[odf-discuss] Gnome Foundation and ECMA

[Jody Goldberg]

On Sat, Nov 03, 2007 at 12:26:07PM +0000, Ian Lynch wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-11-02 at 23:32 -0400, Jody Goldberg wrote:
> 
> If there is an agreed and published ISO standard I doubt that will be
> possible.

MS is strong in the dark side, and ODF is far from rigorous.  They
can easily write content right now that conforms to the spec that OO.o
could not read.  Publishing how on an open list seems like a bad
idea.

> > My biases are self evident.  I'm a developer,
> 
> And that resolves you from all responsibility for compromising strategy?
> The romantic view of the loan hacker changing the world through the
> anarchy of technical excellence has its place but there are increasingly
> many exceptions. RMS has had more effect on the take up of free software
> from his political activities than from his coding.

We'll have to agree on strategy before I'll admit to compromising
it.
 
> As a hacker you are not going to like this reply but the research
> evidence seems to be on my side. The technology just has to be good
> enough

In the short term certainly.  There are lots of other factors can
can impact adoption decisions beyond the purely technical.  However,
increased utility and access to source code are powerful attractors.
Over time, they bias the market in our favour.   All we have to do
is win 51% of the time, and have some patience.

> > This is a technological problem, that's why we're winning now.
> 
> Sigh. I guess in the end you will believe what you want to believe.

The truth of that statement becomes clearer the older I get.
It's depressing.  At the end of the day the most optimistic outcome
is that we'll convince each other that our mutual intentions are
good, and that we are stubbornly blind to reality.

My wife could easily give you some ammunition against me in that
respect.