GNOME (and Novell) do not support the standardisation of OOXML. They are both members of the ODF alliance [odfalliance.org], 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.
Perhaps they vocally state they don't support it, but they ARE helping it. By giving MS arguments of it being "supported" by Novell and Gnome. Novell's fork for windows of OpenOffice and GNOME actively helping them in the standardization process of optionally-open XML specifically mean they are supporting it, regardless of how they tell us that they don't want to.
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.
Congratulations since Novell is the one pushing Optionally-open XML on OpenOffice and would fork it with a windows only version if necessary...
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.
Strawman much?
If OfficeOpen XML becomes an ISO standard, we will, in all likely hood, still not spend time on supporting it. The standard is enormous, very complex and to a large extent so badly specified that a full implementation is probably even harder than implementing the old Microsoft binary file formats. Add to that patent encumbrances and problems with copyrighted elements -- and our conclusion is that we prefer to concentrate on making KOffice a great set of applications that are satisfying to use and satisfying to develop.
They are not just saying they don't have resources, they are also saying they won't because of patent and copyright land mines.
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
Don't kill them messenger, I am seeing it is getting common to blame Roy of being poisonous, when he mostly just posts links to articles and statements from Novell and Icaza themselves, Novell people are the ones being poisonous ever since the deal, giving MS all that many FUD platform and doing FUD against other distros themselves.
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.
Perhaps after any approval is done we might need some support of Optionally-open XML, but not now, right now implementing it is detrimental to the purposes of FLOSS and will only aid MS in their insane attempt to make it count as an open standard - what it isn't - .
We need to focus on preventing "standardization" of this technology, because, the truth is that OOXML is only optionally open, take a look to.net and visual studio, and how visual studio pushes all the parts of.net that were not opened as ECMA standard (cough, windows forms) That's exactly what MS wants to do with documents, a pseudo-open standard, this is only going to be disadvantageous to FLOSS and anyone competing with MS, since they are the only ones who can legally and accurately implement it.
Regardless of the intentions they state, this involvement in optionally-open XML standardization is used as MS as selling point for it. There is no need to do this format helping before any ISO approval, their priority should be to be vocal against the approval, and later, if it gets approved, work on it, right now they are just helping it get approved . As if GNOME gave up or they wanted to help its approval and do work on it to later use it as advantage, what would be a backstab to everyone else in the FLOSS world.
If someone screws up in the Free software community people will complaint and fight against the actions and we are not dependent on them thanks to the fact that we have plenty of alternatives everywhere. So, yes, this fragmentation is a huge selling point for open source - free software.
It concerns me that GNOME didn't see this coming, they don't owe anything to MS or their Optionally-open XML format , so it just doesn't make any sense to advocate such unnecessary format that is meant to keep their monopoly, what GNOME is doing just doesn't make any sense...
Sounds almost as if MS was certain that Optionally-Open XML will be approved as open standard by the ISO. Which is ridiculous at the very least, let ISO drop all their reputation and approve an standard for something there already is an standard for! I guess next we'll see other industry's leaders doing the same to have fair standard competition and use ECMA and lobbying to push their own standards to replace other established standards in the name of freedom of choice...
Is there a way to know what time do they wait before the part where chimps point to the screen begins?
Just saying this cause when I see an intense light and close my eyes or look away I can still "see" some remaining of the light, as if my retina was over stimulated. When I first watched a documentary about Chimps playing this memory test, it looked like they turned off the numbers and the chimp would instantly point at the numbers in the screen (correct position) This is just crazy speculation, but what if chimps are more sensitive to monitor light than we are and could still "see" the numbers in the screen?
Hmmm the only commercial Linux applications I can think of would be the propietary apps included in enterprise SUSE and red hat and also Pixel, that one awesome photoshop clone, they don't use WINE.
I can't tell you about more commercial apps since I don't really know about that stuff. I can name mainstream applications that are native and are used by plenty of users and were not developed by gnome/FSF/KDE/etc , for example Google earth, and Opera
Err am I missing something, how could the ability to run win32 apps mean adobe won't make native OS/X photoshop ? WINE has certainly not stopped native Linux applications.
I hope this is not about Apple selling out to MS to make.net reign bigger, they (.net) has already caused too much of a disaster in my country so thinking of Apple joining MS' push for.net is REALLY scary to me.
Mind control on cockroaches would allow us to have the perfect victim detection machine, much better than any robot on this generation. So, if there was any earthquake, hurricane, bombing, tornado and you had to find people as fast as possible a cockroach would save lives...
I got to run windows 98 in my old 486dx4 computer. It is not a big deal, such computer would always be slow whether you put windows 3.11 or 98 didn't make a hell of a difference. Although I did upgrade RAM a little.
The reason is that they assume that all video games are directed to children, which is obviously wrong. But as always, the problem lies with ignorance, we need more people to educate other people...
I tried to google those hashes, and voila! I found the source words! (Although it mostly involves the fact that your post just got indexed by google...)
So, I guess the danger is that google could force firefox into all of us and begin to charge us... wait. firefox is open source and not even "MS-open source", so we can always fork it even if we got dependant on it! (For a browser which does not try to add propietary extensions that sure sounded hard...
Ok, so that wasn't the problem so what the problem really is? I SEE! We should give the money to other open source projects! Yes, why should all money go to mozilla? It is unfair!... Now that I think of it, this was money earned by firefox, then I see absolutely no reason to give this money to apache or mysql... sorry guys but that just doesn't make sense...
Ok, I can't think of any other creative reason to think there is actually any problem with this, I guess just in case we could go to opera!... Err, wait! It is closed source, so opera is a browser that can actually lock us in! Not only that, but it is probably meant for that, and that's the reason they get money from the WII deal! Oh no, then using opera just in case is not an answer...
Then go Safari!... err, it comes from apple which is just the second biggest Linux hater...
Then go any other open source browser! I'll just stick to firefox because: a) I like the plugins I use, b) I see absolutely no problem with this.
We could just calm down, an true-FLOSS project getting money absolutely from donations and zero charges to users, or would you prefer mozilla not to get any money? And just let firefox die?
Would it matter? Aren't british users also tax payers? Therefore aren't the Linux users paying for their site? May I also get an explanation what's stopping them from using a more accessible format?
I thought Microsoft was smart enough to avoid making any statement to these regards, I guess I was wrong. Although I feel relieved I am not dependent on their software anymore...
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps they vocally state they don't support it, but they ARE helping it. By giving MS arguments of it being "supported" by Novell and Gnome. Novell's fork for windows of OpenOffice and GNOME actively helping them in the standardization process of optionally-open XML specifically mean they are supporting it, regardless of how they tell us that they don't want to.
Congratulations since Novell is the one pushing Optionally-open XML on OpenOffice and would fork it with a windows only version if necessary...
Strawman much?
They are not just saying they don't have resources, they are also saying they won't because of patent and copyright land mines.
Don't kill them messenger, I am seeing it is getting common to blame Roy of being poisonous, when he mostly just posts links to articles and statements from Novell and Icaza themselves, Novell people are the ones being poisonous ever since the deal, giving MS all that many FUD platform and doing FUD against other distros themselves.
Perhaps after any approval is done we might need some support of Optionally-open XML, but not now, right now implementing it is detrimental to the purposes of FLOSS and will only aid MS in their insane attempt to make it count as an open standard - what it isn't - .
We need to focus on preventing "standardization" of this technology, because, the truth is that OOXML is only optionally open, take a look to .net and visual studio, and how visual studio pushes all the parts of .net that were not opened as ECMA standard (cough, windows forms) That's exactly what MS wants to do with documents, a pseudo-open standard, this is only going to be disadvantageous to FLOSS and anyone competing with MS, since they are the only ones who can legally and accurately implement it.
The priority right now should be
Regardless of the intentions they state, this involvement in optionally-open XML standardization is used as MS as selling point for it. There is no need to do this format helping before any ISO approval, their priority should be to be vocal against the approval, and later, if it gets approved, work on it, right now they are just helping it get approved . As if GNOME gave up or they wanted to help its approval and do work on it to later use it as advantage, what would be a backstab to everyone else in the FLOSS world.
Hell yes.
If someone screws up in the Free software community people will complaint and fight against the actions and we are not dependent on them thanks to the fact that we have plenty of alternatives everywhere. So, yes, this fragmentation is a huge selling point for open source - free software.
It concerns me that GNOME didn't see this coming, they don't owe anything to MS or their Optionally-open XML format , so it just doesn't make any sense to advocate such unnecessary format that is meant to keep their monopoly, what GNOME is doing just doesn't make any sense...
Sounds almost as if MS was certain that Optionally-Open XML will be approved as open standard by the ISO. Which is ridiculous at the very least, let ISO drop all their reputation and approve an standard for something there already is an standard for! I guess next we'll see other industry's leaders doing the same to have fair standard competition and use ECMA and lobbying to push their own standards to replace other established standards in the name of freedom of choice...
Microsoft: "Please make the OLPC more expensive so we can force our software on children"
This reminds me of some "The Daily Show global edition" episode.
Is there a way to know what time do they wait before the part where chimps point to the screen begins?
Just saying this cause when I see an intense light and close my eyes or look away I can still "see" some remaining of the light, as if my retina was over stimulated. When I first watched a documentary about Chimps playing this memory test, it looked like they turned off the numbers and the chimp would instantly point at the numbers in the screen (correct position) This is just crazy speculation, but what if chimps are more sensitive to monitor light than we are and could still "see" the numbers in the screen?
Their customers would probably pay them regardless of what MS does, so they have no reason to care. Sometimes monopoly is the consumer's fault.
Hmmm the only commercial Linux applications I can think of would be the propietary apps included in enterprise SUSE and red hat and also Pixel, that one awesome photoshop clone, they don't use WINE.
I can't tell you about more commercial apps since I don't really know about that stuff. I can name mainstream applications that are native and are used by plenty of users and were not developed by gnome/FSF/KDE/etc , for example Google earth, and Opera
I hope this is not about Apple selling out to MS to make .net reign bigger, they (.net) has already caused too much of a disaster in my country so thinking of Apple joining MS' push for .net is REALLY scary to me.
Mind control on cockroaches would allow us to have the perfect victim detection machine, much better than any robot on this generation. So, if there was any earthquake, hurricane, bombing, tornado and you had to find people as fast as possible a cockroach would save lives...
I got to run windows 98 in my old 486dx4 computer. It is not a big deal, such computer would always be slow whether you put windows 3.11 or 98 didn't make a hell of a difference. Although I did upgrade RAM a little.
So, some guy is predicting the future of the whole open source by reading 25 devs in tomcat as a bad sign. This is failing to impress me, sorry.
The reason is that they assume that all video games are directed to children, which is obviously wrong. But as always, the problem lies with ignorance, we need more people to educate other people...
I tried to google those hashes, and voila! I found the source words! (Although it mostly involves the fact that your post just got indexed by google...)
Does this mean that the reason most slashdotters don't ever RTFA is that they can't handle very long text?
I can't afford the first.
They wouldn't push so hard not to ever have Linux support on their ipods or even release specs, you know...
So, I guess the danger is that google could force firefox into all of us and begin to charge us... wait. firefox is open source and not even "MS-open source", so we can always fork it even if we got dependant on it! (For a browser which does not try to add propietary extensions that sure sounded hard...
Ok, so that wasn't the problem so what the problem really is? I SEE! We should give the money to other open source projects! Yes, why should all money go to mozilla? It is unfair! ... Now that I think of it, this was money earned by firefox, then I see absolutely no reason to give this money to apache or mysql... sorry guys but that just doesn't make sense...
Ok, I can't think of any other creative reason to think there is actually any problem with this, I guess just in case we could go to opera! ... Err, wait! It is closed source, so opera is a browser that can actually lock us in! Not only that, but it is probably meant for that, and that's the reason they get money from the WII deal! Oh no, then using opera just in case is not an answer...
Then go Safari! ... err, it comes from apple which is just the second biggest Linux hater...
Then go any other open source browser! I'll just stick to firefox because: a) I like the plugins I use, b) I see absolutely no problem with this.
We could just calm down, an true-FLOSS project getting money absolutely from donations and zero charges to users, or would you prefer mozilla not to get any money? And just let firefox die?
I admire this school's efforts, undermining the threat of freedom of speech.
Would it matter? Aren't british users also tax payers? Therefore aren't the Linux users paying for their site? May I also get an explanation what's stopping them from using a more accessible format?
If anything it is helping redhat get more people to test their software...
evilgooglenoshitsherlock
I thought Microsoft was smart enough to avoid making any statement to these regards, I guess I was wrong. Although I feel relieved I am not dependent on their software anymore...