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KDE and KOffice Rebuke OOXML, GNOME Dithers
Peter writes "Free Software Foundation president Richard Stallman and ITWire have praised KDE and KOffice developers for taking a principled stand against OOXML, while raising serious concerns about the GNOME Foundation's decision to give credibility to Microsoft's broken format. This comes on the heels of GNOME co-founder Miguel de Icaza's depiction of OOXML as a 'superb standard', and GNOME Foundation director Quim Gil's stonewalling of the patent-free Ogg Vorbis / Theora format on behalf of Nokia. Will the GNOME Foundation's indifferent response to Richard Stallman's appeal drive him to throw his weight behind KDE?"
The two most popular distros in use today are Fedora and Ubuntu(Debian) and both use GNOME by default. Yes, there are a lot of other distros that ship with KDE default, but their popularity doesn't match what Fedora and Ubuntu have been able to carve out in the Linux Desktop market. Most people go with the default when installing those distros too, so GNOME has a high probability of being the most used Linux Desktop.
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There are so many TFA's. I had assumed by the /. title that the main one was this which I had read earlier:
KDE takes stand on OOXML; Gnome dithers.
But I still stand by my comments. And here, just to cut to the chase, is one of Jeff Waugh's comments from the article linked above:
The GNOME Foundation is not in bed with Microsoft or Novell on this issue. Our statement is very clear about our attitude towards OOXML and our participation in ECMA TC45-M. We're there to ensure that we have sufficient documentation for FLOSS project to implement it. We're not endorsing, contributing to or developing the OOXML specification or its standardisation. (In fact, it has had a positive contribution to my work against OOXML locally...) Whatever happens with ISO, it's important for FLOSS products to implement it such that users have the opportunity to embrace Software Freedom without cutting themselves off from their own documents, or collaboration with their friends and colleagues. We don't have to like OOXML, Microsoft or the Microsoft/Novell deal to implement it, and have an open and pragmatic approach to delivering Software Freedom to as many users as we possibly can. We fiercely compete with Microsoft, and we're not about to give their monopoly a leg up by boycotting their stupid format. We want *MORE* FLOSS users, not fewer. There is a complete valid disagreement about the *perception* of GNOME involvement in TC45-M and how Microsoft might use it (and we'll make it very clear to national bodies and BRM delegates what our position is and why we're involved in the ECMA group), but nothing deserving demonisation of GNOME or suggestions that it has "sold out" to any corporation. That is simply not the case, and it is unnecessarily divisive to suggest so.
Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
I don't agree with the good job part but think about it. If MS switches over to OOXML and Linux can support it just as well as Windows who needs Windows? The same logic works with
This isn't about open source, this is about Free Software.
I will follow Stallman.
http://www.mhall119.com
I think XFCE is about to eat GNOME's lunch. I just tried it again for the first time in several years, and wow has it matured. You can keep using the same GNOME applications and have nice looking GTK, but have an interface that's easy to use, feature rich, fast and it just works better.
yes, KDE purposefully linked GPL licensed code to QPLv1 code. however, it was THEIR code which means that they were fully within their rights to do so. anyone building apps on top of those libs implicitly agreed as well.
linking someone else's code would be an issue, and in the 2 cases where that happened it was rectified as soon as it was brought up; it's also useful to note that those 2 cases were small code fragments, not significant bodies of work, and as such certainly not evidence of a willfull plot or some such thing. they were oversights, and corrected in a timely manner without fuss.
and this was what, getting to be 10 years ago now? today we have nice clean GPL'd (or "better") code on every platform we support. let's find some new issues to grind over. =)
Who is "they"? Who is "them"?
Has an official representative of the GNOME Foundation publicly stated that it is GNOME Foundation policy to praise OOXML? Has the GNOME Foundation, as a group, taken any kind of official position on OOXML (other than "we want the specs for it so we can interoperate with OOXML users")?
Miguel de Icaza, who is not the GNOME Foundation, did call it "a superb standard". The GNOME Foundation did not endorse his comments, but it did release this statment:
http://www.gnome.org/press/releases/ecma-tc45-statement.html
Here's my favorite quote from the above statement:
If you have some examples of the GNOME Foundation praising OOXML, be sure to post them here. But at the moment I do not believe your complaints are supported by the facts.
P.S. As for Richard Stallman, he won't be completely satisfied with any desktop environment until he can get one where the whole environment is GPLv3 and there is no proprietary software available. Both GNOME and KDE have proprietary software available.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Miguel has nothing to do with the GNOME Foundation, other than being one of 370 individual members. His comments are no more associated with the Foundation than mine or those of any other member. He is not on the board of directors and has no other formal role.
For some time, Miguel was the standing President of the Foundation, which was a purely ceremonial role that meant nothing. Earlier this year, the Foundation asked Miguel to resign from this role to allow the President to be appointed from the board of directors each year.
What, exactly, would you have the Foundation do to convince you that Miguel does not speak for it? Is it even possible, or do you just enjoy spreading misinformation?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
the link in the comment above explains exactly where the code was: a small bit of code in kmidi and an even smaller chunk (a few lines) of rather inconsequential code in kghostview. all of it was replaced as soon as it was noticed, none of it was intentional/malicious, and it certainly wasn't a substantial part of even a single application.
i'm guessing it's kghostview that you were thinking of when you wrote, "there was a PDF viewer or something similar that used third party GPL'd code". which, in light of the actuality of the problem, seems a little bit of an overstatement of the situation. =)
it's all moot at this point, however, with Qt freely available under the GPL and the FreeQt Foundation standing in as an additional guarantee.
I read that, knee-jerked, and thought "you really are biased against MS, aren't you?" I read on and saw you didn't actually do anything to correct that reaction. You really think that the simple act of comparing the MS standard to the ODF on equal terms shows a bias towards MS? If ODF were truly superior, a comparison on equal terms would come up with similar results to a biased one. I think you missed the point of the "equal" bit, which is funny because you emphasised it.
ODF = open
OOXML = closed and proprietary
How hard is this for you to understand? How you can possibly compare the two on equal terms when one isn't available for you to look at?
You seem to be a troll, and you haven't done anything to correct that reaction.
How you can possibly compare the two on equal terms when one isn't available for you to look at?
Huh? The OOXML standard is available for all to see at Standard ECMA-376: Office Open XML File Formats
Now, arguments can be made that the standard is not defined well enough to be implemented (due to things like "do it like word95 did"), but that's the sort of thing that should be resolved by all interested parties before finalizing.
DJ kRYPT's Free MP3s!
No, they haven't. It's rather difficult to independently implement a standard when parts of it are deliberately kept secret.
Except that you believe in Easter Bunny.
OOXML has a spec, like, behave something that we don't have the specs for and won't get the details. Recursion to the unknown. Read up a bit on it and you'll find out. [Yes, you as well, you the moderator who thinks this as 'insightful']
'Provably' means that you have the specs, and 'provably' means that MS implements the specs. Neither will be the case, since you don't have them, and they will not be implemented (at least not all 6000+b pages), you're screwed. Egg in your face, for believing those grandma's stories.
Plus, they recently shifted the maintenance back from ISO to ECMA. That is, to a puppet of theirs. "ECMA, am I doing right ?" "Microsoft, you are doing wonderfully !"
We support ODF. It is the default file format for our biggest deployment, the OLPC laptops. As far as I can tell it is now lossless for the OLPC implementation of AbiWord. We will continue to work to improve ou support for ODF.
We're in the business of helping our users whoever they may be.