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Novell "Forking" OpenOffice.org

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the patent-office-dot-org dept.

l2718 writes to mention that In the wake of their recent deal with Microsoft, Novell has announced a new version of OpenOffice.org which will support Microsoft's planned Office formal, Open XML. From the article: "The translators will be made available as plug-ins to Novell's OpenOffice.org product. Novell will release the code to integrate the Open XML format into its product as open source and submit it for inclusion in the OpenOffice.org project. As a result, end users will be able to more easily share files between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org, as documents will better maintain consistent formats, formulas and style templates across the two office productivity suites."

2 of 370 comments (clear)

  1. Punctuation Abuse? by Kelson · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Perhaps when it acquired quotation marks? In the ever evolving english language, perhaps "forking" means "releasing plugins for a product" and forking means what it bloody well already does mean.

    Hmm, that reminds me of the trend of tacking on a question mark to a controversial headline in order to avoid claims of inaccuracy. The headline would be something like, "Slashdot Full of Weirdos?" and even if the article concedes that, no, only half of Slashdot posters are weirdos, so it can hardly be construed as "full" of them, the impression has still been made -- especially on the casual viewer who sees the headline, but doesn't read the article.

  2. Chasing taillights. by khasim · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The problem with that is it would just take 1 "high priority" "security update" to break the compatibility. And then all those OpenOffice.org installations are "broken" for their customers. Just stick with MS Office, it's less likely to "break".

    Microsoft would be happy to maintain control of the de facto "standard" in file formats. That way they can keep everyone chasing after their last update.

    Instead, Novell should be looking at making it easier to migrate FROM Microsoft's standards.