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GNOME Foundation Helping OOXML?
christian.einfeldt writes "According to long-time OpenDocument Fellowship member Russell Ossendryver, it appears that GNOME founder Miguel de Icaza's widely-publicized praise for OOXML as a 'superb standard' is being followed up with on-going support by the GNOME Foundation in 'resolving' the thousands of criticisms leveled against Microsoft's proposed standard. In an open letter in his blog, Ossendryver urges the GNOME Foundation to halt its apparent support for OOXML as a standard and to put its efforts behind enhancing adoption of the genuinely open standard, ODF, which was approved by the world standards bodies as ISO/IEC standard 26300 on 2 May 2006."
Miguel de fucking Icaza has been kissing Microsoft's ass for years now. Can we please get rid of him already?!
~Eien no Inori wo Sasagete~ Searching for my Hatsumi...
Miguel's stated that, as a standard, OOXML is alright, but also shuddered at dealing with the way Microsoft abused binary segments in the format. The reason Novell et the GNOME foundation are so involved is for simple compatibility reasons. What better way to lure Windows users away than to provide support for the formats their existing documents are probably already in?
"Miguel de Icaza's widely-publicized praise for OOXML as a 'superb standard'"
There is really only a few possibilities:
1) The community is wrong and OOXML is really an open/good standard (heh)
2) One of the heads of GNOME is so inept as not to be able to see that OOXML is far from being an open standard
3) Icaza was bought off
Or is it something else:
4) ???
...dev tools that he feels he can deliver in his open mono implementations.
The MS haters feel dealing with MS is dealing with the devil.
Miguel has delivered useful open stuff.
The haters have delivered hot air.
"What better way to lure Windows users away than to provide support for the formats their existing documents are probably already in?"
Accommodation will only get you so far, sometimes it's time to fight back. This is why I use OGG and ODF when I shares books/music etc. with people, I made a conscious decision to promote these standards.
The fact is, at the moment, Gnome is ideologically flawed. Even in terms of presenting a nice clean UI, xfce-4 does a considerably better job using their own libraries. If only distributions like Ubuntu would stop promoting the idea that Gnome is the de-facto UI of choice for Linux, maybe Gnome would seriously consider their problems and improve.
Insert self-referential sig here.
Well, that's the beaty of Open Source. You don't like it? Don't support them, or fork the project or do whatever you want. They are in their freaking right of supporting whoever they want. And they have help a LOT the OS community. Mono is a great port of the net service and Silverlight is on its way to linuzz thanks to those guys. The DO something. What do YOU do?
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
This is slashdot. Everybody here knows that OOXML is just another msft attempt to control the standard. OOXML is not open, and everybody here knows it.
I happen to think that mono and evolution suck. I'll bet a lot of other people think so also.
Why doesn't Miguel just go work for msft? If Miguel is so happy sucking up to msft, and working with msft to ruin F/OSS; then I think that F/OSS community would be just as happy to see Miguel take his suckie dev tools elsewhere.
Does anybody even use mono?
The article author is either stupid beyond belief or deliberately trying to cause spite and malice. Neither GNOME the project, nor The GNOME Foundation is in any way or form backing OOXML! Miguel de Icaza is, but most other foundation members are staunchly against it. Not that it matters, there is a big fucking difference between individuals opinions and the stance of an organization. If the author has some beef with de Icaza, then he should say so, but don't try to paint the GNOME Foundation with the same brush. Fucking moron troll.
Football Odds
I think KDE is pulling away from gnome anywhere. Personally, I use IceWM. If you don't have hardware resources to burn, you may be happier with lighter DE.
He already tried to join once. Looks like he never got over the rejection
Does anyone still doubt that Miguel de Icaza is a microsoft shill? I think it's time for him to join microsoft and work on their "open source" strategy. Hey, it worked out for Bill Hilf...
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Miguel De Icaza has already lost all his credibility since the mono days, where he pushed the transition of Linux developers to a Microsoft technology for no reason.
Now he works for Novell, a company with links and agreements with Microsoft, and instead of teaching his fellow developers how to write a damn working file chooser, he spends more time pushing for more Microsoft stuff.
He is a Microsoft developer now; What should people expect to get/hear from him other than more Microsoft bull?
I don't know about you, but my first reaction was..
what. the. fuck.
OOXML is a awful standard, filled with numerous little features that seem purposely designed to make it difficult for anybody but MS to implement. Icaza is NOT an idiot, so he must know that this response will be flamed to a crisp across the community - so why is he doing it?
What does he stand to gain from backing this? What have I missed?
But I wouldn't be surprised. Mr. Miguel de Icaza has been very clear about his love for Microsoft and "their" technologies. I never actually hear him choosing community technologies to boast, but maybe that is just due to bias reporting. Either way, it will be interesting to see his reaction if think ever really go bad. I'd also be interested in hearing his opinion on the recent law suit against RedHat.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
What is so bad about Mono?
The reason Novell et the GNOME foundation are so involved is for simple compatibility reasons. What better way to lure Windows users away than to provide support for the formats their existing documents are probably already in?
That sounds nice but it falls down when M$ sends in a clown car full of patent lawyers. That's one of the big reasons OOXML needs to be shot down by ISO. The others are a lack of completeness and 998 other technical problems. OOXML is not doing well in the marketplace and probably never will. If ever there was a case of wasted effort, OOXML is it. Resources are better spent making better ODF applications.
As for a better way to lure Windows users, have you seen Vista?
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I'm not trolling here, I really am curious: is Miguel de Icaza basically a Microsoft stooge? I mean, didn't he put hard for .NET compatibility stuff for Linux?
Maybe.. but until the KDE guys can come up with something that's not so goddamned ugly and annoying to use the only other game in town is XFCE. And make no mistake, KDE sucks total fucking ass. And yes, that includes the vaunted KDE 4.
There's a reason Ubuntu uses Gnome.
Wow, that started off reading like sarcasm, but it turns out you were serious?
IceWM, Fluxbox, Blackbox.
There are other options.
(Not that XFCE is bad, I like it)
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
I've been developing in C# for sometime now. I've also done extensive development in Java, PHP, and Perl. I can tell you that the .Net framework and Visual Studio is by FAR the most productive environment for developing desktop applications, and (in some instances) web apps.
.Net framework, and the .Net development environment itself, to Linux?
And you're complaining that someone is working to bring all the applications developed on the
WTF is your problem? Are you really that stupid to think that interoperability with MS tools/frameworks is a BAD thing? How many people do you think would use Linux at ALL if Samba didn't allow communication to Windows boxes? Or what if there was no way to read/write an NTFS partition? Interoperability is key, and the task Miguel has undertaken is a good one. Quit complaining that someone's working to make Linux a more competitive OS.
Gnome has made linux a viable alternative for common users by embracing technologies and techniques that embrace popular convenience over sensationalist activism. I hope some random passive aggressive blog attack doesn't do anything to defer them from this path- lest we go back to the dark ages of linux as a curiosity, aka the KDE days.
We're close to something big, and gnome's practicality is the driving force behind it, linux be damned- he is not linux.
Masterful, but you worked the bait just a little too hard at that point.
" ... This "users are idiots, and are confused by functionality" mentality of Gnome is a disease ... Please, just tell people to use KDE." -- Linus Torvalds
There may be more problems, but the one I like the most is "because it cedes control over how people develop software (C# and the .NET API) for a free platform (Mono) to Microsoft". With such control in hand, Microsoft can make the development as awkward or costly as they want. And in the unlikely hypothesis developers succeed, Microsoft may call in all their patents and make half of Gnome illegal in the US.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Samba certainly isn't ideal, and neither is Wine. The problem is, there is a massive installed base where it can be used. No so with
Interoperability is done on Microsoft's terms. In order to make Linux a 'competitive OS', it has to be offering something unique itself. Following other people is not a good idea.
Very informative AC post.
What's in a sig?
I slightly recall an episode of Star Trek NG or deep space nine, where some doctor had performed bad things to get to a
cure of some deadly disease. The one cured by it was opposed because of all those that had been tortured and killed by
this doctor. The doctor had been brought to life in the holodeck where the cure was figured out. Afterward there was
the ethical concern as to what to do with the doctors holodeck program and the found cure.
The cure had come from bad things done by this doctor.
I don't recall what was decided in datails but I believe they deleted him and the cure.
So do we adopt ooxml if it really is a stronger thing?
And if we do so does that also promote ends justifies the means?
Linus is not serious about freedom. He has other priorities.
Freedom is free.
where he pushed the transition of Linux developers to a Microsoft technology for no reason.
There are excellent reasons to push Mono; in the long term, Linux needs something better than C/C++.
he spends more time pushing for more Microsoft stuff
And for the last two decades, people were pushing AT&T stuff, some of it patented. Free software has always skirted around patent mine fields of big corporations; it has to, there is no other way of writing useful free software. So far, there is no indication that there is any more risk to Mono from Microsoft than there was to Linux from AT&T.
I looked at the gnumeric developpement version and nothing is done to support ODF but everything is done to support Microsoft OpenXML. It's a shame this software was a great one!
If I had mod points, I'd mod you up.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ntfs-3g
"Unlike the NTFS driver included in the Linux kernel, [NTFS-3G]'s support for writing files has few limitations: files of any size can be created, modified, renamed, moved, or deleted on NTFS partitions, with the exception of compressed and encrypted files."
Miguel has stated why he likes OOXML: it's easy to take an existing Microsoft Word reader/writer and turn it into an OOXML reader/writer, because the file structures are so similar. That makes transitioning existing Microsoft-compatible software to OOXML much easier than transitioning to ODF.
That's a reasonable position. I still think it's wrong.
The purpose of an XML document format is to enable other people to do interesting things with the format, not to make life easy for the few people porting existing Microsoft Word compatible software. Furthermore, open source projects need to support ODF anyway because ODF is here and it's here to stay.
G'day,
:-)
The background is really simple: While Jody Goldberg (Gnumeric maintainer extraordinaire) was at Novell, he had been doing rocking work on the ECMA committee to make sure OOXML didn't just slip through, under-specified and uninvestigated. Jody put them through the wringer!
So, when Jody left Novell, the GNOME Foundation supported his participation on the ECMA working group, so he could continue to "keep the bastards honest".
The GNOME Foundation does not support ISO standardisation of OOXML. But whether or not that happens, we're still going to have to support Microsoft document formats, just like everyone else. Should we let Microsoft shove OOXML through ECMA without challenge? Hell no. That's why we have one of our best hackers in there, holding their feet to the fire.
Thanks,
- Jeff Waugh, GNOME Foundation Board
(Given how often it comes up, I suppose it's also important to note that Miguel does not speak for the GNOME Foundation or the GNOME project in general.)
Dat wut I luv teh Lunix about: it'z teh allz about teh choice. But don't be chooze teh MiKKKr0$l0th... cuz dey iz teh EVILZ!!!!
So be teh choice, buts can't choose teh MiKKKrosloth. Cuz it's about teh choice!
*holds up a mirror*
"Hello 911? I just tried to toast some bread, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!"
I can't imagine why the British Library and the Library of Congress support such a crappy standard, while there already is one which they could improve if they'd like (If you work at either and are reading this, please consider joining the OASIS office TC as well, home of the ISO ODF standard ;-) ).
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Interoperability is one thing, writing Gnome components in .NET is quite another. The former is good while the latter is really bad.
Hey thanks for that. However the same page shows it's part of the still rare FUSE framework and wasn't released until last Feb in stable form, so in the context being part of Linux's acceptance it was still an irrelevent troll. Very interesting development though, thx again.
in the subject box!
"rare FUSE framework"? It's in the kernel. Lots of people use it.
You don't have to clone Windows to produce a viable alternative platform... and in fact if you do end up cloning Windows you'll have eliminated everything that makes the result "alternative".
.NET and your formats and user interface and APIs are driven by compatibility with Windows? If I want to run an OS that's compatible with Windows, I've already got that option.
Why should I care about a Linux-based system where your applications are written in
What makes Linux an alternative is that it's an Open Systems environment that happens to be Open Source as well. That applications written for it aren't locked in to Linux, they'll run on any Open Systems platform. If the interfaces and protocols it uses are Microsoft's, then why should anyone care whether it's got a Linux or an NT kernel under the hood?
What worries me most is that you get modded +2 for a comment like this.
The handful of people I know who use newer versions of office are pissed off everytime they forget to "save as" into an older format and that is because of where I work. All work computers are setup with an older version of office (can't remember the version number off the top of my head). These people usually end up switching to an older version of office and I have been able to con some of them into using openoffice.org.
Every time there's a new version of Office Microsoft has made it impossible to maintain a heterogenous environment. You either have to stick with the older apps, or you have to do a mass upgrade... because even if you don't use any of the newer features and even when they've used allegedly backwards compatible formats Word uses them in the saved files.
OOXML is just the latest one-way format change. They're not doing anything to standardise on an open and portable format, they're just taking advantage of the standards process to push through another forced mass upgrade for Office.
As AC pointed out, FUSE has been in the kernel for a while. I think more than a year now. FUSE and NTFS-3g are both enabled by default on Ubuntu Gutsy so most people have it by default.
There's a reason Ubuntu uses Gnome
I think the reason so many distros with Corporate backing default to Gnome is because they are employing the people who make the decisions within the Gnome project. KDE is much more user driven then Gnome in my opinion. With Gnome, Novell can have some real influence.And as for which desktop sucks ass, there's a reason why Gnome has only 3% more users then KDE in spite of most distros defaulting to Gnome for years now. (From http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2007/10/poll-indicates-gnome-most-popular.html )
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
"Because it's not possible to do that, and it's a fool's errand. All it's doing is following Microsoft's latest programming fad."
I've written GTK applications in C#, and it was a very pleasant experience. It allowed me to be productive in writing Linux applications. So just how is that "following Microsoft's latest programming fad"? Mono, as it is right now, is a very capable development environment even for Unix-only apps.
"Interoperability is one thing, writing Gnome components in .NET is quite another. The former is good while the latter is really bad."
.NET on Linux.
Why? It works, it's Unix-only and doesn't work on Windows, it allows developers to be productive. Seems like good reasons to use
Didn't one of the leaked MS documents talk about an "insider" they had in the open source movement?
I fail to see how recreating a Windows-oriented, Microsoft developed development environment should be needed in order to create a capable environment for Unix/Linux only applications. Would it not have been better to come up with something original, with some new ideas?
And for the last two decades, people were pushing AT&T stuff, some of it patented.
AT&T donated the key patent for UNIX (the setuid patent) into the public domain. The UNIX APIs were designed to be independent of the underlying hardware and implementation, and they never made any attempt to enforce any potential copyrights on the UNIX programmer's manuals. The only product I know of that felt it necessary to avoid using the precise APIs described in the manual, ever, was Idris... presumably because it was by a former Bell Labs employee. There are, so far as I can tell, only two significant operating systems started after the publication of the 1976 Bell System Technical Journal that were not based primarily on the UNIX "software tools" environment: Mac OS, and Windows... and both of those were instead based on the Xerox environment. I'm not counting MS-DOS, because it was an 8086 port of CP/M by Tim Patterson of Seattle Computer Systems, and starting with MS-DOS 2.x it was increasingly adopting UNIX APIs.
By 1987 (two decades ago) the UNIX environment had been re-implemented dozens of times, both standalone and hosted on top of other operating systems. By 1997 (one decade ago) there was no operating system in the world that wasn't either UNIX-based, transitioning to UNIX, or shipping with a functional hosted UNIX environment... other than Windows.
And by that time AT&T had sold all their rights in UNIX to Novell, who had publicly disclaimed any intellectual property in the APIs.
If there was any remaining danger in these APIs, the results of the Caldera (the new SCO) suit have completely defanged it.
So far, there is no indication that there is any more risk to Mono from Microsoft than there was to Linux from AT&T.
On the one hand we have a set of APIs that were already in the public domain both because of explicit donation and due to being published without copyright notice before the US joined the Berne convention, and have since been been proven safe to use, and on the other hand we have a set of APIs that are actively controlled by a company that has a history of using submarine patents, and who is currently attempting to monetize them... with some success.
If you can't see there is a difference there you're deliberately not looking at it.
Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.
Rocket science is easy. Neurosurgery, now *that's* difficult.
FFS, give it a rest guys: "Gutsy Gibbon is the code name for Ubuntu 7.10, the current Ubuntu release. It was released on 18 October 2007." What bearing a 10 day old distro release has on the role of NTFS write capability on the past decade's plus adoption of Linux is beyond me, but I'll leave you all to sort that out while I go shopping.
They've said explicitly that OOXML is easier for them to work with then OpenOffice's format. Period. It basically comes down to laziness, one of the primary virtues in hackerdom. So, lay off 'em, unless you're already in your editor writing code.
I'm already in my editor writing code, so I don't have to lay off them. Laziness in the defense of proprietary systems is no virtue.
Mono isn't something that provides interoperability with MS tools, protocols or file formats so I fail to see your point? It's an attempt to make C# apps in Linux and run
Why is it that if someone says they prefer the ms option to the "open" option the news article is labled as troll? Thats right, 98% of the people here hate m$ (notice the clever dollar sign) and are irrational.
He misspoke -- that is to say that he may have spoken in a way that conveys something different than he intended.
For example, he could mean something closer to, "OOXML promises to be a superb standard."
We all know that OOXML has all kinds of serious problems; Miguel's answer seems to be, "the ones that will cause problems for competing implementations are going to get fixed."
Very well, if the specific problems will be fixed, then we can decide whether OOXML is a superb standardization candidate. But I don't think it is ready for prime time until (a) Microsoft can guarantee that other vendors can correctly render any document saved by an MS product in OOXML format and (b) introduction of new standards within ooxml rather than interoperating with existing standards can be justified in terms other than it is convenient for one vendor.
Do both of those things and perhaps you'd have a standard that would free users from dependency on any single vendor, which would be a superb thing.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
it just exposes the more fundamental flaws. I am working on a website to de-duplicate and sort out the comments as a collaborative effort. I hereby invite the slashdot hordes to come and have a look at dis29500.org.
Suddenly,
Xfce looks sooo good...
Seriously guys/gals I think it is time to fork (specially for Ubuntu) gnome or drop it!
Gnomers PLEASE stop supporting the destruction of OSS.
Hell, I've been a Gnome user from the beginning, and I've grown increasingly disappointed with each new version of Gnome after 1.4.
However, there were several things keeping me on Gnome - primarily some of the applets, most of all the dictionary.
Then they crippled its options as well. And now this.
I don't know whether I'll default to KDE 4 or E17 or something completely different, but I think Gnome has seen the last of me.
Ignore this signature. By order.
I had (and still have) ntfs read/write support in fedora6, slightly older distro than gutsy.
yush
None of those Unix-friendly languages is known for its strong desktop application support. So, how does .NET compare to KDevelop or Xcode for cranking out apps? At least those two aim to compete in the same problem space.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Of course, if you want to further Microsoft's stronghold over the market, use their language and "standards".
do not welcome our OOXML-supporting overlords.
Time to look at JWM a little more closely.
>"How many people do you think would use Linux at ALL if Samba didn't allow communication to Windows boxes?
Linux users don't need samba to "communicate with Windows boxes." There's ftp, http, etc. - and its usually Windows users who want to communicate with linux boxes, not the other way around.
>" Or what if there was no way to read/write an NTFS partition?"
If you're a linux user, you probably don't care all that much - you keep your important data on your linux (ext3/reiserfs/whatever) partitions/drives. Or, like me, you don't have any ntfs (or even fat) partitions.
To run VS/.net combo you need something like wine, not something like mono. To get productivity boost, you need better dev tools/libs, not necessarily MS-like. Making those tools crucially dependant on MS is not very smart move.
I don't use Gnome, This guy is known to do this kinda stuff.
;)
No news here, move along to the next post
pfft, use plan9ports or 9wm
you can keep you fancy schamncy
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
(... crickets ...)
Of course, in the absence of any denial, we are always free to draw our conclusions by his actions:
-
support for MS-OOXML as "a great standard"
-
fan boy of Microsoft technology in general
-
general brown-nosing towards Balmarsaurus
...
On the take? I doubt it. Why pay a bribe to someone who is already in so many ways a "useful fool"Can someone please mod kdawson +1 flamebait. Providing as the one reference in the submission a random dude's blog is lame.
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
He didn't, his comment started at +2: +1 for being logged in, +1 for Karma Bonus.
Oh look, this comment started at +2 as well!
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
I can also get it for debian sarge (oldstable) and etch (stable)... despite how long it takes Debian to do anything.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
While in the short term that would suck for the US, long term it could be a blessing.
What happens if Europe and Asia (particularly Europe) mandates the use of open and transparent software and standards in computing within government? Companies wanting government contracts may well find it cheaper and easier to adopt a strategy of switching over to F/OSS OSes. Then companies that have switched for government work may agree to communicate in the same open formats. I know I find it easier developing software for Unix environments on a unix like desktop - my brain wastes fewer cycles switching modes.
So in this hypothetical scenario, Europian and maybe Asian companies and governments switch largely to F/OSS - those that don't go under. The US stays with Windows and Gnome/Linux are illegal. US companies do business in the US and find it hard to gain entry into any overseas markets while the rest of the world thrives on cheaper open standards based software.
If you think this is a doom and gloom scenario for the US, think about it some more. How long would a situation like this last? Either the US then nukes the rest of the world for obstructing US commercial interests, or laws get changed, software patents are abolished and open standards are accepted if not endorsed by government elected by people who are sick of being isolated from the international community. This scenario is likely why Microsoft is buying up standards bodies around the world, particularly in poorer European states.
Sure there's some pain, but it's the inevitable pain caused by so emphatically embracing a single ideology (in the US case market driven capitalism) over more balanced policy. The pain should be relatively short lived.
I don't therefore I'm not.
I had read/write ntfs support in Fedora 3, tho I had to do a little research and install it from linux-ntfs.org, and at the time it had limited write support (it would force a file system check upon reboot into windows)
I bet Richard Stallman's biggest regret is gnome and the ensuing crap that followed gnome.
Of course it's not an open standard. MSFT haters like you shot it down for recommendation. People b*tch about MSFT not being open, and when they try people b*tch about their attempts.
When MSFT was developing OOXML ODF was not yet ratified and MSFT has a product to deliver. Schedules: it's what commercial software runs on.
While working for Novell I was able to join both OASIS for ODF and ECMA for OOX. After leaving the OO.o development team at Novell to return to other work I lost both memberships and had to scramble to rejoin. Maintaing Gnumeric is a hobby, and my current employer is not involved in the standardization process. Paying out the membership costs of either OASIS or ECMA was not going to happen at the personal or corporate level. Thankfully there was a non-profit tier available, and the GNOME Foundation generously sponsored me to re-join ECMA and TC45 to continue to participate in the the specification process. After spending the last 8 years playing proctologist to every spreadsheet format around, and complaining loudly at the poor quality of documentation for XLS it seems ridiculous to pass up the opportunity to engage MS, and ensure that the spec of their new format was more detailed than previous efforts.
My personal opinion (not speaking for the GNOME foundation or past or present employers) is that both specs should be standards
http://www.gnome.org/~jody/files/2007-ON-Linux-Beyond-ISO-Dome.pdf
The FLOSS community is going to need to implement importers for both formats to help our users, and I'll be happiest when both OOX and ODF are significantly clearer. 5700 pages of OOX is too _short_, Likewise the 700 + 300 (Open formula) in ODF is far too short. Lets double the size of OOX (although with better formatting the number of pages would likely be unchanged), and lets quadruple the level of detail in ODF to get it into a useful state. I only wish that ODF had undergone a fraction of the review that OOX has seen.
This is not about GNOME endorsing OOX, it's about GNOME doing the work necessary for users. There should be reps from Sun's OO.o team on the ECMA TC, and MS reps in the ODF meetings. The goal of this process is to produce useful documentation, and it takes an implementor to know where the really important details are. It hardly seems in the best interest of the FLOSS community to leave the standardization efforts up to corporate interests at Microsoft, Sun, or IBM.
Microsoft may call in all their patents and make half of Gnome illegal in the US.
We can only hope.
The Farewell Tour II
1) OOX was easier to deal for several reasons. Yes, some of it was because Gnumeric's data structures were designed around the Excel UI and hence matched nicely with the MS file formats. However, that was only part of the issue. SpreadsheetML was clearly written by the Excel team, whereas the ODF spreadsheet functionality frequently feels like it was written by XML document people. ODF is missing critical spreadsheet features like shared expressions and strings. It took me about 12 hours of hacking to implement chart import for OOX to a reasonable level. I've just wasted 48 hours on ODF chart import trying to reverse engineer how to allocate data to charts. That kind of ratio is not the way to make people love ODF.
2) 'very rich support'. This depends on how you parse things. Our OOX importer was more advanced that the ODF importer after about 1 week of effort. At the time Brian made his comment the _exporter_ was not terribly advanced. That is being rectified for the upcoming gnumeric 1.8.x release. Calling gnumeric's round trip capabilities for OOX 'very rich' was an exaggeration, but it's a stretch to call it a complete lie. On the flip side, ODF proponents seem happy to tout our suboptimal ODF implementation. Both filters are improving, but it's more than a bit hypocritical to try and complain about OOX and laud ODF for filters of comparable quality.
Is Miguel de Icaza more like Saruman the White or the Dark Lord Sauron here? It appears to be madness that he is following the incantations and spells of the dark side, swearing allegiance and fealty and promoting OOXML even though its clearly inferior. Its disappointing de Icaza has become so corrupted. It could be that he is being very well paid for his efforts, but in the end, he will be given the contempt he has earned over the past few years. I use Gnome, but de Icaza doesn't do a lot with Gnome any more. I don't touch mono and don't want to catch mono, so I leave it alone and am very happy because of that. If he could only keep his mouth shut about ODF and the disgrace that is OOXML. Instead, he continues to pledge all to the dark side. Maybe he isn't so bright after all.
If you're a linux user, you probably don't care all that much - you keep your important data on your linux (ext3/reiserfs/whatever) partitions/drives.
Important data? On reiserfs?
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Miguel de Icaza is like Nancy Pelosi in the U.S. House or Representatives. Supposedly on our side but defending the actions of the opposing party.
He is a cancer and everything he proposes is dangerous for Linux and F/OSS in general.
In these days of equivocation and acceptance of ideologically contrary situations as long it is "inconvenient" to object, we get what we deserve.
This is how our movement dies.
The .NET Frameworks are backwards compatible, much in the same way the Java runtimes are. The 2.0 Framework will run 1.1 code (without having 1.1 installed), 1.1 will run 1.0, etc. .NET 3.0 isn't a runtime (runs on 2.0), so it doesn't count. You do have the option to have multiple versions installed, hence the multiple directories.
No sig, sorry.
Please be specific. How, exactly, has he held their feet to the fire? Read this Ecma page, please, and please point out exactly what he has been responsible for changing for the better for anyone but Microsoft.
First, GP had some good points, at least regarding OOXML. They did kind of ruin it with the Mono comment, though.
.NET development environment. Being tied to a commercial MS product is definitely a bad thing.
Second, you mention Java, PHP, and Perl -- how much have you used Perl? What about Python or Ruby?
I can say that while Visual Studio is nice, I've been sticking to eclipse, and in both, there are things I really miss about my old vim environment. I have to say I was most productive, oddly enough, on a Mac, running Terminal, ssh'd in to a Linux machine, using vim and ruby.
Interoperability is not a bad thing. However, using them instead of what we believe to be better tools, locally, is a bad thing. Unless he's planning to develop Gnome components in Visual Studio on Windows, you don't really get the
If Samba didn't exist, it would be a bit more hassle, but not much -- we have WebDAV, FTP, NFS (I'm fairly sure there's a Windows client somewhere), SCP/SFTP, rsync, and so on.
There was not read/write support for NTFS for most of the time I've been using Linux. The write support came recently, and was still quite painful to do until very recently (this year or so). For awhile, the read support wasn't necessarily dependable either, so we would either install Windows on FAT, or have a separate FAT partition -- or use Samba servers. And Linux still makes a great server -- arguably a better webserver -- without any of these things.
Lastly, I don't really care if Linux is a more competitive OS. I only want it to be a capable OS. I realize it has to be a bit of both, but for the most part, I can actually live without Windows, if I have to. Thus, it's Windows (Vista, especially) which needs to prove itself "competitive", at least to me.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Personally, I think that Less is More. We don't need more standards. We don't need more complex standards either. We don't need more pages. We need less.
The point of standards is that they should encourage the maximum number of implementations, and the best way to do it is by not being a burden on the implementation. If the implementation has to implement two different standards, it will be double the burden, and to what benefit?
I agree that the specification should be clear and in some cases that would mean adding more pages to it, but what you're saying seems to me you're encouraging adding complexity, you're advocating "adding more pages" when in fact you should advocate specifying some things better without compromising its simplicity and conciseness.
--
"Standards are so great that everyone should have its own."
Or Enlightenment? Or Fluxbox? Or WindowMaker?
Really?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Most of the replies to your post seem to be "Why bother?"
However I completely understand and do the same thing myself. I do as much as possible in ODF and ogg theora, even at work. And then I tell people what I'm doing. Most don't get it. However a few do and even appreciate the idea (especially other Linux/*BSD users). You have to build awareness one step at a time.
So please keep it up and continue encouraging others! If we don't, who will?
One of the reasons they gave was that they wanted to create a new 'open' format; hence the name 'Office Open XML'.
But why?
If they want interoperability with other vendors they could have just opened up the specifications for the current binary format (doc, ppt, xls, etc.). Of this format we (library developers) at least knew what problems would arise when converting to their 'standard'. We where almost a 100% compatible. I can only imagine the reason Microsoft is creating a new standard/format is to make sure that all conversion libraries out there are no longer compatible. We (library developers) will have to start over to make OOXML converters and we will have to discover their new tricks.
I don't think "amusing" is the term I would have chosen. Anyone out there support the Gnome Foundation with donations? How do you feel about the organisation using your money do provide free work for Microsoft?
I think we as a community need to think long and hard about our support for Gnome. I know that a lot of people have an investment in Gnome, either in terms of code contributed, or simply because it's the desktop they know best; but the further Gnome gets into bed with MS, the more I worry about the wisdom of supporting the project.
As Queen Victoria might have put it: "we are not amused"
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Fuck off Gnome... I hate you. Crawl up Microsoft's ass and die.
I don't ever put that rubbish on my systems anyways.
We've seen Microsoft involved in "adapting" open standards before, which they quite deliberately broke to their own advantage to promote incompatibility with the existing standard. When they own the standard, it's far easier for them to do, and we've seen that historically with their Word and Excel document formats, and their oddnesses in the MS Exchange calendar system.
Microsoft does not use open standards by any set of rules except "take ownership".
So simple, if you don't help M$, but use their tech, you will get killed. .net in itself is not better than any other technology out there (C++ or Java), the fully integrated developer environment is what makes it better.
Wine would be killed if it depends on M$.
Samba would be killed if it depends on M$.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Which is exactly the point!!!!!!!! An open document format has different requirements than a spreadsheet application. Going from a document format to an application is often hard, so deal with it. Letting a document format be dictated by an application is exactly what one avoids!
Thanks for clarifying your position, I now understand it, and disagree with it totally.
Bart
I don't agree with Linus' comments on KDE/GNOME. Aside from the fact that KDE (and Qt) in general looks worse (regardless of theme) than GTK2 and GNOME (at least, with a clearlooks skin), and the fact that KDE doesn't know how to name its applications properly, Gnome does not have the mentality that "Functionality confuses users", they simply have the time-honored software development principle at heart: Keep it simple, stupid. The other thing to note is, this guy is obviously both a wanker and an MS sellout, but that certainly doesn't mean it should terminate our support for GNOME as a reliable and worthwhile piece of software. Particularly seeing as the rest of the GNOME team don't endorse his ideas. We should also be facing up to the facts. This isn't Slashdotland (and I shudder to think of what that would entail), and hence any format Microsoft push hard enough will eventually become a de facto standard. At least, this way, we can say that our competing products already have total support for the latest MS formats (that is, once it DOES become de facto standard) to the average luddite that your slashdot zealotry causes you to attempt to convert to FOSS.
Sure. Just don't buy cheap arse shit systems that will expose that it's more brittle when things are unreliable. You can lose the data on any filesystem, reiserfs will just take the entire tree with it.
And reiserfsck --rebuild-tree will shit itself if you have reiserfs images stored in your filesystem.
That said, it's a tool that has its place, and it's a bloody good filesystem for storing large amounts of email on big _reliable_ drive units without your performance sinking through the floor.
(believe me, the other "poster child" filesystems have their own issues too)
I'm hanging out for btrfs to stabilise though. I already run my local maildirs on it, and am quite happy.
I was looking for something to reply to that fitted best.
...
Just because you don't like Miguel, you can't deny that MONO is so much more than C#.
Didn't you notice that Python runs on MONO and the implications of that?
Java is getting fucked by Microsoft because they didn't open up their virtual machine to other
languages.If they had, we wouldn't have had this discussion. We'd be busy writing our Python
and Ruby code to run on the Java virtual machine.
It might still happen, but in that case I bet that MONO is involved in making it happen.
Listen up! MONO is great because you can run several languages in the same runtime.
This is Microsoft greatest invention, yeah, you read that right, they didn't copy it from
SUN because SUN was boneheaded and tried to shove ONLY the Java language down our
Not only is Qt dual licensed (proprietary or GPL, you choose) the KDE Free Qt Foundation was set up to ensure that regardless of what happens to Trolltech, Qt, which is the foundation of KDE, will remain available.
Rather ironic that a project like Gnome which was established to create a Free counterpart to what was back then non-Free software has become an antagonist to open source and even to open standards. A small number of Gnome people work against open standards, that hurts both closed and open source projects.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Ossendryver urges the GNOME Foundation to halt its support for OOXML as an apparent standard.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
"Because recreating the .Net framework should not be a requirement for writing GTK applications in a nicer way."
It isn't, has never been, and will never be a requirement. It is an extra alternative for those who prefer it, just like PyGTK and Java-GNOME.
"Would it not have been better to come up with something original, with some new ideas?"
Original != better. As they say, "good artists create, great artists copy". C# already has many good things: is similar to Java, but with a different VM design (generics implemented in VM instead of language), support for Delphi-style properties, language-integrated queries, partial classes, preprocessor support, structs, easy integration with C libraries, a large class library, etc. None of those things (except parts of the class library, like Windows.Forms) are Windows specific and are very well-suited for cross-platform, general purpose development. What's the point in rewriting all those things? Just to get rid of the "MS" label?
I couldn't care less whether a language is copied from something else, as long as it does the job well. They can copy all they want.
"further Microsoft's stronghold over the market"? There is nothing to further, they already have 98% of the desktop market and even Apple can't make a significant dent in it. They can't be any more powerful than they already are.
Of course it's not an open standard. MSFT haters like you shot it down for recommendation
I think you are confusing cause and effect. People like me shot down OOXML because msft refuses to make OOXML an actual open standard. Much of OOXML is closed.
If this absolutely must have a Wikipedia link, at least credit the correct person.
Yes, supporting OOXML is wrong and while I can see reasoning why GNOME Foundation did it (ISO or not ISO, OOXML will be reality for rather long time, let's not slip there in wishful denial), it doesn't seem right. But as this bashin...sorry opinion piece doesn't hold any hints from even trying to get GNOME Foundation answer these accusations, I don't see any reason for flaming.
:) (joke, people)
What I hate more than trying to hype MS tech is flaming from KDE/anti-GNOME guys and trying to trump up KDE and put down GNOME as badass environment. Come on, let's be at least honest. Yes, Gconf is not perfect, but it has proven it's role over time. Yes, someone won't like Mono, but I use Tomboy and love it, while hating slow-to-death Banshee. Some technologies do work, and some not. Some things in GNOME is I can't live without (yes, some people *love* less verbosity in desktop) and there are some things I easily disagree with.
It is really love or hate contest? Do really KDE fans believe that their DE is only one? Then I am really sorry for them, because I think that diversity of free desktop is amazing achievement. That possibility to choose CSharpGtk or PyGTK for coding application is great. That possibility to choose have super-verbose or minimalistic environment is a main reason why free desktop advances so fast.
But heck, what I know, I am not KDE user
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Nothing relieves you of the responsibility of making backups.
Besides, rumour has it reiserfs is a real killer file system ...
Miguel has been a leader in several projects I've used a lot; first Midnight Commander, then Gnome, and now Mono, so I care about what he says (not that I agree with him on everything). He appears also as a reasonable guy, so I listen, and then make my own opinion.
Obviously when I wrote "developed after UNIX" I mean "the development process started after UNIX".
I'm exquisitely familiar[*] with The Univac/Sperry/Unisys 1100/2200 series. I'm familiar with MCP inly through the literature, admittedly. And I know why SX1100 was called "SUX 1100". By 1997 the writing was on the wall even for the Swift, and for some years now Exec and MCP have only been sold under emulation.
I suppose I could qualify that with "by 1997 there was no operating system that wasn't clearly a lame duck that..." but really, you're stretching here.
[*] Read as "exquisitely painfully familiar".
The original POSIX subsystem was deliberately crippled by Microsoft, and the crippled version is the only one shipping with any non-server version of Windows. The updated version, Interix, was written by Softway Systems using a licensed copy of the original POSIX source code. They were bought by Microsoft (this was announced during a Usenix convention where Steve Walli showed himself remarkably capable of dissimulation, because I'd asked him about the possibility at the beginning of the conference and he gave me NO indication that it was about to happen) and the prodcut was apparently shelved then finally came out as a free-but-unadvertised download. Yes, I've used it myself, it's great, but it doesn't count as something shipping with Windows even now.
The patent license from Sun for ODF only covers version 1.0, plus any subsequent versions that Sun participates in the development of. That means that if Sun doesn't like the direction ODF goes, they can stop it by stepping back. Sun has stated that ODF is meant to support exactly those features needed by StarOffice, no more. Until Sun makes ODF an actual open standard, that can be evolved outside of Sun's control, so that it can evolve to handle both Office and StarOffice documents, it is simply not an option.
Besides, rumour has it reiserfs is a real killer file system
It sure is!
If by 'killer filesystem' you mean it will kill your files...
(ie after an unclean shutdown you can find all sorts of files have been spliced together in interesting ways, movie files with bits of text file in them, text files with bits of binary files in them, that sort of thing).
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Of course they can. Their goal is a complete monopoly, not a near-monopoly like they have now. If they have it their way, all computing activities in the world are done on Microsoft platforms with only Microsoft software. That competitors even exist is certainly a thorn in their side.
O <-your head
Try this
"They put a bunch of R&D into C# and its standard libraries, and then released it as an open specification."
:)
if you call R&D stealing from lessons learned from toying with their licensed JVM and later hiring most of the Borland Delphi guys, I'll dig it...
"Having a C# implementation in Linux, with a decent C# widget toolkit, is a good way to invite developers into the open source world."
no, it's a good way to maintain them in the same sheep mentality. Developing under Linux is a good way to learn new technologies and paradigms, entering in contact with non-mainstream mumbo-jumbo. Python, Ruby, Perl, Common Lisp, OCaml, Scheme, Haskell are all proper and better alternatives than low-level C coding...
"Going from [Visual Studio + C# + Windows.Forms] to [MonoDevelop + C# + GTK#] is a lot less daunting than to [emacs + C + GTK], etc."
what about to vim+python+pygtk?
I don't feel like it...
"So what do you do when your bundled DLL is x86, but your customers suddenly ask for ARM? Or when your bundled DLL calls Win32 or WinCE, but your customers ask for Linux or Mac versions? If your program relies on unmanaged code that is not included as part of the .NET or Mono system libraries, then why are you using managed code in the first place?"
.NET app doesn't depend on any obvious Windows-specific things like Windows.Forms or the NTFS API, but does depend on native libraries, then theoretically you can run that app on both Windows and Linux, provided that the native library has been ported to both platforms.
I'll handle it like I'll handle any portability issue - port the code, or telling the customer that it's not possible.
I use managed code in the first place not because of portability, but because of developer productivity and maintenance benefits. C# is more high level language than say, C and C++. It does things like garbage collection. The C# languages has advantages over Java: delegates and closures come in mind.
Realistically speaking, 100% portability is almost never possible. You should have heard of the saying "write once, debug everywhere" about Java. Regardless of whether I use native libraries, I'll have to test the code on the target platform anyway. Things like hardcoded path delimiters can pose problems on portability. A while ago I wrote a Java application. I developed it mainly on Linux. Then I tested it on Windows and I noticed that the Swing GUI looks weird, so I had to fix things up a little. Some unit tests failed on Windows - turned out that it's because of a line ending issue (CRLF on Windows vs LF on Unix).
So suppose I don't use any native libraries at all. If customers ask me for an ARM version I'll still refuse, because I just don't have experience with ARM. I cannot guarantee that my application will run fine on an ARM because I don't have the ability to test it, even if Java/.NET claim to run on ARM. The best I could tell my customers is "use this at own risk" but I doubt they'd buy that.
"The majority of commercial off-the-shelf software publishers stating that Microsoft Windows is a required dependency for an application is exactly what got us into this mess."
I'm not sure what you mean by "this mess". If your
It has proven to work in practice. A while ago I wrote a GtkSharp application. The app ran on both Windows and Linux, without recompilation, because GtkSharp (which is a native library, which serves as a binding to GTK+) is available for Windows and Linux.
"Not possible, or just not profitable?"
.NET framework is bigger on disk than the Java runtime."
.tar.gz with the source code. Most of my target groups consist of 99% Windows users and 1% Linux users so they're already used to software installers.
.FLD file editor. FLD files define walkable and non walkable blocks on a map in a game, and are typically 500 KB each. It would not be user friendly to ask the user to upload .FLD files to the web server and then using clucky JavaScript-based GUIs to manipulate the blocks, would it? This is why I chose to make it a client application. And since I'm a user myself, I chose to write it in C# and GtkSharp so that I can use it on Linux too.
FYI, I don't work for a software company. The "customers" I talked about were hypothetical.
"But in practice, the native library often has not been ported, or if it is, the end user cannot install it on the target system. The
That totally depend on the native library in question. I'm a Linux user and I love cross platform support, so I'll make sure that all the native libraries I use are portable.
The situation really isn't much different from writing C++ programs, or writing Python apps that make use of C libraries. In C++, you also have to make sure that your dependencies are portable. Dito with Python apps that use C libraries. Now, with C#, parts of the program are already portable, and if I choose to use native libraries, I just make sure that those are portable as well. So I really don't see the problem.
"But can GtkSharp applications be deployed over the Internet as easily as Java, SWF, or AJAX applications can?"
I deploy them by creating an installer for them and creating a
If the software in question can be a web application, then yes, I'll write a web application with PHP or Ruby on Rails or whatever. If easy web-based no-software-installation deployment is important for the software in question, then yes, I'll choose Java or Flash. If the functionality in question cannot be easily or efficiently implemented with the web platform, and my target group has a lot of Windows users, then C# is a good option. It all boils down to the right tool for the right job.
The last GtkSharp application I wrote is a
Ajax and Java are not C# killers, nor is C# a Java or Ajax killer - Ajax and Java are merely alternatives which may be more suitable in different situations.