[odf-discuss] Gnome Foundation and ECMA

[Jody Goldberg]

On Wed, Oct 31, 2007 at 09:29:39PM +0000, Ian Lynch wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-10-31 at 14:12 -0400, Jody Goldberg wrote:
> > On Wed, Oct 31, 2007 at 12:45:23PM -0400, Pamela Jones wrote:
> > >
> > > Jeff, you have said in this thread that you don't care what Slashdot 
> > > readers think.
> > >
> > > They are you users.  That is your traditional  user base.
> > 
> > They are _some_ of our users.  Investment banks, statisticians, or
> > users of the OLPC
> 
> I wonder how many OLPC users will receive files in OOXML format in the
> next few years?

An interesting question for which I have no answer beyond, '>0'
Although it is something of a straw man.  OLPC was merely an
illustration of some of the non-slashdot users out there.

> How many investment banks use Gnumeric?
I do not keep statistics on this sort of thing.  Our development
community is just that, a team focused on _development_.  We don't
have a marketing or advocacy team to help track these metrics.
My best guess, based on bug reports, mailing lists, and private
emails suggests a highly accurate
	'more than a bunch, possibly alot, but less than a boatload'

> If OOXML is not given ISO status, its pretty clear that MS will be
> under much increased pressure to fully support odf by governments.

To me that seems like one of those classic
    'be careful what you wish for'
type goals.  MS's history of embracing and extend is daunting.  It
doesn't take much imagination to see how they could distort or
pervert ODF if that was their goal.  I'm happier with them
implementing their own format, and not perverting OO.o's.

> >  To date I've implemented most of the OOX
> > filters myself because I see it as useful.  ODF has been handled as
> > an extension of the OO.o 1.x format and has been around longer with
> > more contributors.  Slashdot readers that disagree with OOX are
> > welcome to help me improve ODF support so that it is
> > better/stronger/faster than OOX.
> 
> Again a rational solution to what is fundamentally a political problem. 

My biases are self evident.  I'm a developer, that's how I approach
things.  On the other hand, FLOSS has made some amazing progress in
the last decade.  Progress that came as the result of amazing work
by the kernel team, and the apache devs, and the mysql people, and
the gcc communities, to name just a few.  People _chose_ free
software because it's better.  Not because it's politically
expedient.
 
> Maybe debate on the political implications of particular actions also
> needs to be given some thought. If technological excellence was the only
> consideration, DOS, Windows 3 and Windows 95 would never have got a foot
> hold.

If only that was true.  Free software didn't have a viable
competitor to MS back then.  We had some good pieces,
sendmail/gcc/emacs but even the BSDs were mired in legal issues for
part of that period.  This is a technological problem, that's why
we're winning now.