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OpenDocument Foundation Closes
Munchkinguy writes "First, they dropped support for their namesake OpenDocument Format and declared a switch to the W3C's 'Compound Document Format.' Then, W3C's Chris Lilley clarified that CDF 'was not created to be, and isn't suitable for use as, an office format.' Now, the Foundation has mysteriously closed up shop, leaving the following message: 'The OpenDocument Foundation, Inc. is closed. We sincerely wish our friends and associates in the OpenDocument Community all the best and much success going forward. Good-bye and good luck.'"
I should know better than to feed the trolls but you do know these guys are not responsible for Open Document and have no official status. They were more or less a fan club. Redmond is the most likely culprit in this case so the addage NEVER... NEVER trust Redmond would be appropriate. This isn't even substantial news to the open source world and won't impact anything in it.
To elaborate, the format was actually put forth by OASIS (which, the entire British parliament should agree is the best band ever), but that's just a little piece of what they do.
The open document fellowship are the community supporters (i.e., the ODF volunteer organization), while the ODF Alliance are the industry supporters. What did the Open Document Foundation do? Muddy the waters.
They're the Ross Perot of open document foundations - making people think that if they listen to them, that they'll get the real skinny because of their seeming-official status. Good to see 'em go.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Well that might be because people want to be able to edit the document later. Just a thought.
je suis parce que j'aime
The "Open Document Foundation" is and was never a crucial part of anything. The Open Document Format was developed by OASIS - see http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.1/OS/OpenDocument-v1.1-html/OpenDocument-v1.1.html/.
The OpenDocument Foundation have moved to da-vinci.us... named after their vaporware converter product that they claimed could magically convert between ODF and OOXML losslessly. They showed it at conferences on their own test documents and their claims have never been substatiated.
On the OpenDocument Fellowship mailing list (not to be confused with the 'Foundation') there's been some posts from members of the foundation... hilariously they accidentally send a private email to the full list which reveals their plans (hint: they're not going away, but they will continue with their FUD)
Don't be fooled by their claims in that email. You'll see that despite being challenged they can't back up anything they say!
because it is NOT this ODF (the ISO standard (almost?), by OASIS) everyone knows about. Just some stupid group of people with same name.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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Recently they tried to bribe their way to the Nigerians to get ahead of Mandriva. Then we hear of Blamer throwing chairs around the office yelling "I'm going to fucking kill Google", I really wouldn't put it above them trying to bribe this committee into submission.
In other words, when everything else fails, look for the money trail.
In all honesty, no matter how much I would care about some open standards, Linux, Linus, and so on (and I do care about those things), if Microsoft sent me a $100k check in exchange of not caring "as much" about open standards, I don't know if I would resist. (If I would resist, I probably wouldn't resist if they doubled the offer).
To me this "bribing conspiracy" makes sense. It would be pocket change for Microsoft and would quickly solve their problem (promoting OOXML). Not a bad business move on their part...
Checking on Wikihack, you can only eat rings when you are polymorphed into either a rock mole, a rust monster or xorn.
So, if they DID eat a ring of teleportation as you say, the only remaining question would be, did Microsoft zap them with the wand of polymorph?
I can't believe I just said that...
No it wasn't, but, it did dilute the acronym for the format and their actions did manage to fuel the FUD-fire. http://hackfud.net/2007/11/06/now-its-open-document-formats-turn-for-the-fudmeisters/ Has a good summary of that plus links to further informative pages and information related to those chaps.
Editing and reading/interpreting it. Those XML files (and the wretched directory structure they fall into) are non-trivial to read. Try opening a docx containing a picture inside of a table cell.
It's a simple matter of complex programming.
Slashdot is slow. I read this on Digg eleven days ago. Roy Schestowitz, the anti-Microsoft FUDmaster-in-Chief on Digg claimed that "the funding for a project run by the OpenDocument Foundation ended some time ago after very aggressive lobbying and bullying in Massachusetts. Microsoft had people thrown out of their job for 'daring' to stick to ODF. ... After the funding ended, the OpenDocument Foundation was glued to a corner, so the wise step to take was to turn somewhere else."
You can read more of Schestowitz' rants at Boycott Novell