GNOME Foundation Helping OOXML? 471
christian.einfeldt writes "According to long-time OpenDocument Fellowship member Russell Ossendryver, it appears that GNOME founder Miguel de Icaza's widely-publicized praise for OOXML as a 'superb standard' is being followed up with on-going support by the GNOME Foundation in 'resolving' the thousands of criticisms leveled against Microsoft's proposed standard. In an open letter in his blog, Ossendryver urges the GNOME Foundation to halt its apparent support for OOXML as a standard and to put its efforts behind enhancing adoption of the genuinely open standard, ODF, which was approved by the world standards bodies as ISO/IEC standard 26300 on 2 May 2006."
No surprise here... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:No surprise here... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think somebody needs to tell explain him some basics of of human relationships.
If somebody blows you off the way Microsoft blew him off on a job interview the best way to deal with them is to reject them. They will come back sooner or later. In fact if you reject them a couple of time they will keep coming back with a better offer than you really deserve.
The worst thing to do in cases like that is to try sticking your nose up their rectum the way he is constantly trying to do. In life that achieves the opposite. The person who rejected you in the first place will treat you exactly as you should be treated when you are in a naso-rectal interface position. Like shit.
All I can say - what a daft jerk...
Re:No surprise here... (Score:5, Interesting)
For all I know, they offered him a better job outside Microsoft for a nice thirty pieces of silver collectible at some future date. Every time I read his name, it's in connection with something I see as damaging to Linux and the Free Software movement. And surely nobody can describe OOXML in these terms without some sort of bias?
Gnome is GPL, isn't it? Doesn't that make it inherently possible for people to sideline this person no matter his current position, before we risk serious damage? In terms of patents, introduction of copyrighted code, or perhaps other issues, presumably someone in his position acting deliberately, could cause some nasty legal wrangles. And actions so far give reason for distrust, do they not?
Re:No surprise here... (Score:5, Interesting)
GNOME (the GNU Network Object Model Environment) was designed around a COM approach (it actually used that well-known failure and DCOM copycat, Corba). Microsoft is abandoning COM, and using it (usually because the financial director told them that it will save money and is better anyway) costs developers a vast amount of time, money, and reputation as the interface conventions are appallingly unstructured. Suffice it to say, GNOME is moving away from corba and has been for some time.
Generally, it is a good idea to watch for what problem Miguel de Icaza wants to solve and then start solving the problem differently before he can damage Linux' reputation for several years until his plans are ripped out and replaced as they usually are.
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Ya, because actually addressing the comments brought up by the ISO and resolving them is Evil!!! It may actually get approved! And who needs more than ONE standard?
Gnome is GPL, isn't it? Doesn't that make it inherently possible for people to sideline this person no matter his current position, before we risk
Re:No surprise here... (Score:5, Interesting)
I was just about to say something closely approximating that.
What annoyed me most before this (which is simply unthinkable) was his extremely strong support of Mono. Personally, I feel that Mono, like Wine, should be treated as a compatibility layer to run software intended for other operating systems, not a viable target for open-source application developers. If everyone likes C# so much, then we should take matters into our own hands and implement a language with the features we like that is under our control! (My concern with Mono following Microsoft's language is that in the event that Microsoft changes a significant feature, like Java did when it added assert, Mono would almost certainly make the same change, leaving a bunch of open-source developers to deal with the whims of Microsoft.)
At some point, until Microsoft starts releasing truly open-source code and letting everyone hack on Windows, we have to keep at least some distance from Microsoft. There's nothing wrong with attempting to run their software, but we shouldn't be writing Windows software just because it's more convenient and we now have a way to run it on Linux.
Re:No surprise here... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's called "Python" (and also goes by the alias "Java"). Hence the complete lack of need for Mono - we already have that functionality in mature, well-tested languages.
Re:No surprise here... (Score:4, Informative)
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- Properties.
- Delegates.
- Structs.
- Easy integration with C libraries.
- VM-level generics support, making it easier to integrate with other
- Mono starts faster than the Sun JVM (or even GCJ for that matter).
- Ahead-of-time compilation with Mono.
- Language-integrated queries (LINQ).
Re:No surprise here... (Score:5, Interesting)
What surprises me the most is that this actually has to be said. It is ridiculous that mono is so actively used to actually make programs for official gnome, we got python, we got Java, we got Ruby, we certainly did not need MONO here.
I can foresee somebody telling me it is about picking the best tool for the job. But then HOW IN EARTH would MONO be the best tool for this job? The intention is to make open source free software, and adding any unnecessary dependance on MS technology is ridiculous, and it is really making gnome look bad, I actually hope KDE4 lives to the expectations so I can move. Really.
Re:No surprise here... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Linux grew a MONO dependence, MS would get the turn off switch. In several situations MS has implied that MONO requires "patent protection", in the case of MS, it does not matter if their claims are utter BS or true, they got a bunch of lawyers and since they ACTUALLY invent .net in this case that gives them even more advantage.
If MS didn't intend on suing regarding MONO, they wouldn't implicitly add protection for it on Novell's deal and at the same time deny protection to it on the next deals...
Even if there weren't any patent threats, MS will keep upgrading .net and make sure MONO gets more and more obsolete, the idea would be to make Linux look like a second class citizen.
Why would you need MS' application stack? beats me to find a logical reason to do that kind of stuff, if the intention with mono was to make a multilanguage cross platform framework that had nothing to do with .net , then I don't understand why the rush to clone .net ... Or where they totally unable to invent their own one?
If they thought that you would be able to run .net apps as a bonus, then they are just crazy, for starters .net apps require at least windows forms (and there are a bunch of .net that also need active x garbage) and windows forms is not part of MS' 'freed' stuff.
Re:No surprise here... (Score:5, Insightful)
It will work wonders when all the five users of the two programs that actually use what Mono has that
You must have market dominance to play Embrace and Extend. Otherwise, you will follow all those neat enhanced supersets of whatever technology was mainstream at the time into oblivion.
Re:No surprise here... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, because you don't understand how embracing and extending works.
Re:No surprise here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Mono is not and should not be treated as a compatibility layer.
People complain that you'll never run Windows
Having a C# implementation in Linux, with a decent C# widget toolkit, is a good way to invite developers into the open source world. Going from [Visual Studio + C# + Windows.Forms] to [MonoDevelop + C# + GTK#] is a lot less daunting than to [emacs + C + GTK], etc.
And it might just blow your mind, but using C# on Linux is sometimes the best language for the job, especially if you have to use C# at work.
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Follow the money. Miguel interviewed for a job at MS. He's the kind of guy they like -- not a US citizen and willing to work cheap. But he wasn't qualified for H1B status, so they couldn't hire him to work at MS. However, they could finance him to subvert linux. Ximian was financed by Paul Allen through Vulcan (at the time he was still a MS board member and Vulcan was used to finance projects without being tied to MS). Vulcan invested a chunk of money into Novell before they purchased Ximian.
This i
MOD PARENT UP (Score:2)
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:5, Insightful)
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Miguel interviewed for a job at MS
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However, they could finance him to subvert linux
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This is all documented information
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He's the kind of guy they like -- not a US citizen and willing to work cheap
The assertions are plausible, but without just one reference, one piece of evidence, it doesn't really advance the conversation any more than "LOL M$ suxors!!!111!"I've heard that, but without, oh I dunno... a reference, it isn't that informative.
Just one piece of evidence? Possibly an insightful statement... but conspiracy theories without evidence are little more than that.
WHERE???
That sounds like unfounded xenophobia to me. You have to have a reference for a statement like that. How much did he want? Was it less than an American doing his job would earn?
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>> Miguel interviewed for a job at MS
> I've heard that, but without, oh I dunno... a reference, it isn't that informative.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza [wikipedia.org]
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Wow, curiously you missed to comment on the important part (tip, the Allen-Vulcan-Ximian-Novell conexion)! :)
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Why does everyone seem to assume that De Icaza is getting some kind of kickback or that it's some sort of conspiracy? It seems to me that the likely explanation is much simpler: Miguel De Icaza simply likes Microsoft! I mean, he applied for a job there; you don't do that unless you would want to work there, generally speaking. He appears to admire Microsoft's technology... I assume he just doesn't care about its business
Re:That's the beauty (Score:4, Insightful)
I choose "Don't support them."
And they have help a LOT the OS community.
With Gnome and some other projects, maybe. OTOH, supporting a bloated, low quality, error-prone, semi-open standard that contains references to proprietary (read as 'closed') MS information is hardly helping the OS community.
Re:That's the beauty (Score:4, Interesting)
I dislike Gnome more by the day. While I know and fully agree with the idea that you can't make an unpaid programmer work on something he doesn't want to work on, I can't help but wonder where KDE would be if Gnome wasn't siphoning off potential developers. Since it's generally accepted that at least one of Gnome's core developers (Miguel) is a Microsoft patsy, and that FOSS market fragmentation is very convenient for Microsoft, the professional paranoid in me can't help but to see connections even if there aren't any.
Gnome devs: ditch Miguel. I'm not the only person that's starting to look at you guys suspiciously. Guilt by association, you understand.
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Quit looking for body snatchers (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Quit looking for body snatchers (Score:5, Insightful)
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But supporting and promoting that "superb" technology gives them even more power. The fact that Miguel does endorse it should ring alarms everywhere.
I think it's time we fight back. We should say _no_ to MS-OOXML while we may tolerate
Mono should have two priorities: 1) to help make Gnome software easier to develop and 2) to make it easier to make Windows software that runs unmodified on free platforms. It more or less
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Calmer than you are, Dude.
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Re:Quit looking for body snatchers (Score:4, Interesting)
Which is fine - if you had any chance of competing. But as you said - large sections are binary. With that in place, you're not much better of than parsing a
Peter.
Re:Quit looking for body snatchers (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree that binary compatibility should be strived for, but it is not ooxml that needs compatability. its the older binary office formats that need to be standardized against. What needs to be done about ooxml is a concerted effort to prevent adoption. This means pushing organizations to switch away from newer versions of office. This also means helping oo.org or your fav alternate office suite getting competitive (assuming u have any means to help).
at my work, people use powerpoint and recently access (my fault - i needed something that was there and people could use). oo presentation is good enough (import and export from powerpoint), but database capabilities are severely lacking.
Patents are body snatchers. (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason Novell et the GNOME foundation are so involved is for simple compatibility reasons. What better way to lure Windows users away than to provide support for the formats their existing documents are probably already in?
That sounds nice but it falls down when M$ sends in a clown car full of patent lawyers. That's one of the big reasons OOXML needs to be shot down by ISO. The others are a lack of completeness and 998 other technical problems. OOXML is not doing well in the marketplace and probably never will. If ever there was a case of wasted effort, OOXML is it. Resources are better spent making better ODF applications.
As for a better way to lure Windows users, have you seen Vista?
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Re:Quit looking for body snatchers (Score:5, Insightful)
Looking at some of [slashdot.org] de Icaza's recent posts on slashdot [slashdot.org], I find them hard to reconcile with that innocent interpretation. His public statements about OOXML are wildly disingenuous; I can't see how anybody who understands the nature of the criticisms of OOXML could fail to see them as pure FUD.
IMO, it would indicate a problem with GNOME if GNOME couldn't tolerate dissent on this issue, but it would also indicate a problem with the community if the community couldn't see through de Icaza's reality distortion field, and understand that he's saying ridiculous things because he has commercial ties to MS.
In the OSS world, it's all about whuffie. De Icaza earned a lot of whuffie by founding GNOME and writing a lot of code. In my eyes, he's lost it all by failing to be forthright.
Re:Accommodation? (Score:4, Funny)
What are the possibilities? (Score:5, Insightful)
There is really only a few possibilities:
1) The community is wrong and OOXML is really an open/good standard (heh)
2) One of the heads of GNOME is so inept as not to be able to see that OOXML is far from being an open standard
3) Icaza was bought off
Or is it something else:
4) ???
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Got hypocrisy much?
What the FUCK? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What the FUCK? (Score:5, Informative)
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From TFA : It appears that the Gnome Foundation is participating in ECMA TC 451 regarding resolving comments and contradictions for DIS 29500.
Being the DIS 29500 about the OOXML specification, what's true? is the Gnome trying to 'resolve contradictions' on the OOXML spec or not?. Please clarify Gnome position, are those facts (Gnome participation at the TC 451) incorrect?.
I really wish Gnome is not being used by MS,
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If you don't want to be associated, then distance yourself, verbally, I have not seen any protests from inside the Gnome organization. So would that maybe look like "consent by silence" which I think it is, because of the direction of your defense/attack. If you want to defend yourself then call out Icaza, and make the distancing clear to all.
Why not boycott Gnome? Who needs it? (Score:2, Informative)
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And no, KDE's not "pulling away" from gnome. Indeed, from what I've seen, gnome is more popular.
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I used to think it was only Redhat/Fedora that deliberately crippled KDE in their distros. Every time I run across someone in real life (not Slashdot) who thinks KDE is slow and crippled compared to GNOME, I ask what distro they use. Invariably it's Redhat or Fedora.
I'm a FreeBSD user myself, but will use Slackware if I need proprietary drivers for a laptop. But I recently put Kubuntu on my work laptop. After las
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You mean, both are jumping over a cliff and KDE is falling a bit faster?
With Gnome and Microsoft, the relationship is that Miguel has a bit too much appreciation for Microsoft's crap. With KDE and Troll Tech, parts of KDE are owned by Troll Tech. Thanks, even in terms of software freedom, I'll stick with Gnome until something better comes along.
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We might discuss on technical terms now, but that would be offtopic.
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They can go to hell.
Re:Why not boycott Gnome? Who needs it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Trolltech delivers a kick-ass platform for open-source development. They do it for free under the GPL, using their own paid developers to do it. How do they get paid? Well, they've found a way to make closed-source companies pay them for the use of their code. Who are you crying for? Those poor companies? That you can't ruin their business model by forcing them to take code they can't sell that way? That you have to run your own fork/patch set? Oh cry me a river... no, YOU go to hell. I bet Trolltech has done 1000x times as much for open source as you ever have.
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1) GPL means that trolltech doesn't "control" any bit of Qt, as long as you use it under the GPL license.
2) Definition of proprietary: "Exclusively owned; private". None of which applies to Qt under the GPL. QED, you are a moron.
3) Mono is most definitely using a proprietary Microsoft interface. It's not code, but that makes it even MORE limiting than even access to proprietary code.
Go shill/troll/be a retard
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In other words, Miguel is a Microsoft fanboy.
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It should be abundantly clear by now (Score:2)
De Icaza has already lost all his credibility (Score:2, Insightful)
Now he works for Novell, a company with links and agreements with Microsoft, and instead of teaching his fellow developers how to write a damn working file chooser, he spends more time pushing for more Microsoft stuff.
He is a Microsoft developer now; What should people expect to get/hear from him other than more Microsoft bull?
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Factually incorrect. Sun forced Microsoft to stop calling their incompatible implementation "Java". The most glaring incompatibilities were the lack of support for Java RMI and Java JNI, which Microsoft instead replaced with proprietary alternatives.
Microsoft could have fixed these deliberately introduced incompatibilities, or called it something other than Java (which they did for a while: "J++"), but ultimately cho
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Yeah, because it was not up to standard. And Sun is the one who defined the Java Standard. If anything was to be called Java, it had to have the same API. I don't have a problem with it. I still see Java as Sun's language and they can do whatever they want with it.
Microsoft might not restrict changes to Mono's API, but if they one day change the interface spec for .NET, what choice would the Mono developers have but fo
Re:De Icaza has already lost all his credibility (Score:5, Informative)
Look at the score. (Score:5, Informative)
AT&T donated the key patent for UNIX (the setuid patent) into the public domain. The UNIX APIs were designed to be independent of the underlying hardware and implementation, and they never made any attempt to enforce any potential copyrights on the UNIX programmer's manuals. The only product I know of that felt it necessary to avoid using the precise APIs described in the manual, ever, was Idris... presumably because it was by a former Bell Labs employee. There are, so far as I can tell, only two significant operating systems started after the publication of the 1976 Bell System Technical Journal that were not based primarily on the UNIX "software tools" environment: Mac OS, and Windows... and both of those were instead based on the Xerox environment. I'm not counting MS-DOS, because it was an 8086 port of CP/M by Tim Patterson of Seattle Computer Systems, and starting with MS-DOS 2.x it was increasingly adopting UNIX APIs.
By 1987 (two decades ago) the UNIX environment had been re-implemented dozens of times, both standalone and hosted on top of other operating systems. By 1997 (one decade ago) there was no operating system in the world that wasn't either UNIX-based, transitioning to UNIX, or shipping with a functional hosted UNIX environment... other than Windows.
And by that time AT&T had sold all their rights in UNIX to Novell, who had publicly disclaimed any intellectual property in the APIs.
If there was any remaining danger in these APIs, the results of the Caldera (the new SCO) suit have completely defanged it.
So far, there is no indication that there is any more risk to Mono from Microsoft than there was to Linux from AT&T.
On the one hand we have a set of APIs that were already in the public domain both because of explicit donation and due to being published without copyright notice before the US joined the Berne convention, and have since been been proven safe to use, and on the other hand we have a set of APIs that are actively controlled by a company that has a history of using submarine patents, and who is currently attempting to monetize them... with some success.
If you can't see there is a difference there you're deliberately not looking at it.
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There are excellent reasons to push Mono; in the long term, Linux needs something better than C/C++.
Not really, there's no evidence that C# is better than C/C++ - not once you've ignored the hype that's come out of MS over the last couple of years proclaiming C#/.NET to be the answer to world hunger, global peace et al. (remember, they said that last time with COM too, and no doubt will be scathing about garbage collection when the next technology refresh from MS comes along).
If you think C# is better than C/C++, for arguments sake, there's alwats Java. Don't forget that the differences between C# and Ja
what. the. fuck. (Score:3, Insightful)
what. the. fuck.
OOXML is a awful standard, filled with numerous little features that seem purposely designed to make it difficult for anybody but MS to implement. Icaza is NOT an idiot, so he must know that this response will be flamed to a crisp across the community - so why is he doing it?
What does he stand to gain from backing this? What have I missed?
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The profit part. You are focused on 1) and 2) but what's important is 3) "Profit!"
1) Support OOXML
2) ?
3) Profit! (i.e. get $$$ from M$)
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A nice paying job at Microsoft or one of its puppets?
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Icaza is NOT an idiot ... - so why is he doing it?
Because he is a raging Microsoft fanboy. His greatest wish is to actually work at Microsoft and destroy F/OSS. Since he didn't get an H1B visa, he couldn't physically work there, so instead he is trying to subvert the community from within, by pushing for Microsoft's proprietary technologies. When everybody has migrated to .NET, OOXML, etc, Microsoft can just extend the protocols, APIs, etc, and say "Hey, if you want your applications to work as intended, use genuine Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office
No proof (Score:5, Interesting)
Another reason to use KDE (Score:5, Insightful)
An issue of ethics not value (Score:2)
cure of some deadly disease. The one cured by it was opposed because of all those that had been tortured and killed by
this doctor. The doctor had been brought to life in the holodeck where the cure was figured out. Afterward there was
the ethical concern as to what to do with the doctors holodeck program and the found cure.
The cure had come from bad things done by this doctor.
I don't recall
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Miguel is wrong, but not without reason (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a reasonable position. I still think it's wrong.
The purpose of an XML document format is to enable other people to do interesting things with the format, not to make life easy for the few people porting existing Microsoft Word compatible software. Furthermore, open source projects need to support ODF anyway because ODF is here and it's here to stay.
Holding their feet to the fire (Score:5, Informative)
The background is really simple: While Jody Goldberg (Gnumeric maintainer extraordinaire) was at Novell, he had been doing rocking work on the ECMA committee to make sure OOXML didn't just slip through, under-specified and uninvestigated. Jody put them through the wringer!
So, when Jody left Novell, the GNOME Foundation supported his participation on the ECMA working group, so he could continue to "keep the bastards honest".
The GNOME Foundation does not support ISO standardisation of OOXML. But whether or not that happens, we're still going to have to support Microsoft document formats, just like everyone else. Should we let Microsoft shove OOXML through ECMA without challenge? Hell no. That's why we have one of our best hackers in there, holding their feet to the fire.
Thanks,
- Jeff Waugh, GNOME Foundation Board
(Given how often it comes up, I suppose it's also important to note that Miguel does not speak for the GNOME Foundation or the GNOME project in general.)
Re:Holding their feet to the fire (Score:5, Informative)
http://blogs.gnome.org/jody/2007/09/10/odf-vs-oox-asking-the-wrong-questions/ [gnome.org]
Basically, he's telling us that OOXML is easier to support than ODF because they're just mapping the old binary format on to the new format. It comes off as an advertisement, which Stephane Rodriguez fortunately pours some cold water on. Microsoft is also using this to claim, extremely incorrectly, that Gnumeric has rich support for OOXML ( http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2007/08/07/iwork-08-supports-the-open-xml-formats.aspx [msdn.com] ), and is using Gnumeric as a poster for OOXML support:
http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2007/08/15/why-there-s-no-microsoft-in-open-xml.aspx [msdn.com]
Yes, we have to support an existing and widely used binary format, because that's the format most documents are in...............it doesn't mean we have to support yet another format that is basically the same as the old one, except different, which very few people actually use. Let's concentrate on getting people off the old binary format and into ODF.
Just because Microsoft uses something, it doesn't mean that anyone else has to support it. The paradox is that if they do start supporting it then they really will end up having to support a new Microsoft format, again, because it's just boosting it's popularity and installed base. Microsoft then starts using this as evidence that OOXML is an open standard that others can fully implement. We need to get out of this ridiculous cycle.
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Unfortunately, that's already starting to shift. Probably half of the office docs I get emailed now are OOXML.
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Neither he nor the GNOME Foundation are answerable to such dedicated, multi-forum, anti-GNOME trolls as yourself,
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I am afraid you ruined your previously well balanced post. :(
If Jody thinks OOXML should be an ECMA standard (there's an explicit Jody post in the discussion) that's fine, but is only a one person opinion, and it is in frontral contradiction with your previous post about the Gnome foundation being not against OOXML ECMA approval.
Overall, it seems you/(Gnome?) are forgetting about the primary goal: OOXML should not even exist, is a trap plain and simple, it's a deliberate MS effort to keep promoting incomp
Not just the Gnome Foundation (Score:2)
I can't imagine why the British Library and the Library of Congress support such a crappy standard, while there already is one which they could imp
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Participation doesn't imply support, however it does indicate that they're interested parties. For instance, the British Library and Library Of Congress wouldn't want to sit idly by while a new format that's likely to be as much used as OOXML is approved, only to find it's a dead end format that's a nightmare to index or cross reference. Remember that both institutions no longer archive most material in the form of paper books, but as electronic copy instead.
The more the Merrier (Score:5, Insightful)
My personal opinion (not speaking for the GNOME foundation or past or present employers) is that both specs should be standards
http://www.gnome.org/~jody/files/2007-ON-Linux-Beyond-ISO-Dome.pdf [gnome.org]
The FLOSS community is going to need to implement importers for both formats to help our users, and I'll be happiest when both OOX and ODF are significantly clearer. 5700 pages of OOX is too _short_, Likewise the 700 + 300 (Open formula) in ODF is far too short. Lets double the size of OOX (although with better formatting the number of pages would likely be unchanged), and lets quadruple the level of detail in ODF to get it into a useful state. I only wish that ODF had undergone a fraction of the review that OOX has seen.
This is not about GNOME endorsing OOX, it's about GNOME doing the work necessary for users. There should be reps from Sun's OO.o team on the ECMA TC, and MS reps in the ODF meetings. The goal of this process is to produce useful documentation, and it takes an implementor to know where the really important details are. It hardly seems in the best interest of the FLOSS community to leave the standardization efforts up to corporate interests at Microsoft, Sun, or IBM.
Re:The LESS the Merrier (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I think that Less is More [wikipedia.org]. We don't need more standards. We don't need more complex standards either. We don't need more pages. We need less [wikiquote.org].
The point of standards is that they should encourage the maximum number of implementations, and the best way to do it is by not being a burden on the implementation. If the implementation has to implement two different standards, it will be double the burden, and to what benefit?
I agree that the specification should be clear and in some cases that would m
Re:The more the Merrier (Score:4, Insightful)
Why should there be two standards for essentially one thing?
If more the merrier, why not 200? This would of course mean not a single one gets adopted.
If less is better what does OOXML bring that is useful to the users and other developers (non Gnumeric)? So useful that developers have to implement support for both, so good a support that user's are not inconvenienced?
You are in the position to say how big task it is to support both instead of one and if it is really worthwhile effort, not me. I am just asking.
Get Sun to open ODF first (Score:3, Interesting)
Who are you kidding? Or are you just trolling? (Score:4, Insightful)
I happen to think that mono and evolution suck. I'll bet a lot of other people think so also.
Why doesn't Miguel just go work for msft? If Miguel is so happy sucking up to msft, and working with msft to ruin F/OSS; then I think that F/OSS community would be just as happy to see Miguel take his suckie dev tools elsewhere.
Does anybody even use mono?
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Re:Who are you kidding? Or are you just trolling? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bingo! (Score:2)
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Re:Who are you kidding? Or are you just trolling? (Score:4, Insightful)
And you're complaining that someone is working to bring all the applications developed on the
WTF is your problem? Are you really that stupid to think that interoperability with MS tools/frameworks is a BAD thing? How many people do you think would use Linux at ALL if Samba didn't allow communication to Windows boxes? Or what if there was no way to read/write an NTFS partition? Interoperability is key, and the task Miguel has undertaken is a good one. Quit complaining that someone's working to make Linux a more competitive OS.
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Masterful, but you worked the bait just a little too hard at that point.
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Re:Who are you kidding? Or are you just trolling? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Because it's not possible to do that, and it's a fool's errand. All it's doing is following Microsoft's latest programming fad.
Samba certainly isn't ideal,
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Interoperability is one thing, writing Gnome components in .NET is quite another. The former is good while the latter is really bad.
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None of those Unix-friendly languages is known for its strong desktop application support. So, how does .NET compare to KDevelop or Xcode for cranking out apps? At least those two aim to compete in the same problem space.
Re:This guy is not an MS hater when he sees good (Score:4, Informative)
Consider Microsoft's past. Then, consider Microsoft's most recent behaviour [noooxml.org], which would be considered criminal elections fraud in any nominally democratic country, had it been in a political election instead of the ISO process.
At this point, you should be able to see why people would consider it unethical to support Microsoft in any way.
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The fact is, at the moment, Gnome is ideologically flawed.
Can you say more about what the ideology of Gnome is, and what the flaw in the ideology is?
Because you assert that as a "fact", but then only go on to say that you don't like Gnome and don't like that people seem to use it and like it. I'd be interested in hearing some detailed criticisms.
You don't have to clone Windows... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should I care about a Linux-based system where your applications are written in
What makes Linux an alternative is that it's an Open Systems environment that happens to be Open Source as well. That applications written for it aren't locked in to Linux, they'll run on any Open Systems platform. If the interfaces and protocols it uses are Microsoft's, then why should anyone care whether it's got a Linux or an NT kernel under the hood?
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Yer, and do you know why they claim that OOXML is easier to work with?
http://blogs.gnome.org/jody/2007/09/10/odf-vs-oox-asking-the-wrong-questions/ [gnome.org]
Because they've already done a lot to reverse engineer Microsoft's existing God-awful format, so working with OOXML is easier! What kind of silly logic is that? Not also, that thi
I call BS (Score:4, Informative)
2) 'very rich support'. This depends on how you parse things. Our OOX importer was more advanced that the ODF importer after about 1 week of effort. At the time Brian made his comment the _exporter_ was not terribly advanced. That is being rectified for the upcoming gnumeric 1.8.x release. Calling gnumeric's round trip capabilities for OOX 'very rich' was an exaggeration, but it's a stretch to call it a complete lie. On the flip side, ODF proponents seem happy to tout our suboptimal ODF implementation. Both filters are improving, but it's more than a bit hypocritical to try and complain about OOX and laud ODF for filters of comparable quality.
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I can understand your complain, but it's not "valid" if we are talking in larger scale. And I think it's too much trolling in your post, so it seems more like personal dislike of ODF or something that way.
But heck, at least this is one of most informative and helpful posts for this rather flaming article