As some guys found out the transcript of the Linux.com chat was incomplete. The second part is more insightful. What strikes me most is Jeffs argument: "comments provided via the ISO process can be acted upon by microsoft to 'improve' the format, to increase the likelihood of it being accepted". It reminds me of radical left wing critics of our political systems that find it so corrupt and broken that they refuse to participate in any pragmatic approach to improve it according to their political preferences. The assumption is that pragmatism plays in the hands of your opponent. I believe that is merely a popular excuse for inactivity or unability. So when the argument was right, why does Microsoft fiercely resist comments and is afraid of resolutions for these?
A statement as clear as "MS delivered OOXML to ECMA as-is MS make the decisions about changing it we're drilling for docs" was missed which lead to a lot of confusion in the Gnome user community. According to some unconfirmed rumours a popular SCO case blogger was so pissed that the person considered to switch from Gnome to another Desktop environment. I find it nice that the Gnome Foundation "drilled" Microsoft for more documentation. But maybe that was soo wrong, too? What if the amount of documentation helped them to sell their "standard" to ISO?
21:45 < lirelent> it's the feedback being done that I don't think is
necessary for FLOSS to compete or even to interoperate
21:45 < lirelent> which is proven by the success of interpreting the
binary formats
21:45 < jdub> heh
21:45 < jdub> you say that
21:45 < jdub> without having suffered through reverse engineering them
21:45 < jdub> :-)
21:46 < lirelent> that's true
21:46 < lirelent> but the point remains
21:46 < lirelent> it does work
21:46 * so_solid_moo saw not long ago that the ooxml spec. had helped
decode more of the binary formats
21:46 < jdub> would've been nice to have docs for it
21:46 < jdub> and for smb/cifs
21:46 < lirelent> and OOXML documentation, no matter how crappy (excuse
the french) will make that process less painful
21:47 -!- roblimo is now known as roblimo-nap
21:47 < lirelent> and that still doesn't require any feedback from
anyone in the FLOSS community to MS
21:48 < jdub> not into the format (which no one has)
21:48 < jdub> but in order to get documentation, we have
21:48 -!- roblimo-nap
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21:48 < jdub> jody has been a nice little PITA to them :-)
21:48 < lirelent> by providing feedback about the weak points of the
standard, you /might/ help FLOSS, but you definitely WILL help MS
21:49 < jdub> but again, that is not what is happening in TC45-M
21:49 < lirelent> I don't like the cost-benifit of that
21:49 < jdub> that *is* what is happening with the ISO process though
21:49 < jdub> and, oddly enough, that's where everyone else is
participating :)
21:50 < jdub> in many ways, our work has assisted the arguments made
during the ISO process
21:51 < lirelent> could you elaborate on that?
21:52 < jdub> comments provided via the ISO process can be acted upon by
microsoft to 'improve' the format, to increase the likelihood of it
being accepted
21:52 < jdub> our tc45-m involvement has been about drilling them for
documentation, not improvements to the standard
21:53 < lirelent> how is that NOT happening in the TC45-m
21:53 < jdub> through demands for that documentation, we've assisted
some of the arguments about why ISO shouldn't accept OOXML
21:53 < lirelent> but if the add documentation doesn't that improve the
standard
21:53 < jdub> (such as complexity of the standard, which is an important
issue locally for me)
21:53 < jdub> MS delivered OOXML to ECMA as-is
21:54 < jdub> MS make the decisions about changing it
21:54 < jdub> we're drilling for docs
21:54 < jdub> such that the specification is more complete
21:54 < jdub> not that it is better
21:54 < lirelent> isn't more complete, better though?
21:54 < jdub> that said, MS may change things as a result of ISO
responses… so, irony :-)
21:55 < jdub> well, it depends on what you value in the specification
21:55 < jdub> more complete documentation of a pile of poop doesn't make
the poop better
21:55 < jdub> it just details the level of poop
21:55 < lirelent> true
21:55 < jdub> if the poop is sufficiently poopie, ISO participants won't
accept it on ISO's terms
21:56 < lirelent> but I've had some interaction with IETF and they don't
seem to care if the protocol is poop, as long as its spec is complete
21:56 < lirelent> but I concede that ISO might have different standards
To foster desktop competition I may add some words from a post of Aaron Seigo from the KDE project posted after the September ballot.
With a global community made aware of the issues, contributing to the solutions and communicating broadly even the most competitive and powerful of companies are finding it difficult to tread on our freedom and get the world to buy into their lies.
Yo everyone who supported "open" xml in the free / open source community (unfortunately there were some, including some fairly well known people), I really urge you to seriously think about your position on this matter. the name "open xml" is a lie because it isn't open (there have been more than enough highly technical articles written debunking that issue thoroughly), it's a danger to true file format standardization efforts (e.g. ODF) and an unnecessary complication for office apps in general.
..
To everyone who spent days, weeks and months of their lives exposing "open" xml for what it truly is: congratulations, thank you and you have my deepest respect and gratitude. People from around and even outside the community rallied to make this happen.
