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Jeremy Allison On Microsoft, OOXML and Standards
An anonymous reader writes "OOXML is already Microsoft's "de facto" standard as implemented in Office 2007, so when would any changes arising from the Comments Resolution meeting in February 2008 be put in place? According to Jeremy Allison's latest column, when last minute changes were suggested for the CIFS standard, which Samba exists to disentangle, "the response came back from Microsoft that although the fixes were valid, unfortunately the code was already written and was going to be shipped in the next service pack. End of discussion. It wasn't even in a shipping product yet, but the specification was determined to be unchangeable as they didn't want to change their existing code.""
"Today, ninety-two percent of desktops and now seventy percent of servers run the completely proprietary and non-standardized Microsoft Windows operating system." 70% of servers are running Windows? What year is this? Have I been in some kind of coma?
Palm trees and 8
Presumably that would mean that Microsoft couldn't legitimately claim that Office 2007 followed an ISO standard, which is the whole point of this exercise?
Well, I guess it wouldn't stop them from trying, or at least issuing confusing public statements on the subject.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
"My own favorites were Cuba voting "yes" to the fast-tracking of OOXML, even though Microsoft is prohibited by the US Government from selling any software on the island that might even be able to read and write the new format, and Azerbaijan's "yes" vote, even though OOXML as defined isn't able to express a Web URL address in Azeri, their official language."
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
Long ago, anyone could claim to be a doctor... eventually the government and other bodies stepped in and started requiring standards. Not so long ago, the same thing happened to dentistry. Similar things happened to architects, electricians, plumbers and many other professions that shape the quality of life, existence and industry in the modern world. Oddly, we have yet to establish such standards in software and information technology and yet it is precisely software and information technology that virtually every aspect of life in the modern world heavily depend on.
There have been many disasters caused by bad code, bugs or other glitches in systems and yet for some reason it's more important that development costs are saved by using crappy programmers with crappy programming practices. Thousands of people will have to suffer and die before things will change I guess... that's what it took for all those listed above.
That's how software in the commercial world works. Software has to ship, and changing code at the last second means complete test runs which both pushes the schedules back as well as costing and organization a lot. Releasing patches is an expensive ordeal as well. It's not like you just can put up a .patch file and expect everyone to download, integrate it, and re-compile their app.
Of course a company isn't going to change their software at the last second. Just because something hasn't shipped yet doesn't mean it isn't done.
Have you take a look at these products?
http://www.varicad.com/VariCAD - supports DWG files via the http://opendesign.com/"Open Design Alliance"
http://fastcad.com/ fastcad - Created by none other than the original developer of AutoCAD, Mike Riddle. Apparently version 8 will run on Linux
note: I have only researched these products because I want to start a Linux solutions company. I have not used them myself (yet). Also IANAE (I am not an engineer)
Here's to the crazy ones
I have been following this lateest tatic of M$ to FUD the ISO, and I never heard this aspect of their unwillingness to follow their own standards, and of course, ship the clothes anyway.
I am going to let users know, and have them bail out of Office 2007 by the thousands.