Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> The geek who took on Microsoft
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | The mild-mannered CIO of Massachusetts sparked a standards debate when
> | he made it policy that state workers use open-standard formats.
> |
> | (FORTUNE Magazine) - In the early morning hours of May 3, a dramatic piece
> | of news out of Geneva began caroming through the online world: At long
> | last, Microsoft's lock on the $9 billion office-application business
> | was facing a challenge.
> `----
>
> http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2006/05/29/8378022/index.htm
ODF has a lot of problems. For example, it doesn't even specify how
spreadsheet forumlas should be stored; it doesn't handle far east
language page numbering; it's super slow.
Apps other than OO.o are having difficulty implementing it, partly
because much of ODF is vague, so devs must decide whether to implement
ODF or mimic OO.o's particular implementation of ODF.
You guys have always claimed that Microsoft Office is prevalent because
they lock up their formats (glossing over the fact that Word Star,
Lotus, WordPerfect, dBase all locked up their formats and Microsoft
came from behind and defeated them). You are going to learn that the
formats were not the issue, functionality/usability was and is.
OO.o realizes that they can't compete with Microsoft on functionality,
so they opened their format (ODF is based on OO.o's previous format)
and said, "We can't compete on functionality, but you should use us
because our format is open!" In other words, it's OO.o that decided to
compete based on formats rather than functionality, not Microsoft.
Microsoft's formats are going through ECMA standardization process as
we speak
<http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2006/05/24/605461.aspx>
You'll no longer have the excuse that you're only losing to Microosft
because of locked formats.
Microsoft won't be able to compete based on locked formats and OO.o
won't be able to compete based on having an open format. Both will
have open formats, so both will compete on functionality/usability. As
Solomon wrote, "There is nothing new under the sun". Microsoft is
going to kick OO.o's ass because Office 2007 makes OO.o look like utter
trash.
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