Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 2nd Apr 2008 17:54 UTC, submitted by Almafeta
"Microsoft's embattled Office Open XML document format received ISO fast-track approval after receiving support from approximately 86 percent of the national bodies that participated in the vote. ISO approval will be broadly perceived as a sign of validation for the document format which has received widespread criticism from technical experts and standards advocacy groups."
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Member since:
2005-11-13
Well, to answer that question with another question, when it comes to package managers, why isn't .rpm or .deb enough? Why can't we just have one standard for package management? Along those same lines, why not build just one solid toolkit for GUIs, one sound framework, and why do we need multiple distros, some with their own directory layout and startup procedures?
Look, I agree with you.. maybe ODF needs a little bit of work, bit it really should be enough.
But ODF is mainly a FOSS thing (which is why I bring up all those other examples above), and it seems that if the FOSS crowd wants only one standard for formatting documents, it should put its money where its mouth is and come up with one standard for everything else as well. Afterall, wouldn't that be better for everyone in the end?
For example, every time I suggest that maybe there should be a single way to build packages (well, maybe one binary and one source) that works across all distros that everyone standardize on, I am immediately rebuked for having the nerve to even utter such an abomination. (Note: I'm not talking about package managers, but rather a specific way packages could be built so that any package manager that supports the standard could use.)
Apparently, it's ok to have several dozen variations of everything else, but when it comes to ODF, that should've been enough.
Personally, I think people are just pissed because this is a Microsoft thing. I'm sure they had their reasons for inventing OOXML and I'm also reasonably sure that it had more to do with business reasons than technical. But hell, at least it's a stanard, which means that for the FOSS crowd, it is better than it was before, no? You didn't really expect MS to implement ODF did you? It might've been a great service to mankind, but it ain't going to earn them more bankroll.
Edited 2008-04-02 22:33 UTC