OpenDocument Foundation Closes 177
Munchkinguy writes "First, they dropped support for their namesake OpenDocument Format and declared a switch to the W3C's 'Compound Document Format.' Then, W3C's Chris Lilley clarified that CDF 'was not created to be, and isn't suitable for use as, an office format.' Now, the Foundation has mysteriously closed up shop, leaving the following message: 'The OpenDocument Foundation, Inc. is closed. We sincerely wish our friends and associates in the OpenDocument Community all the best and much success going forward. Good-bye and good luck.'"
Microsoft shut them down (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Microsoft shut them down (Score:5, Informative)
Another FUD bites the dust ... (Score:5, Funny)
[chorus]
dum, dum, dum, another FUD bites the dust.
dum, dum, dum, another FUD bites the dust.
And another one gone, and another one gone,
another FUD bites the dust
Hey, I'm gonna see it on youtube
another FUD bites the dust
How do you think OpenDoc Foundations gonna get along
When the M$ bux are gone?
You got all the FUD that they could give,
And kicked them out when you were done.
Are you happy? Are you satisfied?
How long can M$ stand the heat?
Out of Redmond, the chairs do fly,
To the sound of the FUD beat [chorus]
dum, dum, dum, another FUD bites the dust.
dum, dum, dum, another FUD bites the dust.
And another one gone, and another one gone,
another FUD bites the dust
Hey, I'm gonna see it on youtube
another FUD bites the dust
Patches are welcome (Score:2)
nope, that's YOUR job.. (Score:2, Funny)
Open Source means that YOU should 'constructivicize' HIS criticism, with an added license that the next man can un-'constructivicize' it right behind your back again.
;)
Re:Microsoft shut them down (Score:5, Interesting)
On the assumption that these people are not entirely stupid:
1. If they were really working to break MS Office dominance, they would have realised by now that what they have said was completely stupid, and may have brought harm to the "cause", as the damages were amplified by clueless "journalists" and "analysts" (e.g. http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=875 [zdnet.com])
2. If they were MS stooges, the credibility required to carried out their work successfully was pretty much destroyed.
Nothing more to do in either case, to continue hanging onto the empty name of OpenDocument Foundation would be farcical on the same scale as Enderle or DiDio.
Shut them down? -No, Send a large check? -Maybe.. (Score:3, Informative)
Recently they tried to bribe their way to the Nigerians to get ahead of Mandriva. Then we hear of Blamer throwing chairs around the office yelling "I'm going to fucking kill Google", I really wouldn't put it above them trying to bribe this committee into submission.
In other words, when everything else fails, look for the money trail.
In all honesty, no matter how much I would care about some open s
Re:Shut them down? -No, Send a large check? -Maybe (Score:2, Insightful)
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I read it in a book once.
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They took the money and ran.
Fishy (Score:4, Interesting)
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I highly doubt this is true in any case, let alone the borderline edge cases Slashdot keeps making unfounded accusations for.
As fishy as a fishy fisherman's fishy bits (Score:5, Funny)
Nope. Nothing fishy there. I'm sure the OpenDoc Foundation just accidentally ate a ring of teleportation or something.
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Checking on Wikihack [wikia.com], you can only eat rings when you are polymorphed into either a rock mole, a rust monster or xorn.
So, if they DID eat a ring of teleportation as you say, the only remaining question would be, did Microsoft zap them with the wand of polymorph?
I can't believe I just said that...
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Nope. It was a RED ring of teleportation.
They just stopped working and went away.
Re:As fishy as a fishy fisherman's fishy bits (Score:4, Insightful)
They released a formal statement.. (Score:5, Funny)
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Editing and reading/interpreting it. Those XML files (and the wretched directory structure they fall into) are non-trivial to read. Try opening a docx containing a picture inside of a table cell.
Look on the bright side (Score:5, Funny)
rather tag it "!thisodf" (Score:5, Informative)
Good riddance (Score:4, Interesting)
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Say wha?? (Score:2)
It's ok to say "we messed up" and call a mulligan. Right guys?
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Only if they have either no lands or nothing but lands on their starting hand, of course.
Foundation has no official status (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Foundation has no official status (Score:5, Informative)
The open document fellowship [opendocume...owship.com] are the community supporters (i.e., the ODF volunteer organization), while the ODF Alliance [odfalliance.org] are the industry supporters. What did the Open Document Foundation do? Muddy the waters.
They're the Ross Perot [wikipedia.org] of open document foundations - making people think that if they listen to them, that they'll get the real skinny because of their seeming-official status. Good to see 'em go.
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Re:Foundation has no official status (Score:5, Funny)
Brian:Are you the Open Document Foundation?
Reg: Fuck off!
Brian: What?
Reg: Open Document Foundation. We're the Open Document Alliance*! Open Document Foundation. Cawk.
Francis: Wankers.
Brian: Can I... join your group?
Reg: No. Piss off.
Brian: I didn't want to code this stuff. It's only a job. I hate closed source formats as much as anybody.
ODA: Shhhh. Shhhh. Shhh. Shh. Shhhh.
Reg: Schtum.
Judith: Are you sure?
Brian: Oh, dead sure. I hate closed source formats already.
Reg: Listen. If you really wanted to join the Open Document Alliance*, you'd have to really hate closed source formats.
Brian: I do!
Reg: Oh, yeah? How much?
Brian: A lot!
Reg: Right. You're in. Listen. The only thing we hate more than closed source formats are the fucking Open Document Foundation.
ODA: Yeah...
Judith: Splitters.
ODA: Splitters...
Francis: And the Popular Alliance for Open Documents.
ODA: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Splitters. Splitters...
Loretta: And the Open Document Alliance.
ODA: Yeah. Splitters. Splitters...
Reg: What?
Loretta: The Open Document Alliance*. Splitters.
Reg: We're the Open Document Alliance*!
Loretta: Oh. I thought we were the Open Document Group.
Reg: Open Document Alliance*!
Francis: Whatever happened to the Open Document Group, Reg?
Reg: He's over there.
ODA: Splitter!
* I Know its ODF Alliance but that doesn't work as well and this is, after all humour/satire.(Based on Movie "the Life of Brian")
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Right. You're in. Listen. The only people we hate more than the Romans are the fucking Judean People's Front.
P.F.J.:
Yeah...
JUDITH:
Splitters.
FRANCIS:
And the Judean Popular People's Front.
P.F.J.:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Splitters. Splitters...
LORETTA:
And the People's Front of Judea.
P.F.J.:
Yeah. Splitters. Splitters
In related news (Score:4, Funny)
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"Plutocracy".
TWW
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Step 1: Identify the problems.
Step 2: Come up with potential solutions.
Step 3: Don't give up when you realize that the potential solutions might be more radical than you expected.
The fact of the matter is that the economic system in the United States is very likely incompatible with democracy. I'm not yet convinced that some sort socialist model is the only thing that would work, but hybrid-socialist systems (as in Northern Europe) are the best solution that has been demonstrated in practice.
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I accept this challenge then :)
All political systems can basically be split into 2 camps, based on who controls how society is run. I won't go into elaborate details about how socialism works, etc.
The main point, and this is something that Western society desperately needs to learn, is that money itself is an organising force. It attracts more money to itself, unless you specifically dis-allow this practice. What this
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That's definitely the argument, and it absolutely provides a clear description of what has happened to economic systems in the real world.
What I don't accept is your two camps premise. There may be forms of capitalism that don't degrade into imperialism. There are definitely different forms of socialism. There are a number possible hybrid systems. There are probably even other options (I keep thinking that there must be a way to do non-linear money).
What I am sure of is this: Pretty much anything works on
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Not if they're exposed to international markets.
The complete failure of Stalinism shows that you can't have 'socialism in a state'. It has to be international, for the same reasons that less profitable capitalist powers are doomed to assimilation - everyone has to compete with the most cut-throat capitalist.
As transitory systems, yes. But the
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Have you ever thought about starting your own oil drilling company? You can't, can you? Barriers to entry. What about a car company? Think you can navigate the patent mine-field just to produce an EFI system for an engine? You can't. Individuals can't enter any established industry.
You can either make the means of production completely state-based ( collective ownership with democratic control over how they're used ), or you can NOT make them collectively owned ...
Given that you end your analysis with:
This is one of the key reasons why the remaining socialists call themselves internationalists - because we realise that there is no possible solution on a small scale - we'd be at the mercy of the world's imperial powers.
I'll assume you don't advocate the capitalist system. You show capitalism as bad because it's hard to start a business due to monopolies. You then show "internationalists" as good because they advocate making the means of production completely state-based. However, state-based ownership of business makes starting a business illegal due to government monopoly. I'm not really what you are advocating at this point. As for:
collective ownership with democratic control over how they're used
I've done
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What a strange leap of logic. You need to study Lincoln.
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What part of Lincoln? The man was a tyrant imprisoning thousand suspected Confederate sympathizers without trial, revoked habeas corpus and spent money on the Civil War without Congresses approval. Abraham Lincoln was so unpopular that in 1925 when Mount Rushmore commissioned his bust almost didn't make it because of the fear that anti Lincoln sympathizers would vandalize the bust, sixty years after his death.
I would venture to say if there
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What part of Lincoln?
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You're confused. If you look it up, you'll find that the US is considered a democracy.
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Your the one that is confused. Go find an American Flag, stand in front of if, place your rught hand over ypour heart and say:
"I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Democracy for which it stands, ..."
Now is that right?
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I know perfectly well that the US is a republic. Your confusion is that you think that a republic is not a democracy, which is false. The US is a republic and a democracy. There's no conflict. You don't explain yourself, but the usual basis for this fallacy is the mistaken belief that only direct democracies are democracies. That just isn't the case: representative democracies like the United States are considered democracies by virtually everybody, and the definitions of democracy that you will find in di
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You make it sound like it's a democratic republic much like the former USSR was a socialist republic. We do not have a democratic republic.
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You're confusing the names that countries give themselves with accurate characterizations of their systems of government. The US is correctly characterized as a democracy and as a republic in spite of the fact that neither word appears in its name. As you mention, many, perhaps most, countries that call themselves "democratic republic", are in fact dictatorships or oligarchies. Indeed, the reason that they call themselves "democratic republic" is precisely because they want to pretend to be something they
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The official form of government of the United States of America is a "federal constitutional republic" which is much more complex that just a democracy or republic. A group of self-governing states in republic held together by a constitution.
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You seem to think that descriptions of one aspect of a country exclude descriptions of others, which is false. The fact that the US is a federal constitutional republic does not mean that is not a democracy, which is the point at issue. Nothing you have said argues against the characterization of the US as a democracy. Further specifying what sort of democracy it is does not change this fact.
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Resurrect it then (Score:5, Interesting)
I suppose.
Anyone?
The worst that could happen is that M$ will pay you a bundle to close it down again.
At best you could shepherd a format that we sorely need promoted.
Choose opendocumentcommunity.org Quick! (Score:2, Funny)
And opendocumentcommunity (.org, .net, .com) domains are vacant. Quickly, choose one and spread FUD!! XD
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Who cares? (Score:5, Informative)
Excellent precedent (Score:4, Interesting)
This is an excellent precedent. Maybe the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution [wikipedia.org] will follow their lead.
Still Making News...? (Score:2, Insightful)
In other news.... (Score:5, Funny)
Pointless. (Score:2)
This news is pointless.
Tit for Tat (Score:2)
Maybe I should found the OpenOffice XML Standardization Committee? Anyone interested in joining? Membership requires you prefer OOXML today, but plan to have a strong belief that ODF is superior to OOXML as per the announcement we'll make tomorrow. Don't worry, it won't take a lot of your time since we plan to dissolve in a week, and announce that to the tech press. ;)
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Sure... you call the PR department at Sun and I'll call IBM.
Sour grapes? (Score:2)
Good to see them gone.
This just in... (Score:2)
Goodbye and good riddance to the trolling trio and their self-serving vaporware specification.
Attention! Announcement! (Score:2)
Watch this space for future announcements, news, and requests for donations.
I hope (Score:2)
There was a time when a standard was made by.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah, so this is a statement that we are getting back to that.
We don't need a foundation. all we need is popular usage....
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OK, so that makes Windows, .DOC(X?), and MSIE the standards. We can all pack up and go home now.
The reason for standards committees is that de facto standards often suck for everyone except the people who invented them.
Smells like legal action (Score:2)
--
Toro
Please read previous articles. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Now (Score:4, Informative)
Hello! (Score:2)
Yes, I think most people here at Slashdot understand that. And just about everyone else doesn't care. And that's the thing: While there is a good amount of frothing conspiracy theory going on, it really doesn't matter because no one really cared about the "Open Document Foundation" anyway. And that's probably one reason they shut down, they just where not effective FUD.
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Cute quote. Way to fire up the hordes. Your evidence is, exactly, what?
Oh, I see where your ideas could have come from. Going to share?
Re:Now (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the evidence made public during the anti-trust trial and conviction should be enough for anyone to have a healthy distrust of everything Redmond does, especially anything regarding openness or interoperability or anything else that threatens Microsoft's OS and office suite lock-in and thus their entire business model.
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Re:Honestly, (Score:4, Insightful)
In the case of word processor documents, the program renders something (unfortunately also called a document) on some kind of device, typically a printer (with various paper formats) and the screen. The difference between HTML with CSS and javascript, and something like MS Word doc format are: built in interfaces to other systems (e.g. compound documents in the case of word), services the underlying rendering platform is expected to provide, plus miscellaneous implementation choices (e.g. VBA vs. javascript). The differences in services provided (e.g. compound document linking and updating in the case of Word) reflect in part the practical differences in the target application domains. And these practicalities do matter, although as HTML matures it is becoming a more practical alternative (in my opinion) for many kinds of documents.
In the case of spreadsheets, they are also a "document" when we are talking about the standard in question, although they are also arguably special purpose programs. The main thing they have in common with "documents" of the prior type is that they are also expected to have graphical renderings.
So really, what we are talking about here are practical ways of achieving various things users need in the course of their work. There are always more than one way to get things done, and accordingly, users could make do with HTML or PDF for many tasks, particularly if they are provided with an editor. With CSS and javascript, there's an even stronger case to be made that there isn't any critical need for a "presentation" document format.
While such solutions would clearly be adequate, they are not necessarily optimal for everyone. For example, HTML does not provide change tracking and commenting capabilities, although this can be a blessing when interchanging documents.
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Word processor formats are the computer version of toilet paper. You dont use it for longterm retention of important information.
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That's where you use DocBook for instance.
But average Joe nor even programmers understand the advantages of splitting the information , meta-information and presentation, therefore they all use Word for drafting their documents.
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You mean you couldn't care less. If you say that you could care less, then it's clearly not at the bottom of your list of cares, or in other words, that you DO care about it.
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"No, I was right, I could care less, because I care even less about what you're saying right now."
Obligatory South Park Reference (Score:2)
Also shut down (Score:2)
Vik
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