3 ms·

I should clarify - Microsoft was forced by their clients to do it. Amongst Microsoft's most important clients are governments, many of which demanded the use of

I should clarify - Microsoft was forced by their clients to do it. Amongst Microsoft's most important clients are governments, many of which demanded the use of standards for documents, like PDF for viewable documents or ISO/IEC 26300 for editable documents, which is the ODF standard. Some government institutions in Europe even moved to LibreOffice. Google does not have such clients for their online office suite. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_adoption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_adoption

dogma1138 11y ago
"Forced" is used way too loosely, many people use the NATO example but they never read the fine print. NATO calls for a recommended support for ODF, but a mandatory support Office Open XML Office Open XML: Mandatory: Standard ECMA-376, Ed. 1: December 2006, Office Open XML File Formats. Open Document Format: Recommended: ISO/IEC 26300:2006, Information technology -- Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0. https://nhqc3s.hq.nato.int/Apps/Architecture/NISP/volume3/apds05.html https://nhqc3s.hq.nato.int/Apps/Architecture/NISP/volume3/ap... Same goes for many other examples especially from the governmental sector. If MSFT wanted to bury ODF they might have managed to do so, since they've managed to get it under OASIS and tag a RAND clause into the ODF license they really don't care. EEE :)
- bad_user 11y ago
  So I'm not aware of any RAND clauses or harmful patents that made it into the ODF standard. Quite the contrary, afaik ODF is under "RF On Limited Terms", which means that all patents must be licensed for everyone's use, for free, with some provisions that are reasonable. We are not talking about RAND. And I'm not a lawyer, but if the FSF supports ODF and given they've got lawyers and have had a no compromise policy, I trust that ODF is safe. See: https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/odf-oasis.html https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/odf-oasis.html So care to provide some references? PS: I wasn't thinking of NATO, but of individual countries. ODF (and not OOXML) is mandatory in France, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Russia and it's becoming mandatory in Italy.

dogma1138 11y ago

"Forced" is used way too loosely, many people use the NATO example but they never read the fine print. NATO calls for a recommended support for ODF, but a mandatory support Office Open XML Office Open XML: Mandatory: Standard ECMA-376, Ed. 1: December 2006, Office Open XML File Formats. Open Document Format: Recommended: ISO/IEC 26300:2006, Information technology -- Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0. https://nhqc3s.hq.nato.int/Apps/Architecture/NISP/volume3/apds05.html https://nhqc3s.hq.nato.int/Apps/Architecture/NISP/volume3/ap... Same goes for many other examples especially from the governmental sector. If MSFT wanted to bury ODF they might have managed to do so, since they've managed to get it under OASIS and tag a RAND clause into the ODF license they really don't care. EEE :)

bad_user 11y ago
So I'm not aware of any RAND clauses or harmful patents that made it into the ODF standard. Quite the contrary, afaik ODF is under "RF On Limited Terms", which means that all patents must be licensed for everyone's use, for free, with some provisions that are reasonable. We are not talking about RAND. And I'm not a lawyer, but if the FSF supports ODF and given they've got lawyers and have had a no compromise policy, I trust that ODF is safe. See: https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/odf-oasis.html https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/odf-oasis.html So care to provide some references? PS: I wasn't thinking of NATO, but of individual countries. ODF (and not OOXML) is mandatory in France, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Russia and it's becoming mandatory in Italy.