fades away and MS screws ODF and Novell with MOOX 2010.

Ciao,
	Marco

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