Re: OOXML [was Re: GNOME Foundation Board Meeting Minutes :: 7/6/07]

["Luis Villa" <luis tieguy org>]

On 10/30/07, Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org> wrote:
> > This flaming was completely and utterly predictable. I'm disappointed
> > that the board took the time to approve an action that obviously
> > exposed GNOME to PR problems without taking the (very obvious) PR
> > steps to reduce that impact.
>
> You are correct, and I take responsibility for opening the
> issue, and not writing a press release to protect the foundation
> from the obvious attack.   The effort is hampered by my disagreeing
> with the opinion you, and much of the community appear to hold.
> I think OOX should be blessed as a standard,
>     'the MS Office XML File Format'
> and that we should do everything we can to improve the specification
> of that and any other format we interact with.  If that level of
> disagreement is unacceptable in the community then I can leave ECMA
> and request that they discontinue the GNOME Foundation's membership.
> In my opinion that would be a step backwards.

As I said in my original note in June, I don't see that we have a
choice- GNOME-based projects will have to implement OOXML, so we might
as well be involved and make it suck less to the extent their (sham?)
process allows us to do so.

But I think we should make it absolutely clear that we're involved
because MS is a dominant market power and abusive, convicted
monopolist who will not be afraid to use OOXML to damage competitors,
not because we think the spec process is a real, valid spec process,
or because we like their spec. To the extent we can do both (improve
the spec *and* remind the world that MS is an abusive, convicted
monopolist) this is a win-win, and should have been in June.

Luis