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ODF Alliance, Who, What, Where (and Why?)
Andy Updegrove writes "On Friday, the new ODF Alliance was launched with much fanfare to 'educate government' about the OpenDocument Format. A flurry of brief news articles appeared the same day, based on pre-launch interviews (as well as an Op/Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal by Sun's Scott McNealy), but they didn't include much information. So what's it all about, why was it formed, and will it be likely to succeed? Given that the 36 members include only one government unit (the ICT department for Vienna), the answer is clearly to establish a beachhead in the government market as a target of opportunity, and then to expand from there to meet the real goals of the members."
Here is an other article on this: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060303-6313 .html
It's a few days old though. (March 3rd)
Cheers!
~Allen
If you RTFA, you'll see:
The ODF Alliance was first proposed by IBM...
If you look at the list of supporters, you'll see IBM, Sun, Novell, Red Hat, Oracle, etc. The open-document format does indeed have the backing of some big companies. The fact that MS doesn't want to support will slow adoption, but there is still a significant push for this format (as the very existence of this Alliance attests to).
That's certainly worth worrying about. I'm not 100% sure here, but I think that the ODF will be administered in such a way that if you want to claim "OpenDocument compliant" on your product, you have to implement the standard fully and properly. Improper implementations can of course be produced (since the spec is openly published), but they will not be able to state/claim "OpenDocument compliant." (This can be protected with trademark law, etc.) It should be noted, however, that the standard clearly states that there will be no fees required to use it.
The OASIS faq states that "The OpenDocument format is owned by OASIS, a non-profit consortium dedicated to the open development of public XML standards." So I think they will use legal means to protect the "OpenDocument" format name from being mis-used, while allowing free implementation of the format by anyone desiring to do it properly.
OpenDocument Format was created by OASIS and is currently used as the default format in OpenOffice and KOffice (well KOffice 1.5 which uses it at the default format is a couple days away from being released, 1.4 supported OpenDocument natively though). I believe Gnome Office and other office suites are also implementing OpenDocument support.
The difference is Office XML cannot be used in OpenSource applications.
Why? Although Microsoft grants you a license, you are not permitted to sublicense. As such, Office XML could never be used in a BSD or GPL, or any similar sublicensing Open Source scheme.
Also, ODF was established by a consortium of companies, is 100% unpatent encumbered, and will most likely become an ISO standard for document distribution in the near future.
Office XML is pretty open, but its not 100%. It's basically only usable by closed source projects, which is most likely Microsoft's intent.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
They DO listen to their customers. If they didn't they wouldn't try to get rid of ODF. Microsoft knows what the customers want and how much they can leave out and still get away with it. Example: IE 7. Is IE 7 vastly improved? The UI is, because Opera and Firefox are luring people away with things like tabbed browsing. But Triton (aka MSHTML) was only marginally improved because Microsoft know that people will care more about a snazzy UI than about web standards and that improved-but-still-partial CSS2 support is enough to appease the crowd.
As for the question for who gets away with that: A monopolist. Control the market and you can dictate what people will put up with.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
People don't need to use Arobat Reader. And the PDF files will work well everywhere if you don't use the newest format, that is what PDF is for. Good luck on the switch.
I am using plain text, PDF and HTML almost sucessfuly for a few years now. Needed the OOo word compatibility one time, but it will probably not happen again. It is possible for some people to switch with almost no harm now.
Rethinking email
I do recall reading that Abiword wasn't going to use ODF (specifically .odw and .otw) as its native format because it didn't do all it wanted to (whatever's in the .abiword XML format I'd assume). If GNOME Office is going to eventually get all its software to use ODF natively or at least up to par with its main format, that's a plus for ODF as well.
At this point, a lot of office software supports ODF importing, and many of them support exporting as well, but MS Office lags behind as usual.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
So that statement differs from other similar statements that have come out of microsoft in the last twenty years, exactly how? No matter what they say any more, anybody that believes them has, well, questionable judgement.
Yeah, we promise this version will actually be reliable, secure and stable (and compatible with previous versions).
ODF is about reducing overhead costs, compatibility issues and long term data retention. As well as issuring competition which is a legal requirment for most government purchases.
Yes, it is for every company on the planet apart from microsoft, who although they are free to use it, not only refuse to do so but are doing everything in their power to destroy it, this is commonly reffered to as blind greed.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
No, have a look here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_applications_ supporting_OpenDocument, there are not many applications yet, but the list is growing
either you are incredibly uninformed, or you really were trolling.
;)
i'll try to respond to some of things you said, though my goal is not to convert you - my goal is to give you food for thoughts and make you research this topic at least slightly more.
As I see it governments will have a choice of choosing between two formats both of which are in XML, both of which have a license attached to them, one format regulated by a bunch of bureaucrats with an anti-corporate agenda, the other a dedicated commercial operation (ie microsoft).
you have mixed up so many things, i am pretty sure this was intentional. let's break it up, will we ?
As I see it governments will have a choice of choosing between two formats
that i can mostly agree with (though there will be other formats for other purposes, of course)
both of which are in XML
and here we have a first problem. you are seriously oversimplifying this thing (which is what ms are doing...). xml is only a container, which, in microsofts case, can contain proprietary objects. xml itself means very little, you have to look deeper than that.
both of which have a license attached to them, one format regulated by a bunch of bureaucrats with an anti-corporate agenda, the other a dedicated commercial operation (ie microsoft)
wtf ? this sounds pretty crappy. first, of course they have a license. let's just say that ms windows and linux both have license attached, thus they must be equal in this aspect. have you noticed that - oh my - licenses differ ?
"bunch of bureaucrats with an anti-corporate agenda" ? i'd like to note that we must remind mcnealy that he must be anto-corporate. seriously. oh, and ms also is participating in oasis, so they must be "bureaucrats with an anti-corporate agenda" (or maybe we can call the "a bunch" in a single entity ?)
Ultimately they have no control of either format, if they wanted something changed in the format they'd have to bargain with Oasis in the same way they'd have to bargain with Microsoft.
um. no. the biggest gain is that there is no single controlling entity which could change the format specifications for their own good. and i suppose anybody can join oasis.
The commercial reality of it is simply this, Microsoft has poorly supported its formats on other operating systems because of the same reasons why every other vendor of software, drivers etc etc has poorly supported Linux and Mac.... numbers.... the numbers are in Windows, if you're making a product for the desktop that's always going to be your target market, where you stand to make or lose the most money. If you have finite resources and time (which is always the case) you'll sacrafice support for other operating systems in favour of Windows every time. There's no conspiracy here, it's just reality.
well, maybe you have missed here. in this case you have yourself shown why exactly current situation is extremly bad. you see, if the format is really open, there is _no need_ for ms to support linux, mac, beos. yeah, and that is what ms fears. because, if file format is really open and standardised, somebody can compete with ms on a relatively level playing field, on a basis of features and quality, not ability to catch microsoft. that would allow somebody to compete on their platform, but, more importantly, that would also allow competitors to use another platforms (thus ms would lose the ability to fight their competitors in office software space by abusing their operating system stronghold). that would result in a good support for file formats on all platforms, which would not be dependant on a single company.
If I was making a decision in a government body I'd choose the format with the broadest support
can you work both for ms and gov simultaneously ?
with the most amount features for the handicapped.
what ? care to elaborate what "features for handicapped" has ms office xml format over opendocu
Rich