Seeing as I’m on the road to full conversion, I might as well go the whole nine yards! Miguel de Icaza’s post is an interesting one as he points out the technical issues that ODF faces and how you would struggle to build a spreadsheet program from the ODF standard. I’m no expert in these standards but this is the first time I’ve seen a balanced argument for OOXML. In reality, technical issues are not what really bothered me, and it’s something that Miguel misses. Microsoft were dragged kicking and screaming to the ISO table. If pressure wasn’t coming from Governments worldwide on adopting ODF as their default file format, would they have gone down the standardisation path? I don’t know the answer to that but it’s good that they have.
People are going to accuse Miguel of being in the pay of Microsoft, seeing as he works for Novell, who signed their soul away for some shiny coins to the devil himself aka Microsoft! Novell and the Microsoft deal has hardly been flavour of the month in the Opensource community! That’s why I like Miguel’s approach because it is based on pragmatism rather than on a dogmatic religious view of things!
Microsoft has a very powerful hold on our psyche because I’ve had people trial OpenOffice.org, like it and found it fine for their use but reject it because it’s not Microsoft Office! Now that’s crazy and scary at the same time!
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January 31st, 2007 at 9:57 pm
I think people are much more a slave to their emotions than most of use would care to admit. Open Office is functional but it is clinical. You just don’t get the “wow factor” that you get with Office 2007. I was attending the Developer launch for Office and Vista a few days ago and one of the speakers referred to the user interface as “the emotional connection to the software”. I think he was spot on. Microsoft understands that you have to win both hearts and minds.
February 10th, 2007 at 7:50 pm
Just a few reminders - As of 2003 Microsoft Office had an XML file format available for everyone in Office. As of 2000 Microsoft started converting everying to XML, including registering C# with ECMA, changing metadata in Windows to XML formats and making the use of these protocols available to others. While MS is far from perfect, don’t suggest that they were dragged kicking and screaming to ISO - XML is not inherrantly good over any other format, in fact, some would say a binary format is much better at bandwidth management and specific document formats.
Then look at the number one complaint before Office 97 about Office - file format changes - we’ve resisted for 10 years, but finally we have made the DEFAULT format something else, which will hopefully again last for 10+ years.
ttfn
David
February 10th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
There has been pressure on Microsoft to get to this point because a number of Governmental organisations were saying that they wanted Open Standards based document formats and ODF was a threat because they were already in the ISO process. It would’ve meant Microsoft potentially being locked out of some of these opportunities. Microsoft was not going to let that happen. I guess the one thing we can agree on is that this is right outcome. The C# example is a good one where Microsoft worked through ECMA right from the start. Interoperability between applications is really important because it’s the customers who are affected at the end of the day. That is why I’ve supported the Microsoft/Novell agreement because Novell will work on OpenOffice to add ooXML support.
Of course I don’t know what Microsoft’s motivations are, so let’s give them the benefit of the doubt.
February 11th, 2007 at 6:10 pm
[...] the panacea that perhaps I had originally thought and Dave Overton added his comments to that discussion. Jonathan’s opening remarks are absolutely true and you can apply these to anycompany. [...]