KDE on ODF
Our friends in the KDE project were the first to fully adopt ODF in their office suite, KOffice, putting to rest our opponent’s claims that ODF was designed only for OpenOffice.org.
Now KDE has come out with a strong statement of support for ODF and against the dishonest Microsoft effort to rubberstamp its MSOOXML file format as an ISO standard. (Note: to date, Microsoft has failed in that project.)
ITWire quotes the original release in part:
“The standardisation process of OfficeOpenXML has turned sour, not in the least because Microsoft couldn’t resist the temptation to cheat. Right now we’re seeing evidence of a concerted campaign at discrediting OpenDocument vis-a-vis OfficeOpen XML. That’s unfortunate, to say the least. If OfficeOpen XML becomes an ISO standard, we will, in all likelihood, still not spend time on supporting it. The standard is enormous, very complex and to a large extent so badly specified that a full implementation is probably even harder than implementing the old Microsoft binary file formats. Add to that patent encumbrances and problems with copyrighted elements — and our conclusion is that we prefer to concentrate on making KOffice a great set of applications that are satisfying to use and satisfying to develop.”