Re: [MLUG] Open Document Format in Minnesota?

["Jonathan King" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On 1/22/07, Stephen Montgomery-Smith <EMAIL:PROTECTED> wrote:
> Mike Miller wrote:
> >
> > Microsoft can continue to do their thing indefinitely, but they are
> > slowly being worn down.  They were forced, entirely against their
> > interests, to start using an open file format.  I don't know if their
> > version of open XML is any better than the one that had already been
> > developed by OpenOffice group.  Having their own format widely adopted
> > will give them a little more time, but in the end, having an open format
> > takes away one more reason to want to use MS Office instead of Open Office.
> >
> > For me, widespread adoption of an open file format is a lot more
> > important than the success of Open Office.  I think this will do a lot
> > to encourage competition.
>
> I agree with Mike.

Amazing; weather.com's map of lightning strikes shows an almost
complete absence of thunderbolt from the blue activity. :-)

> That this law forces MS to do the right thing is a
> good thing.  The open document movement is primarily about getting
> things open, not an anti-MS movement.

I agree with this, too. But I have to say that it's not merely
format-lockin that will be a problem. Whole business processes far
larger than I could ever have imagined turn out to be dependent on
things like a ratty old Access database somewhere or a handful of
Excel macros that have to run, or else.

That said, the movement to XML-based document formats is probably
almost as deep and important a move as open-ness per se. Anything you
can mess around with using E4X would be really tough to close back up.

jking



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> Stephen Montgomery-Smith
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