KDE and KOffice Rebuke OOXML, GNOME Dithers 398
Peter writes "Free Software Foundation president Richard Stallman and ITWire have praised KDE and KOffice developers for taking a principled stand against OOXML, while raising serious concerns about the GNOME Foundation's decision to give credibility to Microsoft's broken format. This comes on the heels of GNOME co-founder Miguel de Icaza's depiction of OOXML as a 'superb standard', and GNOME Foundation director Quim Gil's stonewalling of the patent-free Ogg Vorbis / Theora format on behalf of Nokia. Will the GNOME Foundation's indifferent response to Richard Stallman's appeal drive him to throw his weight behind KDE?"
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Miguel de Icaza (Score:5, Insightful)
Novell is on MS's payroll.
This 'article' is bullshit flamebait (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthuremore, this crap article praises KDE for backing ODF implying that Gnome isn't. Of course Gnome backs ODF.
Finally, look for Jeff Waugh's comments in the comment section of TFA to see how it really is.
More weight to KDE (Score:4, Insightful)
With Linus preferring KDE, could Stallman's support put more weight behind KDE? I'm rather surprised that the GNOME Foundation's decision. They could at least have kept their mouths shut instead of praising OOXML, which severely damages their credibility in the GNU world.
RMS and the tinfoil hat (Score:5, Insightful)
I appreciate RMS and his views. He is a pragmatic alarmist, he is playing the chess game that is computers several moves ahead of most people. That's why so many take his statements with a grain of salt, they don't see he has been "right," consistently, for over two decades, often years before the first real signs begin to show.
GNU/Linux and F/OSS have enemies. It is an undeniable fact. There are people working against us. One need only hop over to groklaw and see the black hand of Microsoft (and greed of course) guiding that whole thing. So, maybe we are paranoid, but even paranoids have real enemies.
I am really starting to believe that GNOME is a trojan horse, or at least some aspects of it. I don't trust Miguel de Icaza, he's either incompetent of a shill and he's potentially dangerous.
Would it still be open source... (Score:3, Insightful)
Especially on an issue where it really does matter.
Re:Does it matter anymore? (Score:2, Insightful)
As for "all" popular distros, the word "commercial" is missing. Or at least "commerce-oriented" (and, yes, yes, Ubuntu is one of these). PCLinuxOS, Mepis are very popular and nice KDE-based distros. PCLinuxOS is particular, I find it has a healthy, free, even "scene"-like attitude to it.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:RMS and the tinfoil hat (Score:2, Insightful)
As another post said read Jeff Waugh's comments in the previously mentioned article. Read before you assume.
Re:Does it matter anymore? (Score:3, Insightful)
Funny, when I bought my mother-in-law a $300 Wal-Mart PC, it came pre-loaded with Linspire, a KDE distro.
I promptly removed it in favor of SimplyMEPIS, another KDE distro.
Here's a $199 PC, which runs Enlightenment. [walmart.com]
Re:Miguel de Icaza (Score:2, Insightful)
Confusion Part Two (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, the "freedom" to write Caged applications is a thorny issue. But I see it like this, and I'm sure RMS does too: in a nation where the ownership of slaves is forbidden, citizens tend to be freer on average than in a nation where the ownership of slaves is permitted. So KDE are actively promoting freedom, by taking a stand against OOXML. Novell and GNOME and Mono are getting rather too cosy in bed with Microsoft for comfort. It's very hard not to think about Microsoft pulling some kind of bait-and-switch operation which would put OSS users in trouble. If this happens, I think it's actually more likely that the Governments of the world would just pass Enabling Acts to annul whatever IP Microsoft are trying to abuse; but that's still a waste of taxpayers' money that doesn't have to happen, and by the time it gets to that stage the damage (in terms of unopenable public and private records) will be severe.
Not everyone is as responsible a citizen as you. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you, and just because you don't understand the importance of having access to Source Code doesn't mean it isn't every bit as big a deal, in its own right, as slavery.
Re:Miguel de Icaza (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:RMS and the tinfoil hat (Score:3, Insightful)
I think he is naive; I honestly believe he thinks MSOOXML is a good thing, based on his experience with
Tired of the Nonsense/FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
- 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.
- The implementation of OOXML is all about interoperability. I don't see anyone (wrongly) trashing Samba as a project, and yet its existence and the effort to implement OOXML support is virtually identical in terms of free software.
- 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.
- The KDE/Koffice developers issued a statement [kde.org] 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.
- Even if you dislike Jeff Waugh, it's pretty tough to find a rational basis for criticising him based on the podcast or his approach to the problem other than (i) not getting the GNOME statement [gnome.org] (again, which you really can't fault) out soon enough, or (ii) giving Roy the publicity he wants.
- 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 [google.nl] person willing to do or say anything that might cook up some self-publicity, and with an irrational hatred of Novell. And in fact on the contrary, Roy skipped around every question that was directly asked to him; instead opting to just give background on Microsoft's "evil" nature and talking about how bad OOXML is (both of which we palpably know).
- 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.
To save any comments of bias, I'm an ardent KDE aficionado.Re:Sigh. (Score:4, Insightful)
Nokia obviously does not want to support Vorbis. That's not Quim's decision to make. He can't change reality on the bug report and say "sure, Nokia will support Vorbis tomorrow, everything will be fine and dandy", because it's clearly *not going to happen*. But Nokia's policy is not GNOME's, and what Nokia does really has no implications for what GNOME does.
I really don't understand what you expect Quim to do on this bug report, or why you think it implies anything in particular about *GNOME's* policies, rather than Nokia's.
Re:More weight to KDE (Score:1, Insightful)
KDE is Free Software. True Free Software.
GNOME is free software lite. It is almost free software, just without the Four Freedoms. With KDE, you can be sure that all KDE software you use is truly Free. GNOME, on the other hand, is more than willing to bow to Microsoft. It has a great history of non-Free software. GNOME died the day it accepted Evolution with the proprietary Exchange connector.
It's time for people who truly love Free Software to stop using GNOME. It's time to move to real Free Software and not free software lite. The fact that KDE is objectively a better desktop environment is just gravy.
Re:Idiots (Score:3, Insightful)
Life isn't _usually_ about taking your ball and going home.
Every once in a while, however, you meet a predator/bully who cannot be challenged via _any_ means except a war to the death. You do not beat diseases by negotiating with bacteria. You do not eliminate rats by trying to train them away from dumpsters. You cannot negotiate with an irrational tyrant expect positive results.
We've already been through the standards process for a document format. There's an ISO standard for documents: ODF. Anything that does not build on ODF is a subversion of that process. Worse, Microsoft's methods are extremely slimy.
You cannot beat Microsoft on the playing field, since MS has the money to insure there aren't any fair playing fields. That's why _we_, the angry morons, need to try and balance the field the other way.
Re:Miguel de Icaza (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This 'article' is bullshit flamebait (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Confusion Part Two (Score:2, Insightful)
More like, "Linux users like me would rather dunk their heads in shit then help them move away from Windows, even if only one step at a time."
It's damn near impossible to find a Qt based program on Windows, and that's surely a roadblock to adoption, since if I can write an app that uses Qt on Windows, moving to Linux would be easier. But you'd rather just insult the Windows users instead.
That's a hell of a comparison, drawing similarities between the enslavement of people and denial of human rights to... software. Completely unreasonable too, since in the end any piece of software can be reimplemented but a person denied rights cannot simply be replaced with someone that has those rights.
No, it's not. There's a difference, a huge difference, between being treated like property and not being able to fiddle with the source to an application. If you can't see that then no one should ever take you seriously, because you're not arguing from a sane basis.
Re:Idiots (Score:2, Insightful)
True, the ODF ball has a lot fewer corners and edges, but that's not going to stop some people from wanting to play with the Microsoft ball, so sooner or later, we're going to need to know how to deal with it.
While you guys are busy freaking out about GNOME, maybe Linux should drop support for NTFS and FAT, and OpenOffice.org should no longer be able to open any document ending in ".doc"
Seriously. People need to chill out. This is about ensuring that we DON'T get shut out of anything. While even the paranoid have enemies, not everything is a conspiracy.
Re:The best way to bring people to open source (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not that simple: this is an issue of standards. When you're dealing with standards, and creating and promoting a standard, you're inherently rejecting the idea of letting people decide what the "best tool for the job" is, because you're trying to make them use a specific tool, so that they can interoperate. What good would it do me to make up my own graphics format and editing tools, for instance, if I can't use the resulting images anywhere or send them to anyone? I can use them for myself, of course, but for things like that, it's a lot more useful if I can also exchange them with others, and because it's a popular standard, they have no problem using these files.
There's a big fight right now between ODF and OOXML. People (especially large organizations) are finally seeing the value of open office format standards, and XML-based ones which they can view or edit with tools other than the word processor or spreadsheet which created them. The whole world has been suffering with MS Office's closed, proprietary, binary-only formats for many years now, and they're ready for a change to something more like PDF or JPG, which can be viewed or edited with lots of different, competing tools. (It's also very useful to have an XML-based standard so that information can be easily extracted, such as for web searches. Google could easily spider and index XML-based documents on the web, whereas doing that for MS's proprietary formats isn't so simple.) But MS doesn't want people to switch to an open standard; they'll lose their proprietary lock-in, and consequently many MS Office customers. So they've intentionally confused the issue by making up their own XML-based "standard", OOXML, which isn't open, and basically serves as an XML wrapper for closed, binary data so that competing software still can't be 100% compatible.
Diversity and uniqueness of different open-source projects is a good thing as you say, as people can pick what works the best, but they're not shut out of anything because it's all open (For instance, I use KDE normally, but I can still use GNOME programs because it's all open-source; I'm not locked out of either by choosing one). But that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about an open standard vs. a closed standard. If the world chooses the closed standard, then we're right back where we were with a decade or more of MS Office dominance, and no other tool being 100% compatible, so we're all forced to use MS Office just to be compatible with everyone else. No thanks.
Re:The best way to bring people to open source (Score:5, Insightful)
If GNOME supports OOXML, this just muddies the waters even more. It's a blatant move by MS (using covertly-paid henchmen) to fracture the open-source community.
We already have multiple national governments adopting the ODF standard (which truly is an open standard); the last thing we need is the stooges at GNOME slowing this process.
Re:More weight to KDE (Score:3, Insightful)
GNOME, on the other hand, is more than willing to bow to Microsoft.
Examples, please, and not tin-foil-hat examples.
This was detailed in the article summary. Miguel de Icaza has endorsed OOXML, calling it a superb standard or somesuch. Miguel and GNOME go hand-in-hand, or at least that's the popular view. GNOME has never done anything to counter that view, so we might as well accept it as true. Therefore, since Miguel is willing to bow to Microsoft (he's done so over and over), then GNOME is too.
Re:Miguel de Icaza (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:More weight to KDE (Score:3, Insightful)
If the Foundation wants to convince everyone that Miguel does not have a hand in GNOME any more, then they need to publicly cast him out, denounce him, and announce that he no longer has any power with GNOME any more, and does not speak for them in any way. That's how you eliminate perceptions: you publicly counter them and state what the truth is. Instead, the GNOME foundation has done nothing at all to counter this perception.
If this perception were only help by a few freaks, there wouldn't be any point to wasting time countering it. But as I said, the sheer volume of comments which show this perception on the part of many Slashdotters shows that it is not held by some tiny minority, but is a very popular perception, regardless of how true it may or may not be.
Re:Could someone please explain... (Score:4, Insightful)
I like Mono. It lets me write C# on Linux. Does it hurt you? Apparently it must, how I have no idea.
I want to open OOXML documents. Does this hurt you? Got me. You seem to think it does.
Re:The best way to bring people to open source (Score:3, Insightful)
If they're considering OOXML on equal terms with ODF, then that shows they're clearly biased towards MS. Providing support as a migration path is fine, but endorsing it is another thing altogether. I don't mind OpenOffice supporting
Just great. McCarthian politics within software. "Oh, you don't like ODF? Why not? Your sounding like a closed-standard sympathiser and a Microsoft lackey!"
I'm sorry, but it just isn't possible to be a supporter of Free software and also endorse closed, proprietary standards. The two are at odds with each other. This isn't McCarthyism, this is reality. The only reason to have closed, proprietary standards is to facilitate vendor lock-in, which is completely against the goals of Free software.
Re:grow a pair! (Score:4, Insightful)
The work that Jody does helps in this regard.
If the KOffice guys want to not import ooxml then they're making their program less useful to their users.
Martin Sevior
Re:Miguel de Icaza (Score:3, Insightful)
The whole point of OOXML is only Microsoft can ever fully support it as it's full of dependencies on Microsoft quirky and slightly undefinable technologies.
And, BTW, Miguel has eroded any credibility he had by, apparently, sabotaging his turf of the open software thing.
Re:The best way to bring people to open source (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Could someone please explain... (Score:1, Insightful)
The C# issue doesn't matter because no one cares about your hello world nonsense.
Re:The best way to bring people to open source (Score:4, Insightful)
That's exactly what I'm talking about. It's not an openly-viewable standard when critical parts of it are closed and secret. I highly doubt this will get resolved; stuff like that is in there precisely because MS wants to maintain their vendor lock-in. How are they going to maintain lock-in if they openly document everything? Besides, these issues were raised many, many months ago when MS tried to get their "standard" accepted as one, and they still haven't done anything about them.
Re:The best way to bring people to open source (Score:2, Insightful)
Get a clue and do a little more research before you label people at GNOME "stooges". The work that people like Jody Goldberg of GNOME is doing is a huge benefit to everyone, but people like you are turning it into more of a political issue than it should be. Jody is actively going through the OOXML specs on behalf of free software hackers and users (that includes YOU, dumbass!) and figuring out where all the ambiguities are, what doesn't make sense, what isn't implementable as specified, etc. He's trying to make a closed standard open, rather than undertake the futile task of making it disappear.
I haven't read the specs, but that's because I don't hack of any office suite software (and I'm willing to bet money that you don't either, and that you haven't read the specs). But Jody does. And Michael Meeks does. And Miguel has (and may still to some extent, I don't know). Because of that experience they are qualified to talk about it. At least, more qualified than you are. If they say something, why don't you just listen to what they say for a moment rather than blow it off because you've already made up your mind that they're wrong? What exactly has qualified you to know more about this than them? You read a couple /. headlines and you're an expert, right?
And no, I don't really care that RMS praised KDE for this. Instead he should praise them for making a nice office suite, not for for picking a side on a stupid political issue. He should be praising Jody Goldberg for all the hard work he is doing for free software hackers and users out there, in case anyone decides in the future that they want to support OOXML. Just because Jody is doing all this work doesn't mean that GNOME is committed to using OOXML, because it isn't. That's a bullshit conspiracy theory that got started on /. and digg, which are apparently where RMS gets his news from these days. Jody's work is about clarifying the spec in case GNOME is put in a position where they feel they need to support the spec someday.
I'm not even going to start on the MS covert funding conspiracy theory bullshit.
Re:Could someone please explain... (Score:3, Insightful)
When an application breaks due to to a bad configuration file, how do you fix/troubleshoot?
rm *.conf, restart. A generic configuration is very often created when none is present.
mv foo.conf.old foo.conf. Poor man's backup.
recover, add foo.conf, restore. File level backups == application level backups.
and so on...
When an application breaks due to bad registry/GConf information?
restore whole registry?
Why does "A single API for storing configuration parameters" have to be implemented like a database? It sucked for Windows, so XML + schemas will make it work for Linux?
W-T-F.
I think a 'good' registry implementation stores data in plain text, and NOT necessarily all in the same place.
If it's XML, it might as well be binary. XML is based on some great principals, but EVERYTHING doesn't need to be so extensible OR marked up (obfuscated).
Each application's data should be easily segregated, logically, and physically.
It should be easy to take a snapshot of a single application's data. Like cp foo.conf foo.old easy.
It should be easy to test a snapshot. Apachectl configtest or testparm easy.
Decide if users should be able to edit raw backend files, or merely view them, or whether usage of an intermediate layer should be enforced.
- Then, go with either easy to read plain text, or heavily optimized binary. Plain text XML might be permissible only in the 'read only' case.
Design a GOOD intermediate layer that supports all the above concepts, with a GUI, from the command line, and by any other means current configurations are accessible by.
Support for local and global configurations. As in
Easy access controls.. public, private. Ugh.. static, whatever, just keep the learning curve low. Hey, play your backend right and guess what? (if your filesystem access controls sucked to begin with, that's a whole other problem)
This could go on forever.
You want to hear the best way to design "a single API for storing configuration parameters"?
1. Take a good, long look at what's possible the old way
2. Don't reduce the user's power. Methods may change, but maintain the same or better control (and ease of use, please).
3. Add features that having a common API enables. Data change notification, for example.
4. K.I.S.S.
Yah, it might be hard to do, most good things are.