OpenWeb 05/09/2009 (a.m.)
Cutting corners - the realpolitik of ODF standardisation? - The Wayback Machine Roars Reality
From Notes2Self 2006 post we discover once again that ODF Interop problems are not new. Back in early February 2005, the legendary developer James Clark made a comment to the OASIS OpenDocument technical Committee about the lack of interoperability for spreadsheet documents:
".... I really hope I'm missing something, because, frankly, I'm speechless. You cannot be serious. You have virtually zero interoperability for spreadsheet documents. OpenDocument has the potential to be extraodinarily valuable and important standard. I urge you not to throw away a huge part of that potential by leaving such a gaping hole in your specification...". Claus Agerskov further commented that this provided a means of creating lock-in (my emphasis)
"OpenDocument doesn't specify the formulars used in spreadsheets so every spreadsheet vendor can implement formulars in their own way without being an open standard. This way a vendor can create lock-in to their spreadsheets"
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
2 comments:
Uh, the James Clark that posted about spreadsheets is definitely a person of great renown and justly famed, but not the same Jamie Clark who is an executive of OASIS.
Thanks orcmid. Right you are. I have foolishly confused an administrator with a living legend. That the legendary James Clark made these comments speaks loudly to the negligence involved. yet here we are, four years after the fact, and still wondering when the cavalry will arrive.
I think it was in late 2004, just prior to the submission of ODF 1.0 to OASIS for consideration and comment, that David Wheeler contacted the TC. He was just as outraged, but offered up a plan that was pretty much brushed aside at the time. David went forward on his own with the Open Formula Project. His objective was to come up with a formula specification that could be implemented by both ODF and OOXML - and HTML+ for that matter. Years of tough work followed as he struggled to find compatibility with between the legacy and leading spreadsheet applications.
The ODF TC did eventually seek out David, but he was initiatlly quite reluctant to contribute and bind his Open Formula work to ODF. He really wanted to maintain that neutral status of being independent with respect to all spreadsheet applications and XML formats. He also had some serious reservations about the OASIS IPR policy. Especially how that policy would limit the free and open participation of individuals and open source community members not having membership in OASIS. Without that membership and IPR commitment, outsiders like Dan Brickland would not be able to contribute to the Open Formula work.
And now you know the some of the reasoning behind the establishment of the OpenDocument Foundation. By exploiting a little known loophole in OASIS membership rules, we were able to neutralize the crippling impact of IPR bound membership rules. Most of the Open Formula members and many of the Metadata members were able to participate in these important efforts in this way. The Foundation sponsored 28 participants, with 15 doing yeoman work outside the main TC. Most were people like Dan Bricklin; wanting to contribute, but finding the commitment asked for by OASIS corporate consortia model a bit inconvenient.
Thanks for setting me straight on this important attribution. I apologize for my carelessness.
~ge~
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