Which version do you prefer:

• Anyone who is not against us is for us (Mk 9:40) or
• He who is not with me is against me (Lk 11:23)

The OpenOffice.org community has mixed reactions to the announcement that the OpenDocument Foundation has registered as a non-profit with OASIS.

As I have argued elsewhere, users’ real investment is in their office data files, not in their office software products. So, while OpenOffice.org is the most important open-source office software today, there is every reason to believe (hope) it will be replaced by other open-source software / services in the future. An open-standard vendor-neutral file format like OpenDocument provides a bridge into the future, and should outlive any particular application using it.

It’s a fact that the OpenDocument format would never have seen the light of day without OpenOffice.org, and we OpenOffice.org folks naturally feel protective about our baby. However, the baby has grown up quickly, and even if we don’t always like the company this young teenager is keeping, he/she does have a right to his/her own life. So, I say good luck to the OpenDocument Foundation.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 20th, 2005 at 6:28 pm and is filed under OpenDocument, OpenOffice.org. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.