[ILUG] on the MS ISO standard thing (fwd)

[Conor Daly]

On Wed, Jan 24, 2007 at 07:12:18PM +0000 or so it is rumoured hereabouts, 
Colm MacCarthaigh thought:
> On Wed, Jan 24, 2007 at 07:04:17PM +0000, Conor Daly wrote:
> > On Wed, Jan 24, 2007 at 06:30:36PM +0000 or so it is rumoured hereabouts, 
> > Colm MacCarthaigh thought:
> > > 
> > > So what if MS get an ISO standard? That'd just show how relatively
> > > worthless an ISO standard without any context is anyway. It sounds like
> > > it's just part of a marketting war and people want to brandish the "ours
> > > is ISO standardised" tag-line, as if that means something. Mneh :-)
> > 
> > If MS get their format registered as an ISO standard, they can ignore the
> > open document format.  If they don't they will have to be seen to be
> > ignoring the registered format or support it.  Either of the latter allows
> > us to promote OpenOffice and others as being compliant with mandated ISO
> > standards and therefore better than MS Office...
> 
> So, it is just a marketting war? Like I said; "Mneh". 

Not strictly so.  It's part of the war on free software along with swpats
and DRM and treacherous computing...
 
> Btw, if you think implementing an ISO will make OO.O better than MS
> Office, hah! I'm an oo.o user (well I use NeoOffice), and it's miles off
> :-)
> 
> Don't get me wrong, I'm in favour of OpenOffice XML being the only
> ISO standard, but for completely different reasons - more to do with
> getting governments into the habit of using properly standardised
> and open formats for public information - but I think it's really

Agreed.  The real reason for being able to say OO.O is better is to
encourage use of the open standards.  If MS have a proprietary standard
mandated, they can, once again, dominate public info and government
policies.

Conor
-- 
Conor Daly <conor.daly at cod.homelinux.org>
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