Re: Word attachment...on linuxtoday

[Richard Stallman <rms gnu org>]

    I fear that it will
    happen soon in gnumeric and may already be contained in many openoffice
    file formats... The solution , each application should be able to save
    in a format that contains no code...

I agree with you--I think this is a very important issue, and all GNU
programs should all be designed with this in mind, including Gnumeric.
I think I will add something to the GNU coding standards about this
issue.  Free software should aim to outdo proprietary software here.

OpenOffice may need to support some Microsoft formats that include
code, for interoperability.  And some GNOME programs might want to do
likewise.  But these programs could also define new, alternative, safe
and clean formats.

    I have been toying with the idea of forbiding word attachments from my
    Internet mail system because of the potential threat of containing
    viruses.

There are good arguments for this.  On the other hand, I think that is
likely to make the sender feel frustrated if his mail is dropped by a
machine.  By contrast, sending back a message as I have been doing
does not seem, in practice, to make people angry.  So my method may
have better chance of convincing them to change their practices in
general.