iTWire - OOXML: move the goalposts, avoid facing the obvious

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OOXML: move the goalposts, avoid facing the obvious

by Sam Varghese
Friday, 21 December 2007
Page 1 of 2 Last week, following a radio discussion, linux.com writer Bruce Byfield characterised two opposing FOSS camps in the OOXML debate who participated in that discussion as being "closer than they have appeared in the past." Register now to win a Canon EOS 500D The two camps were represented by Roy Schestowitz, the co-founder of the BoycottNovell website, and Jeff Waugh, the media spokesman of the GNOME Foundation. There were a few others who piled on to make it an unequal debate for Schestowitz. I called this claim insane. Now Byfield, who's beginning to rapidly show his colours as an apologist for the GNOME faction of this debate, says my claim was made about his "suggestion that both sides believed that they were acting for the good of the community." He seems to have forgotten what he wrote a week ago. Conveniently so. The goalposts have moved. That's the best way to avoid having to face a problem. Spinmeisters are excellent at this. Let's say the rate of unemployment is high. What do we do? Redefine the word "employed" so that the numbers drop. The man who does an hour of community work a week is now defined as an employed person. Hey presto, the problem solves itself. Nothing material has changed but who gives a stuff? Another person in the same camp is Linux Journal contributor Glyn Moody. The picture this good soul paints is: this schism is harming FOSS. We need to heal it. (he doesn't have any ideas on how it should be healed, though). And the best way to push this position is by terming it the "sane" option. Byfield doesn't want to be on one side or the other. He wants a "saner" position. Reminds me of the position taken by the bat when the birds and the beasts were at war with each other. Some hard and logical questions need to be asked. First, OOXML as defined by the specs provided by Microsoft to the standards body ECMA, and OOXML, the binary output from Microsoft Office 2007, are two different things. They meet different specs. Nobody knows the specs for the OOXML that Office 2007 outputs. Why are FOSS people getting involved in this at all? << First page < 1 2 Next page > Last page - Post your comment >>