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?"

Comments

The best way to bring people to open source

[nofrak]

is to constantly fight about it amongst ourselves. That'll do the trick.

Re:The best way to bring people to open source

[Grishnakh]

It seems to me that a mature approach would be to simply acknowledge the differences and you what you think the best tool for the job is. And just because the support might be there doesn't mean you will have to use it.

It's not that simple: this is an issue of standards. When you're dealing with standards, and creating and promoting a standard, you're inherently rejecting the idea of letting people decide what the "best tool for the job" is, because you're trying to make them use a specific tool, so that they can interoperate. What good would it do me to make up my own graphics format and editing tools, for instance, if I can't use the resulting images anywhere or send them to anyone? I can use them for myself, of course, but for things like that, it's a lot more useful if I can also exchange them with others, and because it's a popular standard, they have no problem using these files.

There's a big fight right now between ODF and OOXML. People (especially large organizations) are finally seeing the value of open office format standards, and XML-based ones which they can view or edit with tools other than the word processor or spreadsheet which created them. The whole world has been suffering with MS Office's closed, proprietary, binary-only formats for many years now, and they're ready for a change to something more like PDF or JPG, which can be viewed or edited with lots of different, competing tools. (It's also very useful to have an XML-based standard so that information can be easily extracted, such as for web searches. Google could easily spider and index XML-based documents on the web, whereas doing that for MS's proprietary formats isn't so simple.) But MS doesn't want people to switch to an open standard; they'll lose their proprietary lock-in, and consequently many MS Office customers. So they've intentionally confused the issue by making up their own XML-based "standard", OOXML, which isn't open, and basically serves as an XML wrapper for closed, binary data so that competing software still can't be 100% compatible.

Diversity and uniqueness of different open-source projects is a good thing as you say, as people can pick what works the best, but they're not shut out of anything because it's all open (For instance, I use KDE normally, but I can still use GNOME programs because it's all open-source; I'm not locked out of either by choosing one). But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about an open standard vs. a closed standard. If the world chooses the closed standard, then we're right back where we were with a decade or more of MS Office dominance, and no other tool being 100% compatible, so we're all forced to use MS Office just to be compatible with everyone else. No thanks.

Re:The best way to bring people to open source

[Grishnakh]

You are missing the big point here: open vs. closed standards. OOXML is taking a back-seat to ODF more and more, so MS is trying to screw things up and push OOXML through ECMA, etc. (which is just a rubber-stamp agency), and all the despicable things they did with the ISO trying to get it passed as an ISO standard (which finally failed when their shenanigans were exposed).

If GNOME supports OOXML, this just muddies the waters even more. It's a blatant move by MS (using covertly-paid henchmen) to fracture the open-source community.

We already have multiple national governments adopting the ODF standard (which truly is an open standard); the last thing we need is the stooges at GNOME slowing this process.

Re:The best way to bring people to open source

[Grishnakh]

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.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. It's not an openly-viewable standard when critical parts of it are closed and secret. I highly doubt this will get resolved; stuff like that is in there precisely because MS wants to maintain their vendor lock-in. How are they going to maintain lock-in if they openly document everything? Besides, these issues were raised many, many months ago when MS tried to get their "standard" accepted as one, and they still haven't done anything about them.

Re:Miguel de Icaza

[Trigun]

No, he is on Novell's payroll.

Novell is on MS's payroll.

This 'article' is bullshit flamebait

[sayfawa]

Gnome does *not* support OOXML becoming a standard. The *only* thing they are doing with it is trying to make sure that *if* and when it becomes a standard that it's good enough and open enough for Free software like Gnome apps to able to implement it. But they are *not* helping to get it passed.

Furthuremore, this crap article praises KDE for backing ODF implying that Gnome isn't. Of course Gnome backs ODF.

Finally, look for Jeff Waugh's comments in the comment section of TFA to see how it really is.

More weight to KDE

[FutureDomain]

Will the GNOME Foundation's indifferent response to Richard Stallman's appeal drive him to throw his weight behind KDE?

With Linus preferring KDE, could Stallman's support put more weight behind KDE? I'm rather surprised that the GNOME Foundation's decision. They could at least have kept their mouths shut instead of praising OOXML, which severely damages their credibility in the GNU world.

RMS and the tinfoil hat

[mlwmohawk]

I am reminded of Henry Kissinger's famous quote: "Even a paranoid has some real enemies."

I appreciate RMS and his views. He is a pragmatic alarmist, he is playing the chess game that is computers several moves ahead of most people. That's why so many take his statements with a grain of salt, they don't see he has been "right," consistently, for over two decades, often years before the first real signs begin to show.

GNU/Linux and F/OSS have enemies. It is an undeniable fact. There are people working against us. One need only hop over to groklaw and see the black hand of Microsoft (and greed of course) guiding that whole thing. So, maybe we are paranoid, but even paranoids have real enemies.

I am really starting to believe that GNOME is a trojan horse, or at least some aspects of it. I don't trust Miguel de Icaza, he's either incompetent of a shill and he's potentially dangerous.

Re:Idiots

[Ash-Fox]

Gosh. You guys are a bunch of angry morons. Life isn't about taking your ball and going home. It's about doing deals to gently move the status quo over to your side. Taking your ball and going home isn't going to actually SOLVE anything.

As far as I can see, the ODF ball is being given to everyone, including Microsoft. Except Microsoft doesn't want to play, which is normal.

They want everyone to adopt to using their ooxml ball, but they keep giving it as a flat ball to everyone and only they can pump it up. Not sure what Microsoft wants, but they're not exactly playing with anyone.

Confusion Part Two

[ajs318]

Once upon a time, KDE was lambasted for using the not-Free-enough Qt libraries. There was a project to replace Qt and create a truly free KDE; but in the end, Trolltech released Qt under the GPL. And not the mealy-mouthed LGPL, like the GNOME libraries, which allows use in Caged software; but the full-on, not-sharing-is-stealing GPL. So the leeches still had to pay to use Qt in a Caged application; but if you played fair and wrote Free software, you could use Qt with the blessing of the copyright holders. (This didn't please the Windows fans. Windows users, raised on a diet of "illegally copying the Software is my way of Sticking It to the Man, and if you don't pay me $49 for this crapplication to do something petty that Unix has had since forever that I built with my pirate copy of Visual Studio, I'll turn off saving and bring up nag screens every five minutes", bitched loudly that there was no GPL Qt for Windows -- but the only thing stopping them porting it was the fact that the average Windows user would rather drown in shit than make the effort to swim.)

Now, the "freedom" to write Caged applications is a thorny issue. But I see it like this, and I'm sure RMS does too: in a nation where the ownership of slaves is forbidden, citizens tend to be freer on average than in a nation where the ownership of slaves is permitted. So KDE are actively promoting freedom, by taking a stand against OOXML. Novell and GNOME and Mono are getting rather too cosy in bed with Microsoft for comfort. It's very hard not to think about Microsoft pulling some kind of bait-and-switch operation which would put OSS users in trouble. If this happens, I think it's actually more likely that the Governments of the world would just pass Enabling Acts to annul whatever IP Microsoft are trying to abuse; but that's still a waste of taxpayers' money that doesn't have to happen, and by the time it gets to that stage the damage (in terms of unopenable public and private records) will be severe.

Not everyone is as responsible a citizen as you. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you, and just because you don't understand the importance of having access to Source Code doesn't mean it isn't every bit as big a deal, in its own right, as slavery.

Tired of the Nonsense/FUD

[apokryphos]

I'm getting pretty tired of this ongoing OOXML issue; the FUD surrounding it is astounding. The article on itwire hasn't helped anyone since it's pretty clueless, looking for buzzwords and then reaching bizarre conclusions. Let's get a few facts down here:

• GNOME (and Novell) do not support the standardisation of OOXML. They are both members of the ODF alliance, both use it as the default file format, and if it was even remotely realistic to have a decent office product without OOXML support (where the Windows desktop is unfortunately in such an insane over-dominance currently), then they would of course be all for it.
• The implementation of OOXML is all about interoperability. I don't see anyone (wrongly) trashing Samba as a project, and yet its existence and the effort to implement OOXML support is virtually identical in terms of free software.
• You like software freedom and hate the software patent system? Great, so do I. Free implementations of proprietary solutions, though, are a good thing; not a single one of my friends are going to be using Linux if they can't submit their assignments to their lecturers. We need interoperability, to ease the transition for people coming from the proprietary world.
• The KDE/Koffice developers issued a statement basically saying they didn't have the resources or the time to implement OOXML, and suddenly a lot of silly talk gets thrown at GNOME. If I volunteered to implement OOXML support in Koffice I doubt (i) that they would object, and for sure that (ii) any distribution would not include it.
• Even if you dislike Jeff Waugh, it's pretty tough to find a rational basis for criticising him based on the podcast or his approach to the problem other than (i) not getting the GNOME statement (again, which you really can't fault) out soon enough, or (ii) giving Roy the publicity he wants.
• The itwire article plays Roy as some sort of victim in the podcast talk. That is ridiculous. Unfortunately -- and to the detriment of the FLOSS community -- Roy is an incredibly prolific, poisonous person willing to do or say anything that might cook up some self-publicity, and with an irrational hatred of Novell. And in fact on the contrary, Roy skipped around every question that was directly asked to him; instead opting to just give background on Microsoft's "evil" nature and talking about how bad OOXML is (both of which we palpably know).
• Finally, even if you decide to ignore all the other above facts, please tell me why you're not also staging wide protests against OpenOffice.org or your distribution for including OOXML support, as well.

To save any comments of bias, I'm an ardent KDE aficionado.

Re:Sigh.

[AdamWill]

How can he 'separate the two'?

Nokia obviously does not want to support Vorbis. That's not Quim's decision to make. He can't change reality on the bug report and say "sure, Nokia will support Vorbis tomorrow, everything will be fine and dandy", because it's clearly *not going to happen*. But Nokia's policy is not GNOME's, and what Nokia does really has no implications for what GNOME does.

I really don't understand what you expect Quim to do on this bug report, or why you think it implies anything in particular about *GNOME's* policies, rather than Nokia's.

Re:Could someone please explain...

[wasabii]

It's because he's pragmatic. You know, not religious. Not a fundamentalist crazy-person.

I like Mono. It lets me write C# on Linux. Does it hurt you? Apparently it must, how I have no idea.

I want to open OOXML documents. Does this hurt you? Got me. You seem to think it does.

Re:grow a pair!

[msevior]

As an AbiWord developer all I can say is we want to support any format that our users have on their computer.

The work that Jody does helps in this regard.

If the KOffice guys want to not import ooxml then they're making their program less useful to their users.

Martin Sevior