Woot! OOXML nogo!

[Jerry Feldman]

On Wed, 5 Sep 2007 13:32:19 -0400
"Ben Scott" <dragonhawk at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 9/5/07, Greg Rundlett <greg.rundlett at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The process isn't over.
> 
>   I expect "the process" will never be over.

There is currently a move to merge some of the features of OOXML into
ODF. 

From a purely political point of view, Microsoft will certainly object
since it is not in their best interests to have an industry standard.
Long before Bill Gates, IBM had a history of subverting standards or
going in the opposite direction. I suspect Microsoft will possibly have
mixed signals on this. 

From a technical point of view, as long as ODF is not subverted,
merging some of the features of OOXML into ODF is not a bad thing. Some
of Microsoft's objections to ODF were that it did not support some
features that MSFT had in their products. However, I doubt that
Microsoft will support any truly open document standard unless there
was a strong enough demand for it. Unfortunately, the demand would have
to come from major corporations and governments. Very few state
governments in the US have the cojones, so my guess it will be a long
time before we get a truly open document standard, but ODF is certainly
a step in the right direction.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9
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