[odf-discuss] Response from a GNOME Foundation board director

[Daniel Carrera]

Jody wrote:
> the addition of the wonderful new Formula spec in ODF
> 1.2 actually drives the final nail into the interoperability coffin.
> It is a beautiful piece of work but it is intentionally different
> enough from XL that MS could never store content without loss

Marco wrote:
> Please elaborate on this. Does this apply also to the creation of NEW
> spreadsheets? Or is it a problem ONLY with migration of existing ones?
> If it applies to new files too, can MS technically patch their product
> to not create such problems? If not, why not?

It applies to new documents too. The reason is that the Formula spec defines some formulas different from how they are defined in Excel. There were some formulas where the developers (we) felt that Excel defines formulas wrong. A conspicuous example is that Excel thinks that the year 1900 is a leap year, but it isn't. Yes, MS can technically patch their product, but they won't because that would break backwards compatibility with any existing document that depends on the formulas giving the wrong answer. These bugs have been known for a long time and MS hasn't patched them to not break backwards compatibility.

Jody wrote:
> The ODF TC was fraught with politics, and produced significantly
> fewer benefits.

Marco wrote:
> If so, this is a serious issue that should be addresses (in the proper
> seats, not sure this is the one). But I still feel that giving up ODF
> now only makes OOXML win.

I agree with Marco on this one. ODF has problems, yes. I've never seen a perfect formant, or any community that was free of politics. But ODF is a step forward, and a very good chance to break the existing Microsoft monopoly. Consider that without ODF there would be no OOXML. It is thanks to ODF that Microsoft felt compelled to finally document their secret formats and to do so in a public process under ECMA.

Cheers,
Daniel.