OpenDocument Foundation drops support for ODF

[ZeroHour]

This makes me laugh, laugh hard actually. All the people who said ODF was the way forward and that it would be relatively future proof should be v quiet now as the people who decided that ODF was the way forward have changed their mind now to another *better* format.
The point I thought was that ODF would not need this as it was expandable and would not need to be *changed* to another format type in future versions.
The joy if you just converted everything to ODF thinking it was the dogs to find out you have been dropped as *the* open standard.
ODF is not dead though, but it still looks bad if its decided that it really cant do all that is needed.

The OpenDocument Foundation has decided to end its support for OASIS's OpenDocument Format (ODF) and instead support W3C's Compound Document Format (CDF), which is currently described in the Web Integration Compound Document Core 1.0 draft. This move reflects growing concerns within the interoperability advocacy community about the long-term viability of both ODF and Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML).

Read more here (Ars Technica)

[Geoff]

The Open Document Foundation are an unimportant bunch of nobodies that decided that compatibility with Microsoft proprietary formats was their number one priority. If you don't believe me, you can ask Rob Weir instead:

The mythology of Silicon Valley is filled with stories of two guys and a garage founding great enterprises. And here we have two guys, and through blogs, interviews, and constant attendance at conferences, they have become some of the most-heard voices on ODF. Maybe it is partly due to the power of the name? The "OpenDocument Foundation" sounds so official. Although it has no official role in the ODF standard, this name opens doors. The ODF Alliance , the ODF Fellowship, the OASIS ODF TC, ODF Adoption TC (and many other groups without "ODF" in their name) have done far more to promote and improve ODF, yet the OpenDocument Foundation, Inc. seems to score the panel invites. Not bad for two guys without a garage.

[webman]

Let's all just go back to plain text files and be done with

[GrumbleDook]

Wax tablets ... and get out your slide rule too ... or your abacus!

[ZeroHour]

The Open Document Foundation are an unimportant bunch of nobodies that decided that compatibility with Microsoft proprietary formats was their number one priority.

Important enough to make the news though
Its never a simple thing in format wars as both have their merits.
We here, admittedly will probably not ever use ODF due to office 2007 not natively supporting it and really office 07 is the best UI I have seen for any office app so far. Its the UI that sells it for me, if office had odf built in yeh, we maybe would use it but since it does not its a problem for us in the future (currently on older versions of office here right now) when it comes to using it. Kids will probably go down the openoffice route at home so that could change attitudes here in time though.

I am up for old tech paper :twisted: would make our servers happy anyway

[Geoff]

Important enough to make the news though

Flame bait always makes the news. Controversial news gets you your page views and thus your ad revenue. Anyway, the original source of this story is here:

http://fussnotes.typepad.com/plexnex...srupting-.html

[ZeroHour]

Yeh, this thread has already got 69 views