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OpenDocument Foundation To Drop ODF
poet sends us to Computerworld for a story on the intention of the OpenDocument Foundation to drop support for Open Document Format, OASIS and ISO standards not withstanding, in favor of the Compound Documents Format being promoted by the W3C. The foundation's director of business affairs, Sam Hiser, dropped this bomb in a blog posting a couple of weeks ago. Hiser believes CDF has a better shot at compatibility with Microsoft's OOXML, and says that the foundation has been disappointed with the direction of ODF over the last year.
Nothing has a chance at compatibility with OOXML except the bloated crap churned out by Word and its ilk.
Driving to achieve closeness or compatibility with Microsoft formats, except as something kept at arms length, is essentially suicide.
That will have agencies and large corporations running away from ODF - and any successors - right into the welcoming arms of Microsoft.
I almost hoped that it was April, 1st - but when I checked, it was still October. Damn.
is it April 1st?
Is this posted on theonion?
is taco drunk in charge of a keyboard?
has darl got a new job?
How much has ballmer paid to give such a turnaround?
liqbase
No, Sun and IBM, Wordperfect and others are still working with it. It is strange to me that the so called Open Document Foundation can do this as was pointed out in the article link, that it is a non-profit established to help with Open Document Format, that they would steer their organization to an opposite position to its namesake. I think all the officers should be kicked out and a realignment with their charter should be taken.
This is why having "boards" and "foundations" and "working groups" equals death for free software. They get bogged down, undermined and subverted by politics and beaurocracy.
If OpenOffice.org, Sun (StarOffice), IBM (Lotus Symphony) and KDE (KOffice) all continue to support ODF, what difference does it make what the Foundation does or says?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Read radical news here
As I recall, in spite of the grand-sounding name, the people in that organization don't have anything to do with anything. They're busy recommending this and that, but they don't actually do anything.
Ahh, here we go, here's my source on this:
"The OpenDocument Foundation", in spite of its name, is nothing. They are not the "official" foundation backing ODF. They are just two guys, with a good name and without a garage, which used to develop a OOXML ODF converter. Read this for more information: Cracks in the Foundation.
Its blatantly obvious that Sam Hiser, proponent of the blog post that sparked this frenzy, doesn't know jack shit about the real specs of ODF, read the comments on the blog I linked, they more than make the point (aside from the initial long-winded comment attempting to discredit anyone with enough common sense to disagree with Hiser, its a nice try but anyone with a hint of mental forethought and reasoning ability, can see right through the propaganda). Twenty minutes of actual research would've saved Hiser and the ODFoundation a lot of grief.
Additionally, if this isn't some backroom Microsoft inspired posturing, I'd be VERY surprised. The very essence of "CDF" in the way Hiser frames his argument is compatibility with MS OOXML. Who gives a rat's ass about specific compatibility within the framework of a particular document directly with another type of document, thats not the point of the whole exercise the odf format is attempting. The ODF is OPEN for any application to implement 100%, that allows for clearer communication between applications, and as a result, real living people.
Cheers.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
First, it was disability support. It was shot down.
Second, it was not supported by Microsoft Office. It was shot down too, with developed plugins already available for organisations.
Third, it was "let's have two formats and let's live together peacefully". Yeah, right. Formats don't get accepted by ISO just because there are "very important to keeping in touch with old good ole Microsoft Office".
And finally, we get "interoperability with Microsoft formats" argument. What a croak.
Get this people - truely open document format will NEVER have anything to do with Microsoft Office wet dream to keep domination. NEVER.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
I've been pushing for standardizing on an open format - specifically ODF - for some time now. (This has been hard, because the last time I edited a
Now the rug gets pulled out from under my credibility (yet again) by the open community itself.
This isn't the "open community", this is a group of shills paid by Microsoft who have cleverly selected a name for their "foundation" to make it appear as if they have some power over the ODF standard. Blame MS for pulling the rug.
The Opendocument Foundation isn't officially related to the OpenDocument standard. They're just a bunch of guys who took the same name so that they could ride on the coattails of the ODF movement, and doing MS's bidding, derail the process... and look, they're trying hard.
Before taking this article too seriously, you might want to read this posting too:
Cracks in the Foundation
The more you know, the more you know you don't know.
Miguel de Icaza?
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Citations, please. If you're going to lob grenades like this, you owe it to your readers to offer proof of these accusations. I'm not saying you're wrong — I can see some factions within Sun taking this approach — but it'd be nice if you offered some proof.
The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development
Actually, it's just three guys:
http://opendocumentfoundation.us/we.htm
Not much of a foundation.
The *real* ODF group is:
http://www.odfalliance.org/memberlist.php
I think that the only honest thing the "The OpenDocument Foundation" can do is rename
itself "The Compound Documents Format Foundation", since to do otherwise would be as
deceitful as Microsoft choosing to name OOXML "Office Open XML". But honestly, I doubt
they will. Their comparison chart between CDF and ODF betrays a few lies:
http://opendocument.foundation.googlepages.com/GOSCON_Chart.pdf
In particular:
* CDF is not OOXML compatible, nor has any implementation shown this to be possible. ODF at least has a not-100% compatible conversion.
* ODF has a lot more big vendor support than CDF
* Neither are universal formats, but ODF is supported by more vendors and software projects at the moment.
Personally, I think that the reasons for "The OpenDocument Foundation" changing it's
support from ODF to CDF is self-interest. When ODF was first introduced, there was
money to be made for a small company to write MS Office/Corel Office/Mac Office plugins
and other conversion services. But then Sun and others started offering free converters
and conversion services. There's just too much competition too quickly
CDF, OTOH is not as well supported universally, so there's a lot more room for
a small company. And if the CDF growth rate is slow, the "The OpenDocument Foundation"
has the chance to become *the CDF conversion experts* and make a lot of money.
Also, since CDF (if you believe their claims) is more web oriented, it would be good
for transactional converters of many types that need to be used for each message.
With ODF, you convert your document once and don't have to worry about going back
(by purpose....ODF is best for documents that have to be read, as is 100 years
from now). The difference in profit between one-time business and licensed per
transaction business could huge, even if CDF has a smaller market.
Yes, it's true that Rob Weir is an IBM employee. How does that impact the accuracy of his story? Can you point to any fact in that story which is wrong or misleading? It matters not who he likes or hates if his arguments are sound.
:-)
Now then, it's also true that this "Foundation" has no official role in ODF whatsoever. It was started by a couple of random people who do little more than blog, attend meetings, and feed quotes to the press. And right now, the "OpenDocument Foundation" is abandoning ODF for CDF. Let the "Closed Document Format" jokes begin.
So, really, why again should we care about their opinions? They're certainly entitled to them, but like so many Slashdot posts, do they actually matter? Or is this fuss unseemly given that the "support" the OpenDocument Foundation offers amounts to little more than words? It's not like they're actually coding anything, developing the standard, or any actual, useful work.
It's tantamount to trumpeting "Anonymous Coward drops support for Windows!" when I can't really imagine that my opinion of Microsoft's code is worthy of front page news. Though I'll certainly settle for a (+5, Insightful) or two
Excuse me, but there is no such thing as ".doc" format. There at least half a dozen, if not more, mutually distinct formats labeled ".doc". Each of them has features and capabilities not available in all the others, and transformations among them are non-reversible: translating a document from an old Word 95 format to Word 2003, to Word for Macintosh version whatever, will not reproduce your original document. It's even worse for spreadsheets, which are also part of the format.
The denominators for it are not "common", they're nearly fractal in their complexity.
Well, of course, since Esperanto is just as easily learned by people as ODF can be taught to computers...
Universally spreading Esperanto requires an effort from a lot of governments around the world to promote it and teach it; universally implementing ODF requires some programmers, some coffee, and a couple of months, to code a filter that can be then reused in future versions or other applications.
Don't confuse intent with possibility of realization.
My 0.02 cents
First, the idea of more compatibility with OOXML is not even remotely the issue. These are separate specifications. They are by nature incompatible. One format is not compatible with another. Second, you don't pull the rug out from underneath an existing format that has been approved by the organizations that matter, and Microsoft is not one of those that matter. As far as performance goes, what is he talking about? Milliseconds, adoption?
This whole thing sounds like complete malarkey to me. Something is awry. If you can't buy the standard organizations I guess they can buy the ODF key players.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
While that bit of logic is similar, Esperanto never had any country that actually used it. ODF does, in the OpenOffice and StarOffice suites of software. Thus, it never had a base of native users to support or to eveolve it.
Next strawman?
As has been mentioned several times in the comment, the "Open Document Foundation" has no real connection to the Open Document Format, and the writeup reads like a MS-shill press release. So please fix it with an addendum so that casual readers of Slashdot don't take it at face value.
Well, that's pure bullshit.
The primary value of ODF is that it reduces archival, retrieval, and distribution costs of our largest institutions. You know, the really big and long-lived ones, like nations, states, businesses that have celebrated their centennial year, and so on. We will start to see the benefits in about 10 years, in improved information services, and therefore lower taxes and cost of goods than would otherwise be the case.
The direct costs to implement this are lower than any alternative. There are only two other strategies, and one variant of the ODF strategy, so let's do an exhaustive listing:
The indirect costs of implementation are dependent on how effective Microsoft can be with its campaign of FUD, bribery, and astroturfing. They do not seem to be as good at this as they used to be— their notoriety now precedes them— but they are still a force to be reckoned with.
Hey, you damn astroturfers, get your crap out of our meadow!