All Things Microsoft > Microsoft as a Company

Microsoft dragged into accepting ODF

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Calum:
as already mentioned the constant push and pull between different standards and platforms is entirely down to economics. it is some absurd idea that for a free market economy to work people must always have some competing betamax or minidisk to buy, or else competition fails. this is clearly rubbish. like with DVDs, just agree with one format and stick to it i say, what's wrong with dvds? nothing for what they were intended for. also, i disagree with planned obscolesncence too, why should i suddenly have to throw out all my videos just because i start buying dvds? every ten years i will have to throw out everything and replace it all with whatever the new format is! same with CDs/tapes/records etc. good job i don't actually have a betamax (or an eight track player, or a philips digital cassette machine...)

Aloone_Jonez:
You say we should all stick with one format, but it depends on the format, if it's MS Office formats then it's bad, the format needs to be free for everyone to use to be of any benifit.

mobrien_12:
Actually, there's a lot of skepticism around this.

First, theres allegations that they took code from the ODF plugin project, without credit, and relicenced it under the BSD licence.  The original author isn't really pissed, and the original licence was essentially dual:  Apache and LGPL, so it isn't that big a deal, but it wasn't proper if that's what they did.

Second, there is no damn reason for this plugin project.  The new office project is a long ways away from being released.  MS could put it in by default.  Why don't they?  Why make it a separate download?  Free software or not?

Third, if this is a plugin, will it mean that people will have to make an extra step every single time they want to save in ODF?  Will it say "you are saving in a sucky format and you won't get all the wonderful benefits of MS.  Sell your soul Yes/No?"?

Fourth, this will ONLY work with their new, unreleased version of office, so people will have to upgrade to use it, while the current Free software version from ODF foundation works for everything from Word 97 onward.

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but this is MS we are talking about here.

Aloone_Jonez:
You have a point there, I take it the ODF foundation's plugin is free so you can just email it to people, but there again there's the question of whether you can use it without administritive access to the machine.

mobrien_12:

--- Quote from: Aloone_Jonez ---You have a point there, I take it the ODF foundation's plugin is free so you can just email it to people, but there again there's the question of whether you can use it without administritive access to the machine.
--- End quote ---


Well, I haven't tried it yet.  I would expect you could because most Word plugings are written in Visual Basic for Applications, the same things that macros are made out of.  

From what I understand, the MS plugin will be Free software as well.

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