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

[Thomas Zander <zander@kde.org>]

On Saturday 30 June 2007 20:45:09 Bruce D'Arcus wrote:
> Would it be valid to call my application an officially compliant ODF
> application? Do we even know what that means such that we can answer
> that question?

There is no 'compliant' ruleset, and I think this is just another reason 
why there should not be one either.
I'm absolutely sure that after you made a definition of what 'compliant' 
is, someone will come and write a malicious client that still is 
compliant, but advertising it as such will just make everyone cringe.

> I don't think saying "let the market decide" is an adequate answer. We
> need to have real answers for these questions, because the future
> success of ODF is going to depend on reliable document exchange among
> disparate applications, with disparate feature sets.

Well, I agree that reliable document exchange is required. But claiming 
that having some sort of compliant rubber stamp is going to help is just 
not realistic.
In fact; there is no proof at all that a "certified compliant" label has 
ever helped to further compatibility.   All the way from people taking 
tests to certify them as MS or Linux capable people to certified alarm 
systems. They don't make perfect techies and they don't ensure you are 
free from buglers. It makes you personally feel good, sure, but the real 
world doesn't really care about that.

As I stated in various mails already in this thread; making thing 
mandatory or putting an "officially compliant ODF" label on a piece of 
software will not make software more capable of interchanging with 
others. It never has, and it never will. That's just good hope without 
any proof that it ever worked for anybody.

And don't forget the concept of measuring the wrong metric! [1]

There is a conference in the US every year where producers of software 
(samba etc) come to test how well their software interacts. The really 
practically important stuff; like "does it actually work!". There is one 
planned for ODF apps in a couple of months.
It will be the first, so lets see where it goes. But coming together and 
checking if big usecases exchange correctly is a good measure of 
interoperability, as I'm sure you'll agree.

So, what I'm saying is that ODF compliance has little to do with 
interoperability.  Sure, its connected, but they have very separate 
metrics to measure their success. And you seem to think that going for 
one metric will automatically mean success in another.  Just like the 
Bürgermeister found out, that's not how things work.


1) http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/05/legend-of-rat-farmer.html
-- 
Thomas Zander

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