[Discuss] ODF is now an ISO standard

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2006-05-03 15:20-0700 Alan W. Irwin wrote:

> On 2006-05-03 13:53-0700 Paul Nienaber wrote:
>
>> But Microsoft has what attempts to be a non-conforming C implementation.
>
> That's their tried and true "embrace and extend" technique.
>
>> Watch them do the same, much like how there are Office variants that 
>> theoretically use the same file formats, but aren't forwards-compatible.
>
> Actually, MS is not using that "embrace and extend" tactic in this case.
> Instead they are trying to go with their own completely different
> "standard", and I think that is going to hurt them badly.

There is an important development today on the ODF front.  See
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20060504015438308 and
http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS5139606687.html .

Apparently, a representative of the Open Document Foundation (which gives a
lot of credibility to the claim) claims that after a year of work
they now have an Office plug-in that
will seamlessly read and write ODF from all versions of Office from 97 on
up.  Of course, it is vapourware at this stage since it is not released to
the public yet, but assuming it will become widely available and operates as
well as claimed, this development changes everything.  On the one hand it
helps MS because they can now compete in the ODF world.  On the other hand,
it hurts them because (a) their fight against ODF has now lost all
credibility; (b) they have to play on a level playing field (at least with
old versions of Office which they cannot fiddle with to embrace and extend
ODF); and (c) it makes Office interoperable with every other office app
including different versions of Office ==> no more vendor lock-in, no
more forced upgrades, and no more Office monopoly.

So _if_ the claim is true, this is a really huge development.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net); the
Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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