OOXML: move the goalposts, avoid facing the obvious

Sam Varghese
Thursday, 20 December 2007 20:25

Opinion and Analysis

Second, what kind of impact will the support offered by GNOME - and yes, there is support - have on the votes of national bodies during the February ISO vote on OOXML? What kind of propaganda is GNOME lending itself to being used for by its silly statements about OOXML?

Third, are we to believe that a large number of adults, who have been part of the FOSS landscape for a long time, do not really understand the implications of their words in support of Microsoft?

Fourth, are these same people unaware of the history of the computer industry and the actual reasons why a vast majority of the world's computer users are forced to use mediocre software and pay top dollar for it?

Fifth, could it just be that these people are willing to go along for any kind of ride simply because this seems to be the right time to cash in and salt away a bit of moolah?

Sixth, why has nobody among these FOSS elites bothered to react to the fact that Microsoft has now changed its stance on control of the OOXML standard and is now talking of ECMA - over which it has control - being the one in control, and not the ISO? Is it the old remedy of ignoring the problem and hoping it will go away?

Seventh, there seems to be a manufactured air of defeatism around - as Byfield puts it, "Whether or not OOXML becomes an official ISO standard, it will still become unofficial standard (sic), simply because Microsoft Office is the main office program used on computers." Why is this so?

If this kind of defeatist attitude had been there from the time Richard Stallman decided to create free software for use by everybody, would we have even come close to the stage we are at?