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What does the ODF camp have to do with package managers?

Oh, wait, you read that as “including some who are directly affiliated with Linux distributions”

Do you really think this is a Linux thing? Don't you think people using other Operating Systems even Microsoft's OS did care about not having OOXML as an ISO standard? Man, this goes well beyond Linux or any other Operating System.

Having more than one HTML standard would be a bad thing too, wouldn't it? Why should we need more than one good electronic document standard, and hopefully an open standard that is developed together by several companies and non-commercial entities? That is what ODF - an already accepted and truly open ISO standard would be.

The important question we should ask is why ODF wasn't enough? There might be some small technical issues, why some people would rather prefer OOXML. But more likely this is mostly just the result of enourmous amounts of Microsoft lobbying. Read Groklaw to find out more about all the odd politics and lobbying related to this whole process: http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=20051216153153504

Besides, there are many technical reasons why ODF is a better, and more open choice than OOXML. Now it is possible that the monopolistic position of Microsoft allows it to practically kill ODF, an already approved ISO standard for electronix documents. Great, just great...

For example, the president of the European Academy for Standardisation, Tineke Egyedi, "doubts whether ISO should have a taken into consideration a second standard for electronic documents at all. ISO approved the Open Document Format ODF in 2006, says Egyedi: 'What are we to do with a second standard, which is overlapping the first? This conflicts with rules of the World Trade Organisation.'"
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080327170359776

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

What do YOU think is better: An Internet Explorer which which supports W3C standards, or the Internet Explorer HTML quirks to be declared W3C standards?

If that was too complicated, how about this:
Do you like the fact, that for your travel-hairdryer you need to carry a boatload of adapters on a trip around the world. Wouldn't a SINGLE plug standard be better?

Again other question:
What do you think is better for you as a buyer: Having to decide early on which Program from which company to use for all times, or beeing able to alternatively use a different program from a different vendor without entering a format conversion nightmare.

Honestly answer to yourself above questions, then you will begin to see the difference between competing distros and competing standards.

RPM is in LSB.
None of the package manager has been ISO certified.
There is no point in ISO certification if it certifies all package managers.
Having multiple format is ok if they each serve a purpose. However, ISO certifying 9000 formats is pure non-sense and the ISO organisation is loosing credibility.

I'll tell you why (even though I'll get me modded down into oblivion).
ODF was a grand strategy to render MS Office, and in particular, MS Office's huge feature set, irrelevant. Essentually, OO.o and the others couldn't compete with MS Office on features, UI, etc, so they decided to compete on "Use us because our format is an open standard, so your file will be readable forever even if our software goes out of business; you can't say that about MS Office." The ODF camp has been lobbying governments to mandate exclusive use of ODF based on this premise. If governments passed such rules, then MS Office would be banned from government use by law.

Now, the ODF crowd will say, "Well, all Microsoft has to do is implement ODF in MS Office, then governments can continue to use it." But what they don't tell you is that ODF does not handle the full feature set of MS Office. Indeed, since ODF is based on OO.o 1.0 XML format, ODF is based on OO.o's feature set, and therefore codifying ODF into law is equivalent to codifying OO.o's feature set into law, which would actually make it illegal for governments to take advantage of features in MS Office that ODF can't handle and that OO.o lacks. OO.o and the others would no longer have to try to compete on features, since those extra MS Office features would be illegal for government use anyway. Indeed, MS Office's extra features become a disadvantage rather than an advantage - if Microsoft did implement ODF into MS Office to comply with some government rule, ODF files saved by MS Office couldn't go beyond OO.o's feature set and you'd get these "Saving as ODF will lose some features for this file" warnings like you get when saving to RTF and the like.

OOXML being recognized as an open standard undermines the above grand strategy, since governments that buy into the "only open standards can be used" stance can continue to use MS Office. Which is why the "ODF camp" is so upset about this.

The ODF camp doesn't like what I've said above and will mod me down, but I really don't care. They modded down all of my posts on this subject back when the vote on the original ECMA spec failed while modding up the most inane of posts that agreed with them, completely abusing the moderation system, but that doesn't change the fact that what I said above is pretty much spot-on regarding the motives of much of the "ODF camp".

Microsoft's motives weren't exactly pure either. They opened up their formats, not due to altruism, but to kill off ODF's grand strategy and respond to government requests that they open their formats. (An irony is that the EU is one of those that demanded that Microsoft submit their formats to ISO, and is now looking for a chance to fine Microsoft for violating their whimsical "we make it up as we go" antitrust laws for doing just that.)

I'll say one more thing, which I've said before. Neither ODF nor OOXML is an app-neutral, created from scratch, pure as the driven snow, be-all/end-all uber-format. ODF is based on the previous OO.o XML format and OOXML is based on the previous MSO XML formats, and as such, they inherently cater to the features and code structure of OO.o and MS Office, respectively. While Microsoft admits this wrt OOXML, the ODF camp likes to pretend otherwise wrt ODF.

Edited 2008-04-04 23:46 UTC