Greve told the BBC that genuine adoption of ODF would give consumers more choice. "People will no longer need to use Microsoft Office in order to interoperate. People could switch to GNU/Linux and choose OpenOffice or other applications that support ODF, like Lotus Symphony or Google Docs."
Group items tagged
IDABC - EU: Microsoft's ODF-support draws mixed reactions - 0 views
-
This is nonsense. Whether an organizations standardizes on ODF or OOXML, the "interoperability" they seek will still be based on every desktop running the same application. Neither format enables the interchange of documents between different applications - even if those applications properly implement the format standard. Anyone can prove this for themselves. Simply shuttle a few OpenOffice ODF documents between Symphony, Novell Office and Google Docs. Then weep. At least with MSOffice-OOXMLyou can exchange documents between different versions of MSOffice. Even though OpenOffice, Symphony and Novell Office are based on the same code base, interop might as well be zero.
Besides; what end users really want from a modern desktop office suite is collaborative editing of web ready documents. This discussion is so last century - 1995!
EU's Kroes says further technology antitrust abuse cases pending UPDATE - Forbes.com - 0 views
-
The commission said that as part of its antitrust investigation into interoperability with Microsoft Office it will investigate whether the announced support of ODF in Office leads to better interoperability and allows consumers to process and exchange their documents with the software product of their choice.
Kroes said on Tuesday that the commission keeps a close eye on interoperability and said the market should have the right balance of non-propriety and propriety standards.
'Standards are the foundation of interoperability'. 'Standards may, of course, be proprietary or non-proprietary. Much excellent technical development has been driven by non-proprietary standards - the internet is awash with acronyms for non-proprietary standards: HTTP, HTML and XML'.
-
I wonder if the EU is aware that there is no such thing as ODF Interoperability? After more than five years of working side by side with Sun on the OASIS ODF TC, there is zero interop between KOffice ODF and OpenOffice ODF! How is it that Microsoft's joining the ODF TC somehow results in a level of application interop that has eluded and defied the efforts of two supposedly open source applications?
The truth is that OpenOffice-ODF and MSOffice-OOXMl are both based on an XML encoding of the application specific binary dump. The content layers are easily exchanged with other applications, but presentation continues to defy any kind of interop. Especially what the EU expects. Check out the quotes:
" The commission said that as part of its antitrust investigation into interoperability with Microsoft Office it will investigate whether the announced support of ODF in Office leads to better interoperability and allows consumers to process and exchange their documents with the software product of their choice.
"Kroes said on Tuesday that the commission keeps a close eye on interoperability and said the market should have the right balance of non-propriety and propriety standards.
'Standards are the foundation of interoperability'. 'Standards may, of course, be proprietary or non-proprietary. Much excellent technical development has been driven by non-proprietary standards - the internet is awash with acronyms for non-proprietary standards: HTTP, HTML and XML'.
Antitrust: The EU Case Against Microsoft | Investingation, Court Proceedings, Decisions, En... - 0 views
-
The web-pages referred to below provide information about the European Commission’s March 2004 Microsoft Decision, the Court of First Instance proceedings relating to that Decision, and its ongoing implementation.
Antitrust: Commission imposes € 899 million penalty on Microsoft for non-complian... - 0 views
-
Antitrust: Commission imposes € 899
million penalty on Microsoft for non-compliance with March 2004 Decision
Microsoft makes more code public - International Herald Tribune - 0 views
-
"Today's announcement is still all about the rest of the world interoperating with Microsoft on Microsoft's own terms, not the other way around," said Thomas Vintje, a lawyer representing the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, a Brussels-based group representing Microsoft competitors like Adobe, Nokia and Oracle, which brought one of the new complaints that led to the current EU commission investigations of the company. "The world needs a permanent change in Microsoft's behavior, not just another announcement," he said.
Wizard of ODF: OASIS invited to join Microsoft in the DIN technical report - harmonizatio... - 0 views
-
the WG is busy working on a first draft. This'll include mainly work in Wordprocessing. Spreadsheet and Presentation is
still in the very early work. So help from the ODF TC would be great --- and a liaison would make sense IMHO.
To give you an idea why help from the ÓDF TC would be needed I'll briefly outline some questions which arose:
* Need for more use-cases, i.e. feasable interop scenarios
* Discussions of unspecified behaviour (e.g numbering in 1.0, spreadsheet formulas, compatibilty options, etc.) and
their impact on interop scenarios
* Questions regaring generic settings like e.eg. form:control-implementation="ooo:com.sun.star.form.component.Form", or
tweaking a la http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=51726.
* Possible interop problems not handled by the specs (e.g. graphics, WMF, EMF, SVM, etc.) or e.g. font metrics and font
embedding.
As you see there are a lot of overlapping areas with eg. the "ODF interop" we dealt with in the workshop in Barcelona.
[This issue is hosted in the Adoption TC, right? Maybe this TC is also suited as a liaison partner?]-
Uh Oh. Microsoft and Novell joined the EU's call to harmonize ODF and OOXML, but Sun and IBM refused the invite. Now we have the invite in front of the OASIS ODF TC!. Is there any rock big enough for them to hide under if they also refuse?
And if the OASIS ODF does join the EU-DIN-ISO effort, where doe stha tleave IBM, Sun and their inistance on a politically mandated "rip out and replace" as the only acceptable solution?
-
Microsoft and Its Rivals Take 'Office' Politics Global - WSJ.com - 1 views
-
Another article from Charles Forelle of WSJ on Microsoft's efforts to corrupt the international standards process
1 - 9 of 9
Showing 20▼ items per page
"Microsoft has an ongoing obligation to supply complete and accurate interoperability information as specified in the Commission's 2004 Microsoft Decision," the EC goes on. "However, given that the original set of interoperability information has already been documented by Microsoft, increased opportunities through private enforcement provisions in Microsoft's license agreements for third parties to exercise their rights directly before national courts, and experience gained since the adoption of the 2004 Decision, the nature of the technical assistance that the Commission requires is now of a more ad hoc character."