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
