OpenDocument Foundation To Drop ODF 325
poet sends us to Computerworld for a story on the intention of the OpenDocument Foundation to drop support for Open Document Format, OASIS and ISO standards not withstanding, in favor of the Compound Documents Format being promoted by the W3C. The foundation's director of business affairs, Sam Hiser, dropped this bomb in a blog posting a couple of weeks ago. Hiser believes CDF has a better shot at compatibility with Microsoft's OOXML, and says that the foundation has been disappointed with the direction of ODF over the last year.
Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
Driving to achieve closeness or compatibility with Microsoft formats, except as something kept at arms length, is essentially suicide.
Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
That will have agencies and large corporations running away from ODF - and any successors - right into the welcoming arms of Microsoft.
I almost hoped that it was April, 1st - but when I checked, it was still October. Damn.
Re:So is ODF (the format) dead, then? (Score:5, Insightful)
Quote from TFA: (Score:5, Insightful)
Does it matter? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So is ODF (the format) dead, then? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
This was my first thought: How much did MS pay off the OpenDoc Foundation?
Follow the Money (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop right there. If that is the sole purpose for the organisation to exist, then it makes no sense at all for it to start promoting an alternate format.
The most logical reason for this change of heart I can think of - given that nobody seriously expects "compatability with Microsoft formats" to ever be anything more than a pipedream - is a big bag of cash.
Re:So is ODF (the format) dead, then? (Score:3, Insightful)
The only thing that really matters is that developers of products that people use support the format. A foundation is just another entity that has its own peculiar interests to pursue. The importance of a foundation is in who decides to work with it, no more or less. It's just a mechanism for cooperation.
You must love Microsoft tactics (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, it was not supported by Microsoft Office. It was shot down too, with developed plugins already available for organisations.
Third, it was "let's have two formats and let's live together peacefully". Yeah, right. Formats don't get accepted by ISO just because there are "very important to keeping in touch with old good ole Microsoft Office".
And finally, we get "interoperability with Microsoft formats" argument. What a croak.
Get this people - truely open document format will NEVER have anything to do with Microsoft Office wet dream to keep domination. NEVER.
Re:Does it matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
Reading his words... (Score:3, Insightful)
All he is saying here, in honest truth, is that MS monopoly is allowed to continue.
What ODF was about is OPEN format so that all can produce, create and save documents read by any other. The above statement now concedes that we go back to 'trying' to read a proprietary format designed to lock-in users in a monopoly.
It gets from bad to worse.
Re:Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, completely ignoring Microsoft formats isn't essentially suicide, it is suicide. Microsoft exists, and dominates the office application market, pretending it doesn't exist and that you can 'do your own thing' without taking it into account is utterly stupid.
Re:Seriously? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:questions (Score:1, Insightful)
ODF won't be worth anymore than the proprietary format OOo used before it, if there isn't enough added-value that it's worth it for common people to spend the resources to convert. Right now, there isn't -- not until either Microsoft signs on, or an ODF compatible software package is able to reach the level of expert-usability that Office has.
(Tonight's list of what an ODF suite needs to do before it can dethrone MS Office? PDA/smartphone capability, and direct script control of the UI.)
Re:This is Sun's Fault (Score:4, Insightful)
"we" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm inclined to think it's the latter, personally. It just takes a while.
Re:Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
Open source can easily afford to take the long view in technical matters, because the bottleneck are the programmers and other volunteers. So if you want open source to thrive, make it interesting and simple for programmers to add a little bit here, a little bit there, and promote technical excellence, not compatibility to today's garbage.
Your concept of market suicide makes no sense for open source. If however some people still want to chase a moving commercial target for "compatibility", they can just put up some money and pay somebody instead of expecting it for free. They'd better do it fast, though, because in two years it will all be out of date again.
Re:Nope (Score:3, Insightful)
porl
Re:Nope (Score:3, Insightful)
Some elaboration (Score:5, Insightful)
http://opendocumentfoundation.us/we.htm [opendocume...ndation.us]
Not much of a foundation.
The *real* ODF group is:
http://www.odfalliance.org/memberlist.php [odfalliance.org]
I think that the only honest thing the "The OpenDocument Foundation" can do is rename
itself "The Compound Documents Format Foundation", since to do otherwise would be as
deceitful as Microsoft choosing to name OOXML "Office Open XML". But honestly, I doubt
they will. Their comparison chart between CDF and ODF betrays a few lies:
http://opendocument.foundation.googlepages.com/GOSCON_Chart.pdf [googlepages.com]
In particular:
* CDF is not OOXML compatible, nor has any implementation shown this to be possible. ODF at least has a not-100% compatible conversion.
* ODF has a lot more big vendor support than CDF
* Neither are universal formats, but ODF is supported by more vendors and software projects at the moment.
Personally, I think that the reasons for "The OpenDocument Foundation" changing it's
support from ODF to CDF is self-interest. When ODF was first introduced, there was
money to be made for a small company to write MS Office/Corel Office/Mac Office plugins
and other conversion services. But then Sun and others started offering free converters
and conversion services. There's just too much competition too quickly
CDF, OTOH is not as well supported universally, so there's a lot more room for
a small company. And if the CDF growth rate is slow, the "The OpenDocument Foundation"
has the chance to become *the CDF conversion experts* and make a lot of money.
Also, since CDF (if you believe their claims) is more web oriented, it would be good
for transactional converters of many types that need to be used for each message.
With ODF, you convert your document once and don't have to worry about going back
(by purpose....ODF is best for documents that have to be read, as is 100 years
from now). The difference in profit between one-time business and licensed per
transaction business could huge, even if CDF has a smaller market.
Re:Boards, Foundations and Working Groups, OH MY! (Score:5, Insightful)
Witness the career of Meng Weng Wong, who naively cooperated with Microsoft in accepting SenderID into his SPF standard and watched Microsoft's proprietary, patented XML lunacy effectively destroy further SPF deployment, while allowing Microsoft and SenderID to take credit for all the good SPF had already done.
It's like dealing with Wal-mart: you may be forced into doing so in the short term by the need for expansion, but in the long term, it's usually death for you company or your project.
Re:Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, completely ignoring Microsoft formats isn't essentially suicide, it is suicide.
That's why OpenOffice (and many other applications) have the ability to read and write Microsoft Office files (.doc, .xls, .ppt). But trying to make those your standard document formats for your office suite would be completely retarded, since they're not open standards and you don't know the specs. And Microsoft can change the specs and not tell you.
Re:Thanks a lot, guys. B-( (Score:5, Insightful)
The denominators for it are not "common", they're nearly fractal in their complexity.
Re:Isn't the point to be "Open" - not compatible? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:questions (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, of course, since Esperanto is just as easily learned by people as ODF can be taught to computers...
Universally spreading Esperanto requires an effort from a lot of governments around the world to promote it and teach it; universally implementing ODF requires some programmers, some coffee, and a couple of months, to code a filter that can be then reused in future versions or other applications.
Don't confuse intent with possibility of realization.
Paid for by Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
This whole thing sounds like complete malarkey to me. Something is awry. If you can't buy the standard organizations I guess they can buy the ODF key players.
Re:questions (Score:5, Insightful)
Next strawman?
Re:Nope (Score:3, Insightful)
Thing is, Office is the cheaper and faster option. It costs too much to go to microsoft free solutions, because the truly expensive stuff are employees (who generally can be expected to know Word and Excel automagically) and training time.
I sure as hell would love for you to be right, and I think maybe Google or others will make online documents in a way that makes Word a dinosaur.
So many companies would love to provide their employees with mere html portals locked to the document program, and with no way to print or save data (unless you are screened well). Enter data, go home. I know it sounds dreadful, but it's probably the future.
trademarks? (Score:3, Insightful)
Then Sun, OpenOffice.org, ISO, and ECMA screwed up on trademarks. "Open Office XML" and "OpenDocument Foundation" should refer to nothing other than ODF and OpenOffice.
Re:Nope (Score:5, Insightful)
Until MSFT completely changes the file format and GUI for MSFT OFFice ala MSFT 2007. Then all new training is required because those who need training memorize locations instead of actions. Indeed the loudest complaints about the new interface is from people who don't understand the differences. while I haven't used it yet and most likely won't(I'm sorry but $1000 for an OS and office suite? I don't think so), I do think it is a step in the right direction.
the problem is people are taught Word, and Excel. They aren't taught word processing or spreadsheets. Every time MSFT releases the OS the layout is slightly different. new training is required for those were taught to memorize the interface.
Re:Nope (Score:3, Insightful)
people around the facility learned a while ago that i dont open powerpoints from email -save for work-related ones (which iv never come across).
if its not important enough information to treat with a little respect ("cheryl has cancer and we're taking donations!" in wordart doesnt come across as serious as it should) then i dont think its important enough to waste my time looking at.
HEY SLASHDOT FIX THIS STORY'S WRITEUP (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nope (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder what the hell has been going on with Vista and Office 2007. Not that MS has ever been brilliant about these things, just the monopoly.
There is a bit of a market for openoffice to fill if they can be seen as the Office 2003 successor to Office 2003. But I still think the whole model is old and we will move to web based software for basic office tasks.
Re:questions (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that's pure bullshit.
The primary value of ODF is that it reduces archival, retrieval, and distribution costs of our largest institutions. You know, the really big and long-lived ones, like nations, states, businesses that have celebrated their centennial year, and so on. We will start to see the benefits in about 10 years, in improved information services, and therefore lower taxes and cost of goods than would otherwise be the case.
The direct costs to implement this are lower than any alternative. There are only two other strategies, and one variant of the ODF strategy, so let's do an exhaustive listing:
The indirect costs of implementation are dependent on how effective Microsoft can be with its campaign of FUD, bribery, and astroturfing. They do not seem to be as good at this as they used to be— their notoriety now precedes them— but they are still a force to be reckoned with.
Hey, you damn astroturfers, get your crap out of our meadow!
Could this be any *more* misleading? Editors? WTF! (Score:4, Insightful)
For crying out loud, this is a garbage summary that deliberately leaves out necessary context for no other apparent purpose than to mislead the reader into thinking it matters what this "foundation" thinks.
FROM TFA:
--
Toro
Re:OpenDocument Foundation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Nope (Score:3, Insightful)
2) Because Microsoft has figured out there's more money in trying to do what people want, rather than trying to tell people what to do. Using excel as a pseudo-database? Using excel to do simple lists? Ok, we'll try to accomodate you. It's the complete opposite of the Unix philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well, it's the philosophy that a user shouldn't need to use more tools than necessary and applications thus should be jack of all trades, and only if it can't be shoehorned in should the user have to use a different application.
Re:questions (Score:3, Insightful)
because depending on the volume of documents, it's probably better to do that, than adopt one of the other alternatives listed in the GP. an alternative to rewriting the documents, is to write open, documented extensions to ODF to accommodate the "bells and whistles", and improve the FOSS to do the conversion. Although you'd have to pay someone with the expertise to do it, it may work out cheaper than rewriting thousands of VBA macros. and once it's done once, its done forever, for everyone.
Alternatively you could just wait till some other FOSS developer does it anyway. It's never black and white and the cost of moving vs. savings due to liberation from legacy software is something specific to each situation. So your question "why should they waste their time" contains the unstated assumption that it is a waste of time for them to do it. In some cases it isn't.
Re:Nope (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait, menus are a problem because they're not Gooey enough? Who the fuck decided that being Gooey was the be-all and end-all of UI design anyway?!
No shit, Sherlock! And if you're using "Ribbons," you are in effect having to memmorize a list of icons representing commands, and their location. Memorizing lists of pictures is one of the things GUIs were supposed to encourage, but is fucking stupid, because then you have to memorize the mapping between pictures and concepts (even harder than between words and concepts, by the way, because it's hard to describe a verb by a picture) anyway! How is that an improvement?!
Re:questions (Score:4, Insightful)
franca it has to have a base of native speakers who have economic, political, cultural, and/or military influence. It has nothing to do with some special characteristic of English speakers.
Furthermore, the idea that Esperanto is somehow universal in nature is just arrogant Indo-European-centric thinking itself. Tell a Hungarian, or an Eskimo (e.g. Yupik) speaker that Esperanto is 'easier' to learn and they'll laugh their asses off at you. Anyone who claims Esperanto is somehow 'neutral' or incorporates the best of all worlds has never had any meaningful exposure to a non-Indo-European language; that's 95% of the languages of the world, in case you're wondering. Just for reference: Farsi (Iranian), Russian, Spanish, English are all first-cousins linguistically speaking (I bet you think they're *really* different from each-other, right?) Esperanto is their gene-manipulated bastard child.
To any speaker of a truly foreign language like Yupik there is no practical difference between learning any of those languages -- oh, except if she learns English she gets access to the whole world of business, science and international politics, as well as the best chance of asking for directions when traveling; if she learns Esperanto she can talk to a bunch of kooks, assuming she can find one of them.
But I'm sure you and many other amateur Linguists on Slashdot are going to disregard this completely and stick to your preconceived notions about natural languages with completely inappropriate comparisons to designed languages which is eerily similar to ID proponents when talking to biologists. I'm not sure why I even bother to respond to these kinds of posts. *sigh*
Re:Nope (Score:3, Insightful)
It's bad enough now, having to write instructions like "First select Edit -> Preferences -> Security -> Certificates -> Manage Certificates. In the resulting Certificate Manager popup, select Authorities. Now click Import..." and so on.
Anything that forces a graphical representation also forces us to converse in terms of graphical representations. And guess what, humans don't do that very well.