Thursday, May 07, 2009

John D. Head aka "Starfish" [on the latest ODF controversy]

More perspectives

I am not going to get into the middle of either discussion. I just want to point out something Doug has done - Microsoft posted their guiding principles and their implementer notes. Microsoft invited folks to Redmond to discuss both ODF and OOXML - I know this personally because I was there. IBM decided not to show up even when invited. I do not remember if Adobe was in the room.
So yes, I think Microsoft is creating some issues with interoperability when it comes to a document standard. I also think that OpenOffice.org has bugs in it's ODF implementation - and everyone has decided to copy the bugs to make things work. Should Microsoft have done that - perpetuate known bugs just so files open? I know people who are on both sides of that discussion. I am not sure which side I am on - but I do know who is the loser.

Read the full post for more details.  If everyone agrees the ODF spec has bugs and that ODF is a standard-in-progress in important areas (e.g., a spreadsheet formula language), however, I think it’d be more accurate to say Microsoft is highlighting some issues rather than creating some issues.

John D. Head aka "Starfish"

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