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

[Jody Goldberg]

On Fri, Nov 02, 2007 at 03:59:38AM -0700, Daniel Carrera wrote:
> 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.

Agreed on both counts.
ODF may one day become all that people claim it already is.
However, even if it doesn't it's a better format than the old binary
approach, and if one believes that OOX was produced as a result of
ODF (which I do) then that alone is more than sufficient to praise
ODF for achieving a major step towards breaking the unholy
dual-monopoly from Redmond.