What is Digg?47 Comments
- ascheinberg, on 11/12/2007, -2/+69For the record, this is the Open Document FOUNDATION, which is not the main backer, but rather, a small group of people. This is NOT OASIS or Open Document Alliance, which would be REAL news.
- schestowitz, on 11/06/2007, -17/+60To put this in perspective (I'm sort of friends with people at the OpenDocument Foundation, so I know this), the funding for a project run by the OpenDocument Foundation ended some time ago after very aggressive lobbying and bullying in Massachusetts. Microsoft had people thrown out of their job for 'daring' to stick to ODF. Some of the systematic manipulation you can read about in the press (I have a summary here: http://boycottnovell.com/2007/08/02/massachusetts- ... After the funding ended, the OpenDocument Foundation was glued to a corner, so the wise step to take was to turn somewhere else. What would make a better publicity stunt than throwing dirt at the face of OpenDocument format? The press then listens and gives exposure to the OpenDocument Foundation's future path.
Truthfully, these stories need to be buried because they fail to reveal the full picture. It's the OpenDocument Foundation's /revenge/, but it's very biased for personal reasons, among others.
ODF is an excellent standard. It's the way to go and it's the future. Don't be misled here. - RLillySR, on 11/04/2007, -1/+24The name OpenDocument Foundation is as deceiving at the present time as Microsoft calling the lock-in format OOXML "Open". The only thing it opens is a door letting everyone out of breaking their Dictatorship
The OpenDocument Foundation, is two guys who lost all their funding, getting paid by Novell now to ruin ODF. They have there own agenda, in the meantime and forever they will use ODF, because the CDF has no compound. - ut2k4king, on 11/03/2007, -0/+20TXT ftw.
- clickwir, on 11/03/2007, -3/+20How many decades does it take to come up with a Document Format that just works? This is starting to sound like ***** Microsoft *****.
- grapesofbaath, on 11/03/2007, -2/+18god, this is just never ending.
- addies, on 11/03/2007, -0/+10check out .txt
- OBKenobi, on 11/02/2007, -0/+9I heard they're going to switch to the WTF format.
- stalefries, on 11/03/2007, -0/+8This is the first time I've heard anything about CDF.
- JigoroKano, on 11/03/2007, -3/+10If it's an ML that the W3C made up from scratch, then it's probably horrible, aka MATHML. What the ***** is a ML for if humans can't work with it? Just go binary if it's going to be that bad.
- joshuabowers, on 11/02/2007, -1/+7TeX/LaTeX work quite well, and there are even some wysiwyg editors for the format. Completely free, too.
- GnuTzu, on 11/03/2007, -7/+13That boycottnovell link appears broken (Digg's URL parsing has a bug).
This should be clickable: http://boycottnovell.com/2007/08/02/massachusetts- ...
URL's in comments have to end with blank space--parenthesis and such will otherwise end up included in the URL.
But, Roy probably knew this and forgot. Anyway, thanks Roy. - init100, on 11/02/2007, -0/+4"So who is the 'OpenDocument Foundation', and what is their role in all of this?"
My impression is that this is a group founded to promote ODF adoption in the state of Massachusetts, nothing more. It consists of just three persons. Contrast this with the ODF Alliance, that have dozens of companies as members.
"Should anyone care that they no longer support ODF?"
No. It's just like if I started an organization called the OOXML Foundation and subsequently announced that we would drop OOXML support for ODF support. Why should people care? - sark666, on 11/12/2007, -0/+4Yes but it SOUNDS really, really bad to the public perception, esp. for companies considering going with the open document format. More companies will take a wait and see approach. This really pisses me off and is almost comical to suggest 'uh yeah, that format we've been going on about, ya that one, forget it, here's another one, but hey we promise this is the one for really real this time.'
If this was april fools I'd say great gag. - init100, on 11/03/2007, -0/+4Um, why? The OD Foundation is just a three-man group. Don't confuse them with the ODF Alliance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_Foundati ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_Format_A ... - grumpyrain, on 11/02/2007, -0/+4My understanding about these things is that most users and companies don't really like the doc format because of vendor lock in and because of the difficulty of writing applications that manipulate various documents. OOXML is marginally better than .doc at this point. Being an XML based, one can in theory write applications to directly manipulate documents. Although Microsoft has placed in there some Word specific tags with undocumented behaviour (eg autoSpaceLikeWord95) that would be unacceptable for a public standard. There is also the complaints about abusing the standards process that are beyond the scope of this post.
ODF is the other major standard being pushed, which although does have some criticisms does not have the same openness problems as OOXML. Clearly it is in all of our collective best interests to have a document format which is Word Processor independent. But there needs to be a large shift in users away from Office before Microsoft will feel threatened enough to support any truly open document format without vendor lock-in. And at the moment, like it or not, Office (the Windows version anyway) is the benchmark. To me it is the same argument as the iTunes DRM vendor lock-in. Ideally, (if you really had to have DRM) you would at least want a system that was compatible with every device from every manufacturer and a port available to your preferred OS. But Apple would not want upset the apple cart (pun not intended). As long as Microsoft have an effective monopoly in Word, Excel and Powerpoint, I can't see them 'going out of their way' to make their software less salable.
So who is the 'OpenDocument Foundation', and what is their role in all of this? Should anyone care that they no longer support ODF? Did they have any reasonable excuses for dropping support? - JQP123, on 11/03/2007, -0/+3If Vi + TXT files work for you then you're really out of place in this debate. Heavy users of office documents have more complex and sophisticated needs.
- da5id, on 11/02/2007, -0/+310110011 0110011 0100110011 01110001 110001111000 11000 1010101 11011 0110011 !
- Sairgem, on 11/12/2007, -2/+5Pick one and ***** stick with it. Barely anyone knows about ODF at this point and you're already wanting to start supporting another one?
- da5id, on 11/03/2007, -0/+2I heard RTF was better than CDF -- and more platform independent.
- init100, on 11/02/2007, -0/+2This is a place where the "move along, nothing to see here" applies. This "foundation" is just a three-man group that previously worked with ODF adoption in Massachusetts. It is not the same organization as the ODF Alliance, the main backer of ODF, which has member companies such as IBM, Google, Oracle, Sun, Novell, Red Hat, and more.
- init100, on 11/02/2007, -0/+2You make it sound like some important organization in the ODF world has switched allegiances, which isn't exactly the case. The main backer of ODF is the ODF Alliance, which is not related to the OpenDocument Foundation, apart from the latter being a member of the former.
- Fduch, on 11/02/2007, -1/+3The OpenDocument Foundation notes (PDF) that Sun holds critical patents relating to the OpenDocument format and has retained the right to countersue for infringement if sued over related technologies. The OpenDocument Foundation feels that this unduly advantages Sun and offers ODF nothing but excessive intellectual property burdens.
As I always say those so-called "open" formats are not really open. Ind if they aren't then why not use formats with superior functionality? - init100, on 11/02/2007, -0/+2Unsupported? It is actually supported by pretty much every office suite except the one from Microsoft.
- RLillySR, on 11/02/2007, -1/+2This would be a crime if Opendocument was TM. Sam and Marbux declined thier support for ODF several months ago. Why did you not change the Foundation name to Compound Document Format Foundation and have a press release to that effect and announce a chance in the format you will support now?
Your reputation is done, If i was W3C i would not touch you with Windows on a USB up you ass... - Derrekito, on 11/02/2007, -1/+2can anyone explain what the big deal is about formats? I mean so long as it is not rtf, I could care less about the format? Vi + TXT files is good.
- da5id, on 11/02/2007, -0/+1Sorry, I meant: "The Compound Document framework implements a new, and more versatile, type of document and defines several new classes to support and manage this compound document, therefore its design is in this format document, command and selection, data, storage. The class structure of the Compound Document framework builds on the structure laid down by the Basic Document framework. Therefore, this section introduces only the classes new to the Compound Document framework."
What's not to like? - da5id, on 11/02/2007, -1/+2He heard MS talking in his head -- that's just evil!
- da5id, on 11/02/2007, -0/+1This will *really* facilitate the break-out of OO -- maybe 2008 will be a watershed.
- Skooma714, on 11/02/2007, -2/+3I use both OpenOffice and Microsoft Office 2007. I use Openoffice for personal word processing and Word if I'm going to be sending the works to anyone else.
I'll still use Odf just to spite everyone. - JigoroKano, on 11/02/2007, -0/+1Yeah, that's about as human readable as MATHML.
- grumpyrain, on 11/03/2007, -0/+1Thanks for clearing that up. I would have thought that the ODF Alliance or OASIS would have had some sort of trademark to protect squatters from using ODF. So it is not as serious as the sensationalist article implies.
I think 'care' is the wrong word, but we should be at least interested as to why a particular organisation turns its back on ODF. They may well be cry babies who didn't get their own way through due process. They may even be politically aligned with a competitive format with less honest motives. But they may also have legitimate gripes on things that could be done better. If you think about other open standards like HTML or SQL, you can see cases where the standards body takes so long to ratify a particular feature that you end up giving companies an excuse to come up with non standard implementations. For ODF to succeed against OOXML, they can't give Microsoft the opportunity to claim that a particular document is impossible to render because the format is inadequate. - Stonekeeper, on 11/02/2007, -0/+1Looking at these comments, the trick worked.Microsoft has muddied more waters and like sheep, you just bought it hook, line and sinker.
- FaT32, on 11/02/2007, -0/+1"Opera is currently working on a CDF implementation, but it is unclear what the scope of that implementation will be or when it will be available." That's great!
I see many guys from Opera Software contributed to ODF: Erik Dahlström, Ian Hickson (formerly) Opera Software, Anne van Kesteren, Charles McCathieNevile. - cjh24, on 11/02/2007, -0/+1It seems opinion is quite devided over this story. However, competition is the mother of all development..
- init100, on 11/02/2007, -0/+1I agree. Many people seem to think that this "OpenDocument Foundation" is the main backer of ODF. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The main backer of ODF is the ODF Alliance, and their support of ODF isn't going anywhere.
- graviplana, on 11/02/2007, -2/+2Holy crap, wow, the devious entities are mucking around! Smells like Ballmer has been throwing some chairs within chairs!
- da5id, on 11/02/2007, -1/+1"...a self-describing data format for the storage and manipulation of scalar and multidimensional data in a platform- and discipline-independent fashion. " What's not to like?
- mihai11, on 11/12/2007, -2/+2This is non-sense. Just when ODF was catching up these stupid bastards are saying that it is not good enough. This is what happens when you put a hand of engineers to make real-world decisions: they are unable to see beyond technical advantages / disadvantages. This is why engineers should do programming and let other people do the important decisions.
What are those people from Open Document Foundation thinking ? That the market can change its ways over night ? ODF should be supported 20 years from now, otherwise who is going to believe them next time when they are proposing something ? This just proves that they are immature and that they should be ignored. - inactive, on 11/02/2007, -0/+0I would rather drop the ODF format and put my weight behind the W3C format as they are far more likely to support the 'blink' attribute.
Phillip. - scabbers, on 11/12/2007, -8/+7Epic, epic fail. You can forget about anyone ditching .doc now.
- inactive, on 11/03/2007, -7/+4It's a sad, sad day...
- dezmd, on 11/12/2007, -7/+4The ODFountain ass clowns have already been throughly ripped to shreds over on /., including posts such as my own:
Its blatantly obvious that Sam Hiser, proponent of the blog post that sparked this frenzy, doesn't know jack ***** about the real specs of ODF, read the comments on the blog I linked, they more than make the point (aside from the initial long-winded comment attempting to discredit anyone with enough common sense to disagree with Hiser, its a nice try but anyone with a hint of mental forethought and reasoning ability, can see right through the propaganda). Twenty minutes of actual research would've saved Hiser and the ODFoundation a lot of grief.
Additionally, if this isn't some backroom Microsoft inspired posturing, I'd be VERY surprised. The very essence of "CDF" in the way Hiser frames his argument is compatibility with MS OOXML. Who gives a rat's ass about specific compatibility within the framework of a particular document directly with another type of document, thats not the point of the whole exercise the odf format is attempting. The ODF is OPEN for any application to implement 100%, that allows for clearer communication between applications, and as a result, real living people.
Cheers. - inactive, on 11/02/2007, -6/+1Is google behind it, if yes, it will succeed, if no, it will not. Case closed.
- skaface69, on 11/02/2007, -8/+3File this under: Who gives a *****!
*.doc 4 life! - inactive, on 11/02/2007, -11/+4What a bunch of boneheads. This almost ensures that M$ OpenXML will become the new standard. God help us all.
- joe90210, on 11/12/2007, -10/+3ODF is a dead format, it's badly designed, incomplete and unsupported
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