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

[Radoslav Dejanović <radoslav.dejanovic@opsus.hr>]

Gordon MacGinitie wrote:

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

That is a pretty smart method of niping it in the bud. If there isn't a
serious reason to preserve unknown features, I vote for this "violation
act" - if the standard is to drop unknown features, that would *greatly*
reduce other parties hidden agendas and pretty much force them to try to
implement their features as a part of the standard - in which case it
would be much harder to make advantage of other vendors.

The reason against that would be that this might slow down "evolution"
of ODF, as process of adoption of new features would be quite longer.

But then, I do remember HTML wars of Microsoft and Netscape, and while
it did boost HTML evolution, the end result was pretty ugly and it took
years to settle down. I don't want that to happen to ODF, it might even
kill the standard.

Another argument is that the big and very important user - a government
- really does not like fast changes. They like it slow, but safe. And,
governments are important ally for the ODF standard, as their support
will ensure relevance of ODF.