[odf-discuss] Alex Brown on OOo ODF validity

Sat May 3 23:13:43 EDT 2008

Paul, for sake of argument, let's say you were right on the legal 
analysis.  Just hypothetically.

The testing of ODF, even if we take Alex's rather flawed validation test, 
showed only three deviations types from ODF 1.0 when dealing with a 5,000 
page volume of the OOXML text.  One was repeated thousands of times, a 
soft-page-break on every page, a feature that only ODF 1.1 has.  That 
would be trivial to fix -- just comment that line out of the OO code. Next 
was an invalid URL in a hyperlink.  Easy to fix -- just add code to OO to 
validate URL syntax when adding a hyperlink, to prevent bad user input. 
The third problem was an unknown use of "style:for", something not defined 
in ODF 1.0 or ODF 1.1 or even ODF 1.2.  Again, that could just be removed.

So, if you were right on the legal analysis, and such a threat did come, 
does anyone serious think that the above problems would be a show stopper? 
 These seem like things that one could fix in an afternoon.  Sure there 
may be other, similar types of problems,  but from a technical 
perspective, making a version of OO that wrote out conformant ODF 1.0 
should not be difficult, if there was a demand for such a thing.

-Rob

odf-discuss-bounces at opendocumentfellowship.com wrote on 05/03/2008 
10:52:23 PM:

> 

> On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 2:42 AM, Ian Lynch <ian.lynch at zmsl.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-05-02 at 16:37 -0700, marbux wrote:
> > <http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39409700,00.htm>
> >
> > Alex Brown, a document-format expert who is convenor of the process to
> > standardise Office Open XML (OOXML), posted a blog this week

> This entire debate shows why there should be only one ISO standard. 
> 
> How so? There are no full-featured editors that can write 
> conformant ISO/IEC:26300. It looks to me as though with the blunders
> committed by the major ODF vendors that the only ISO/IEC standard 
> that will have conformant support by  full-featured editors will be 
> ISO/IEC:29500, assuming Microsoft carries through on its commitment 
> to provide conformant support of ISO/IEC:29500 in MS Office. See 
> comments by Rob Weir and me here, <http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/
> 0,1000000121,39409700,00.htm>. 
> StarOffice, Lotus Symphony, OpenOffice.org and the various clones of
> the latter's code base are one World Trade Organization legal 
> challenge away from being declared ineligible as government 
> procurement candidates for all governments that have identified ISO/
> IEC:26300 as a procurement specification and national standard. A 
> similar challenge in the European Union judicial processes could 
> also produce the same result throughout Europe. Likewise individual 
> lawsuits could produce a similar result in any nation that is a 
> member of the Agreement on Government Procurement where any branch 
> of government has adopted ISO/IEC:26300 as a procurement specification. 
> 
> What good is an international standard if no one supports it with 
> conforming implementations? See e.g., <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> Open_Document_Architecture>. 
> 
> Those who regard the law as mere pedantry have never looked up the 
> barrel of a court's injunction. 

> "The law, Roper, the law. I know what's legal, not what's right. And
> I'll stick to what's legal. . . . I'm not God. The currents and 
> eddies of right and wrong, which you find such plain-sailing, I 
> can't navigate, I'm no voyager. But in the thickets of the law, oh 
> there I'm a forester. . . . What would you do? Cut a great road 
> through the law to get after the Devil? . . . And when the last law 
> was down, and the Devil turned round on you - where would you hide, 
> Roper, the laws all being flat? . . . This country's planted thick 
> with laws from coast to coast - Man's laws, not God's - and if you 
> cut them down . . . d'you really think you could stand upright in 
> the winds that would blow them? . . . Yes, I'd give the Devil 
> benefit of law, for my own safety's sake." 

> R. Bolt, A Man for All Seasons, Act I, p. 147 (Three Plays, 
> Heinemann ed. 1967), as quoted in Tennessee Valley Authority v. 
> Hill, 437 U.S. 153, 195-196 (1978),  <http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/
> scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=437&invol=153> (completion of 
> "virtually complete" major dam halted).
> 
> What happens to your business, Ian, if the courts rule that all 
> major ODF implementations are ineligible for government procurement 
> tenders because they can't write conformant ISO/IEC:26300? Are you 
> willing to bet that portion of your business on Microsoft not asking
> a judge to pull that trigger? That is what you are doing.
> 
> In my experience, judges are far less likely to enforce my notion of
> what is fair and just than they are to enforce the law. The 
> government procurement tender and national technical regulation both
> say ISO/IEC:26300 but OOo writes to ODF 1.1. On what grounds would 
> you argue that OOo remains eligible as a procurement candidate? 
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Paul
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