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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?"
is to constantly fight about it amongst ourselves. That'll do the trick.
No, he is on Novell's payroll.
Novell is on MS's payroll.
As was extensively explained in various GNOME places recently, Miguel is not GNOME, and has borderline zero impact or influence on GNOME at present (hence the best 'looks-serious' tag the author could find for him was "co-founder"; Woz was the co-founder of Apple, does that mean he's running iPod codec policy?) . Quim Gil is rather more directly involved in GNOME right now, but he also works for Nokia. He also clearly does not set Nokia's corporate policy. Therefore what he's doing on that bug report is reporting a corporate policy that stinks. This is obviously an uncomfortable position for him, but has sod all to do with GNOME.
Gnu drama.
Novell is on MS's payroll.
But the default desktop for SUSE Linux (owned by Novell) is KDE... So GNOME uses de Icaza who promotes Microsoft on Novell's payroll which ships KDE as the default desktop, but Microsoft has an agreement with Novell who has de Icaza on payroll and - Oh no, now I'm dizzy!
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.
Free the Quark 3 from asymptotic confinement! Bring your charm! Don't get down! All colours and flavours welcome!
For the love of god, why don't people have balls(women excluded)? I'm getting tired of people bowing down to pressure or being bought out. Doesn't anybody stand up for what they believe in anymore? I mean, way to go KDE. But, Gnome? I mean, as a community aren't we supposed to stand up for the FREE as in FREEDOM we claim that open source is? I mean, this isn't just the Gnome community, I'm talking about the community as a whole. We need to stop OOXML. It's a big bloated piece of crap, shilled out at the last moment simply because MS saw a threat. But this rant isn't even about OOXML alone. Just now Ogg was kicked out of the HTML5 spec due to pressure from Nokia and Apple. I mean, WTF! Ogg was a great choice, good quality, free as in beer, and free as in freedom. The best of both worlds.
Anyways, I'm done talking.
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.
Hydraulic pizza oven!! Guided missile! Herring sandwich! Styrofoam! Jayne Mansfield! Aluminum siding! Borax!
Not until KDE 4.1.
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.
...if we didn't?
Especially on an issue where it really does matter.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
As a long time KDE user, I sincerely hope not.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
No, he is on Novell's payroll.
Novell is on MS's payroll.
Which isn't all too high, look at their recent filings and layoffs.
Sure he wants to get a generous offer from them (MS), and he'll bent any direction of the windrose for it.
Let him move along. Even encourage him to move along. Gnumeric was the last great thing he did. Evolution was already corrupted, because the contributors to the Exchange plugin were asked to fork out for using it.
The earlier he arrives in Redmond, the better for the community.
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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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
1. KDE was good, but not free (Free? phree?) enough.
2. Gnome was established because we couldn't accept that un-free KDE?
3. KDE fixed its problems and Gnome became Microsoft's bitch
4. ???
5. Profit!!!
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.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Thanks for the info; but I was really aiming for a +5, Funny moderation with the dizzy comment. :)
This is exactly the sort of thing the GNU/Linux, F/OSS people need to be careful of. These are serious matters, and this joker wants to ad-hominem RMS in an attempt to minimize the impact of his statements. Note, no refutation of fact, merely insults, childish ones at that.
Yea, maybe RMS's appearance is, lacking a better phrase, unorthodox, but his words and actions are the issues here. Stop being a child and focus on the subject, or is it your job to distract from the subject?
Tune in next episode as exciting new revelations are unveiled!
http://www.mhall119.com
You guys all know that Miguel has been distancing himself from GNOME for years now? He even had a signature at one point on his Slashdot account (since removed) asking people not to complain to him about perceived flaws in GNOME's UI.
Miguel is a Mono developer. Mono is linked to GNOME in the sense that some GNOME tools use it, but it's about as accurate to paint him as a GNOME developer as it would be to paint GCC developers the same way.
Wait, that isn't a car analogy. Hold on - it's about as accurate to paint him as a GNOME developer as it would be to paint a Goodyear tire salesman a Ford mechanic.
Yeah, yeah. That one works.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
but their popularity doesn't match what Fedora and Ubuntu have been able to carve out in the Linux Desktop market.
Funny, when I bought my mother-in-law a $300 Wal-Mart PC, it came pre-loaded with Linspire, a KDE distro.
I promptly removed it in favor of SimplyMEPIS, another KDE distro.
Here's a $199 PC, which runs Enlightenment.
... what Miguel de Icaza's obsession with shoving Microsoft technologies in to Gnome?
Is it to try and attract Windows developers to the Linux platform? Is it to ease transition from Windows to Linux? Is it to make it easier for Microsoft to threaten the entire community with patent infringement threats..? What is it?
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
de Icaza is very entrenched in MS derived technologies: Mono, SilverLight, etc. It is perfectly understandable to want the MS technologies to be thoroughly explained and implementable. Also there are some back history to OOXML that contains file format data that could be useful for many of the projects. For the sake of interop it is necessary to glean the standards as written. I don't think he is giving too much praise to the OOXML format, whether it is better or not is not important here.
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.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
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. =)
It's been my experience that does not support office formats well. Mostly for images and tables. I have had many experiences where I open up a .doc only to find that the images are on top of each other. With any luck a formal spec, as convoluted and stupid as it is, would help fix this problem. I commonly recommend that people try using Open Office before they run out a buy MS Office. Half of them end up having so many problems with .docs that they have to get MS Office anyway. I am not saying that it's a good standard just that MS making an open standard at all is a benefit for Linux adaption in the long run. I'm also giving Miguel the benefit of the doubt here by saying that he might be supporting MS standards so that a switch from Windows to Linux becomes easier for people.
- 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.???
Life isn't _usually_ about taking your ball and going home.
Every once in a while, however, you meet a predator/bully who cannot be challenged via _any_ means except a war to the death. You do not beat diseases by negotiating with bacteria. You do not eliminate rats by trying to train them away from dumpsters. You cannot negotiate with an irrational tyrant expect positive results.
We've already been through the standards process for a document format. There's an ISO standard for documents: ODF. Anything that does not build on ODF is a subversion of that process. Worse, Microsoft's methods are extremely slimy.
You cannot beat Microsoft on the playing field, since MS has the money to insure there aren't any fair playing fields. That's why _we_, the angry morons, need to try and balance the field the other way.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Bill's married. It will never work.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
given that KOffice uses ODF natively, providing good evidence that ODF is not simply a one-project/company proprietary format being dressed up as a standard, yes it is important. it's a very compelling argument in favour of ODF that has been used quite a bit in the push towards ODF standardization; it's not uncommon to see ODF stalls at tech events showing OpenOffice one one computer and KOffice on another displaying the same document. more examples of ODF usage are appearing every day now, of course =)
and yes, a good number of people do use KOffice. certainly not as many people as use OpenOffice, but to the users of KOffice knowing that they are working with apps that use an interoperable format is indeed pretty important to them.
Sure compared to KDE gnome is minimalist but that is a feature!!
Some, a lot, of us choosed GNOME on our own. Stop saying GNOME users only use it because it is the default desktop or because we want to disagree.
Saying that I have to mention that lately GNOME has been pulling features from under my feet, If they weren't adding features to compensate I would become very pissed about it.
I'm so used to GNOME, and find it so much more comfortable than KDE that it is probable that i'll stick with it for a long time.
On the other hand, KDE 4 is coming...
But... the future refused to change.
And the GNOME Foundation is meanwhile in the background trying to create a pump that will also inflate Microsoft's little ball. Then we can all play with it however we want.
True, the ODF ball has a lot fewer corners and edges, but that's not going to stop some people from wanting to play with the Microsoft ball, so sooner or later, we're going to need to know how to deal with it.
While you guys are busy freaking out about GNOME, maybe Linux should drop support for NTFS and FAT, and OpenOffice.org should no longer be able to open any document ending in ".doc"
Seriously. People need to chill out. This is about ensuring that we DON'T get shut out of anything. While even the paranoid have enemies, not everything is a conspiracy.
Menus: Linux=function, Windows=vendor, OS X=as little as possible. Makes a statement, don't you think?
I know it's a minor point but it then changes who you blame for the issue. Currently it's Open Office that does not work right. You can't argue it. The spec is 'work like MS office' and it does not. But OOXML has a spec. So when the MS software deviates the MS software will be provably wrong. Like with the acid 2 test. When Firefox 3 comes out IE will be the only browser that does not correctly support HTML. And when they can't pass the OOXML acid 2 test equivalent there will be extra egg on there face for having written the standard in the first place. The people who wrote the OOXML standard not being able to implement it will show just how bad it is.
The one big problem with Gnome is that it embodies exactly what ordinary folk would imagine when you asked them about the meaning of "computer nerd". The image is that of a clumsy, pimply boy living somewhere in a basement, desperately trying to be anti-establishment. In a way, it wants to be a techno-hippie. Now imagine that the nerd's world was suddenly turned upside down by his views becoming mainstream, at least to a certain degree. By now, it has become kind of common to think and say that Microsoft is the devil, that the whole proprietary software crap should be buried in an unmarked grave, etc.
That's exactly the situation Icaza and his cronies are finding themselves in. They wanted to be rebels, even saviors. One sign of that is the (rather fruitless) experiment that is Gnome. In an attempt to describe it, I arrived at the following:
Or in other words: Epic fail! You want proof? Until today, Gnome has consistently failed to even grow a usable file selection dialog. I rest my case.
Ironically, denouncing the rest of the "scene" has that way become the logical way to again be different. It's a purely religious reflex: if someone threatens your perceived dominance, it is declared evil. If you think about it, deep in its absolute retardedness, it's kinda cute on that level.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
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.
"If MS switches over to OOXML and Linux can support it just as well as Windows who needs Windows?"
The whole point of OOXML is only Microsoft can ever fully support it as it's full of dependencies on Microsoft quirky and slightly undefinable technologies.
And, BTW, Miguel has eroded any credibility he had by, apparently, sabotaging his turf of the open software thing.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Yeah, KGhostview was probably it. The amount of code certainly wasn't "inconsequential", the KDE code was little more than a front end to the (GPL'd) application. RMS's comment therefore was correct. His comments were taken offensively, but shouldn't be - RMS was essentially saying "Technically, the KDE people did violate the GPL and lost their rights to redistribute some code as a result, so the legal procedure of "forgiveness" needs to be done." But it didn't come out that way as the forgiveness thing made it sound like RMS was calling upon KDE developers to go on their needs and plead.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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 !"
Look at these benchmarks:
http://zrusin.blogspot.com/2006/10/benchmarks.html
Compared to Qt, the GTK+ 2 rendering engine is sorely lacking.
Miguel may have been a founder of the GNOME project, but he is not even on the GNOME foundation board anymore. His opinion matters no more than that of anyone else who contributes code to GNOME. Though he has written some excellent software his baffling statements probably with respect to OOXML will not likely be taken seriously.
RMS is worried about compromising on principles of Free software by putting efforts into making software that reads or writes this technically and philosophically nasty format. Since when has AVOIDING interoperability furthered the spread of Free software? Linus has yielded to pragmatism many times in the past (using BitKeeper for example, and being cautious about GPL3) whereas RMS remains steadfastly rigid in his ideals at all levels. RMS' stance is admirable, but look at where the Linux kernel is...then look at how far the HURD has come in comparison. Perhaps some pragmatism isn't always a bad thing?
Now, as far as compromising "principle" with the pragmatic decision to work on making GNOME read the OOXML format, where exactly is this a more serious concern than with countless other interoperability projects? What about the work that went into making NTFS mountable in Linux? What about the Samba project? What about the ability of OpenOffice, KOffice, AbiWord, GNUMeric, etc. to at least partially support Microsoft's legacy binary file formats already? Where do we draw the "principled" line here? Microsoft's "core dump" binary formats, NTFS file system, CIFS and the Active Directory are not proper open standards yet great effort has been made thus far to reverse-engineer and deal with them so as to break down the Microsoft lock-in. How come, all of the sudden, RMS has to chime in about OOXML and now suddenly we should all ignore it on principle?
Perhaps the KDE people should become even more principled and drop all the hooks it has with Samba to browse and be browsed on Microsoft's "network neighbourhood". Perhaps Linux-based OSes should not only all drop GNOME as the default desktop, they should also drop the ability to mount NTFS volumes too. After all, if we're gonna snub OOXML because it's crap and it's closed, then we should be consistent and do the same across the board.