Re: Open Office file formats (Oasis-open) and gnumeric

[Russell McOrmond <russell flora ca>]

On Mon, 10 Mar 2003, Daniel Veillard wrote:

>   No on principles. I disagree with the fact that I need to pay to
> get involved in the standardization group of OASIS.

  I would like to clarify this if I can.  Is it the problem that *you* as
an individual have to pay, or that there is payment involved generally.  
If there was sponsorship of GNOME Office to the OASIS Open Office TC,
would that solve the problem in your mind?

(Note: The confusion between the "OASIS Open Office TC" and the
"OpenOffice.org project" is very unfortunate.  It is even worse when
speaking and having to say "open space office" when discussing the OASIS
TC)


  I am also wondering how many people involved with GNUmeric are Canadian.  
It normally doesn't matter where someone is from for anything Free
Software or Internet related, but does when promoting software projects 
within governments.


  It is my understanding that the W3C isn't going to be dealing with
office productivity file formats, and the IETF may not be dealing with
non-network file formats at all.  If not OASIS, then how do we move this
critical issue forward?  It will be very important to getting FLOSS office
productivity suites into larger corporate and government clients.  I also
believe that office productivity on the desktop is the next important
milestone that we as a community/sector need to reach. While Linux is
great and all, it won't be as relevant to a migration path as FLOSS office
productivity running on existing Microsoft Windows desktop platforms.  
This is why the initial push for OOo on Windows, and common file formats
with all FLOSS office suites for the other platforms supported.

  While AbiWord and GIMP have MS Windows versions, I don't believe that
GNUmeric or any of the other GNOME office or KOffice tools are ported to
MS Windows.


  While not generally known, NAFTA Chapter 10 (government procurement)
requires governments (Canada, USA, Mexico) to favor open standards over
any branded technology, where such standards exist. I am doing a
presentation on this issue next month to two different audiences, both on
a government track.  Any discussion of this can push the whole issue of
FLOSS in government forward.

  The following is an early draft which will give you an idea of where I
am trying to go with this.  I am working on another report right now
(software patents) and haven't been able to update this in a while.

  http://www.flora.ca/russell/drafts/office-citt.html

---
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
 Any 'hardware assist' for communications, whether it be eye-glasses, 
 VCR's, or personal computers, must be under the control of the citizen 
 and not a third party.   -- http://www.flora.ca/russell/