Re: GNOME Foundation Statement on ECMA TC45-M Participation

[jamie <jamiemcc blueyonder co uk>]

On Mon, 2007-11-26 at 09:49 -0500, Gregory Leblanc wrote:
> On Nov 25, 2007 12:39 PM, jamie <jamiemcc blueyonder co uk> wrote:
> > On Sun, 2007-11-25 at 12:18 -0500, Jody Goldberg wrote:
> > > On Sun, Nov 25, 2007 at 12:56:09PM +0000, jamie wrote:
> 
> > > > Office 2007 has less than 10% of all office versions (50m out of 500m)
> > > Which is already comperable to the OO.o installbase.  They are
> > > playing with a much larger population.
> >
> > yes and that larger population is using older office versions so MS
> > still has a lot of work to do to sell to them an expensive upgrade which
> > mostly only contains a prettier interface
> 
> The sell here for Microsoft is very very easy.  The small businesses
> that I do consulting for here in the US all use Microsoft operating
> systems and office products.  At this point, when they order a new PC
> as either a replacement or an upgrade, they are unable to order
> Microsoft Office 2003.  Microsoft has enough monopoly control to force
> users to change to the new version, simply by making the old one
> unavailable.
> 
> The change to Microsoft Office 2007 will happen, and the change to
> MOOX will inevitably follow.

Its not that simple. From what I see in the company I work for, we tend
to still use doc and xls even though we have office 2007 so that others
outside our business can still open the docs

Lack of backwards compatibility could severely limit use of MOOX where
businesses cannot be sure others can utilise it. Doc and xls are simply
the lowest common denominator and hence will continue to be used whether
you have 2007 or not and MOOX cannot change that for the foreseeable
future

In your example - this is even more the case! If half your computers
have 2007 and the others 2003 you will not be using MOOX surely?


jamie