Re: [oiic-formation-discuss] My perspective. Extensions

["Gordon MacGinitie" <gmacginitie@gmail.com>]

Experience in other fields has lead me to believe, firmly, that forwarding things one does not understand is a recipe for disaster. The deluge of emails warning of a virus, Captain Crunch's whistle, many others.

Imagine the following impossible (?) scenario:
There is a vendor Vx with a proprietary ODF application Ax
and a vendor Vo with a proprietary ODF application Ao;
Vx has a long standing hatred of Vo;
Vo includes a highly desirable proprietary feature extension, X, in A2;
Vx examines Ao and discovers a way to use the X feature to spoil Ao's output;
most files from Vx show wrong on Vo, who is to blame? 
I use FOSS aplication K that forwards feature X;
I receive a document that originated from Vx and has been edited by others that use K;
I edit and forward it to a person that uses Vo who complains of the error;
now Ao's Vo is blamed for the fault!
A long way around, but mission accomplished.

Given enough hackers and malice the impossible happens frequently.

I urge that the forwarding of unknown features be considered a violation of interoperability.