Re: [tdf-discuss] Re: Do not support writing to OOXML format

On 02/01/11 19:01, Larry Gusaas wrote:
> No. What is included is a community decision, not just the developers.

My interpretation is that *The Document Foundation* and *LibreOffice*
projects are driven more by informal consensus rather than democracy per
se. That is to say that the various steering committees make their final
decisions based upon a mixture of community opinion, technical and
pragmatic considerations. An efficient community driven project has to
give greater weight to the latter of these three (technical and
pragmatic considerations) whilst also taking on board *valid* community
discussion.

It would seem, thus, that the engineering steering committee have
decided that the arguments against implementing OOXML are outweighed by
the technical and pragmatic benefits of full interoperability with the
world leading office suite (which perhaps lamentably is Microsoft
Office). The politics of this decision may be contentious to the
community (or rather this mailing list) but basing decisions on a
political platform such as this will only lead to LibO falling into
obscurity because it doesn't *just work*.

Regards,

Lee Hyde.


-- 
"The division of mankind threatens it with destruction. Only universal
cooperation under conditions of intellectual freedom and the lofty moral
ideals of socialism and labor, accompanied by the elimination of
dogmatism and pressure of the concealed interests of ruling classes,
will preserve civilization."

        -- Andrei Sakharov, The New York Times (July 22nd, 1968)


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