[odf-discuss] Gnome Foundation and ECMA

[Ian Lynch]

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? How many investment banks use Gnumeric? I have a genuine
interest in knowing because such statistics are always useful when
schools say "Every one uses MS Office". I know of some big government
users of OOo/Star Office but I don't know many users apart from
individuals of Gnumeric and I would be genuinely interested in the
figures. 

In the end the ECMA issue is political, not rational and the rights and
wrongs depend on your perspective. The British Education Communication
Technology Agency has made a complaint to the Office of Fair Trading
about interoperability of MS Office as well as the anti-competitive
nature of MS Schools agreement. As governments increasingly understand
the issue of anti-competitive practices they are likely to step up the
pressure for change.  If OOXML is not given ISO status, its pretty clear
that MS will be under much increased pressure to fully support odf by
governments. Anything that makes OOXML more likely to achieve ISO
recognition is in the bigger picture counter-productive in achieving
choice through open standards rather than choice between competing
standards. Its a simple matter of priorities and overall strategy. 

>  are not slashdot traditional readers.  I'd like to
> see them supported despite what part of the community says.  Free
> software is about choice. 

Open Standards are about enabling the choice promised by free software.
While interoperability with MS products is a necessity, so are the
political messages sent out. Mainly IT is about confidence, hence the
power of FUD in marketing. The messages we give out intentionally or
unintentionally are what others use to make judgements about who we are
and what we believe, and what marketing teams use to distort the truth.

>  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. 

> I do not see this as zero-sum, and will continue to write code based
> on that assumption.  If that means ignoring part of the slashdot
> communities desires, then so be it.
> 
> > You have also said that you can't say and do certain things because your 
> > corporate sponsors might not agree.
> >
> > You tell me: how does this look?
> 
> I must have missed that.
> 
> I do not speak for my past or present employers, nor do I speak for
> the GNOME foundation.  I will continue to state my personal opinions
> on technical matters publicly with no fear that the Advisory board
> would attempt to control or manipulate that stance.   The board
> benefits from a strong GNOME community with robust debate on
> technical issues.

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.

Ian
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