Re: [office] Re: [office-metadata] Suggested Changes on the Metadata proposal

[marbux <marbux@gmail.com>]

On 6/30/07, Thomas Zander <zander@kde.org> wrote:

I have to ask you;  how do you think history will unfold if you make this
part mandatory?
If you think that suddenly everyone will do it right then you are in for a
surprise. The world doesn't work like that.
I can point to issues where OOo is not ODF compliant, and just not
altering their behavior since it makes sense for them. How does that
change when you mark something mandatory?

Note the reason I mentioned the testsuite;
http://testsuite.opendocumentfellowship.org  the reason is that this is
an excellent tool to tell the world how good or how bad an implementation
is. We already talked about having an extra metric that specifies how
well data is retained between load and save.  Its unfortunately not done
due to lack of manpower.
A second question for you; do you have doubts that the market can make
sure ODF compliance becomes a consideration for people choosing their
tools?

On the latter question, no doubts, although not in the manner you have been discussing.  Europe has been quite clear that it intends to enforce interoperability conformance requirements and testing through the government procurement power and that one of their fundamental requirements is lossless interoperability. They are also preparing to use the procurement power to force the convergence of ODF and MOOXML, with ODF providing the common functionality. Really, if you take the time to read the various presentations at the Berlin Conference, you would realize that the eminent demise of both OASIS ODF and Ecma OOXML in their present forms were announced at that conference,

If you don't want to take the time to read all of the presentations, accessible from this page, <http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/6474/5935 >, I recommend that you at least skim the slides at <http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=27865> (expectations on industry players) (4 slides); < http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=27866> (How do we get from standards to interoperability?) (5 slides); and < http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=27956> (Open Document Exchange Formats: Report to the plenary session) (8 slides). And from < http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=28841> (PEGSCO Recommendations (9 slides) ("Think about conformance testing to safeguard interoperability").

I do not believe that Europe will accept that interoperability is simply too complicated to warrant mandatory conformance requirements.