[odf-discuss] Gnome, Ecma, and what governments (and FOSS?) should have done

[Russell Ossendryver]

>Actually, there is one set of organisations that could, that could
>handle it, and stage a PR coup at the same time.  An ODF
>advocacy/support group could sponsor me to join ECMA in the dual
>role of clarifying MOOX and acting as a liaison.
>Any offers ?

Interested in knowing more?


On 11/3/07, Jody Goldberg <jody at gnome.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 01, 2007 at 07:22:14PM +0100, Alberto Barrionuevo wrote:
> >
> > One thing is that ECMA committee is composed by Microsoft and its backers
> > (Intel, Apple, Novell, etc.)
>
> To characterise Novell as a Microsoft backer is grossly unfair to my
> ex-colleagues.  They have contributed a massive body of work to
> OO.o, improving and advocating it.
>
> > "OOXML is an open standard with many and competitive
> > implementations" (what remains false, because actually only
> > MS-Office implements it... and badly in the case of the DIS 29500
> > or ECMA-376 versions of the specification).
>
> They can already cite the Apple, and Word-perfect filters for that.
> Which I suspect has significantly better name recognition than
> Gnumeric.
>
> > So Jody joining officially in the name of Gnome of course that is helping to
> > Microsoft to get its ISO. And an ISO for OOXML means severe problems for ODF.
>
> That depends entirely on how we look at it.
> 1) We are not helping explicitly.  As stated previously we are
>   not taking part in the issue resolution.
> 2) We're not helping implicitly by writing the filters.  There are
>   already commercial efforts that probably had more development
>   time than the few days Gnumeric has seen.
> 3) MS was forced to promote it's spec as the MS Office file format.
>   It is not being promoted as 'the' format for office suites.  That
>   would be problem.  I do not see MOOX as a severe threat to ODF,
>   with or without an ISO imprimatur.  MS was forced to acknowledge
>   that they serve different goals.
>
> > Different would be that Jody joins via another entity not as important in the
> > free software world as Gnome. I would see no any problem on that approach,
> > since he could get the interoperability information he looks for in the same
> > way. But Microsoft wants/needs to Gnome in the team, not any other.
>
> Not unreasonable.  I chose GNOME because of my strong ties to the
> organisation, and because of our community focus on just making
> things work for our users.
>
> Unfortunately there is likely to be a small 'not in my backyard'
> problem.  What organisation of any importance is going to welcome
> taking on the role of community whipping boy of the week ?
>
>    "Hi my name is Jody, and I'd like join your organisation and
>    have it sponsor my participation in causing 'severe problems'
>    for ODF"
>
> There aren't likely to be many takers.
>
> Actually, there is one set of organisations that could, that could
> handle it, and stage a PR coup at the same time.  An ODF
> advocacy/support group could sponsor me to join ECMA in the dual
> role of clarifying MOOX and acting as a liaison.
>
> Any offers ?
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