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which complicates compatibility with open-source software such as LibreOffice.
Or any competitor. Which is why this "standard" should be declared anticompetitive.
The actual article— Hacker News.
And also:
The European Commission has accepted our request, and starting from today – Friday March 6 – has added the Open Document Format ODS version of the spreadsheet to be used to provide the feedback. We are grateful to the people working at DG CONNECT, the Commission’s Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, for responding to our request within 24 hours. At this point, the rest of this message is no longer relevant, and the call for action is no longer necessary.
I fully support this. This is a very easy to implement. 99% of the documents don't require specific msoffice undocumented features that odf format doesn't support
Yes, it would probably force microsoft to adhere to the specs if their files didn't work more users.
or you know you could require them to comply
"OOXML" is literally just an XML serialization of MS Office internal data structures that Microsoft bribed the standards body to push through.
"bribed" is a gross simplifiction of the almost hilariously evil plot they pulled to get OOXML certified. They actually bribed a couple of smaller nation states to become IETF members and vote for Microsoft's standard. It was a major scandal back in the day but formally legal.
I remember that plot also gumming up IETF business because the bribed nations just stopped participating after voting for Microsoft.
I remember, only trouble is a lot of people at the time didn't care or were paid loads of money to not care.
Also the name Office Open XML right at the time OpenOffice was the only one about before oracle came in and fucked it over
It's like noticing a car crash and looking back... you know you shouldn't and yet it's somehow mesmerizing. So... where can I actually read about this please?
Wikipedia for a beginning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML I remember The Register having a more detailed (and pretty snarky) article about it back then, but I didn't search for it yet.
Ah, so niche but of course there is a great Wikipedia article for this, thank you!
I was listening to the podcase episode 318 "Bill Gates and Jeffrey Epstein w/ Tim Schwab" of Tech Won't Save Us thinking that honestly I had such a low esteem for Gates surely it couldn't get worst. Well, I was clearly very wrong.
Now to read this after listening to the podcast is a great example showcasing how dearly Microsoft KEEPS on fighting for its monopolistic position. It's not a "oh it just happen" kind of situation. It's a constant investment of resources in the worst kind of ways, not into making the product better, but rather this. Again, unsurprising but whenever people argue about Gates being a "good" person or how Microsoft "changed" and isn't what it was in the 2000s they are unfortunately very naive.
Anyway, digging into this, thanks again.
You're welcome. It was a pleasure to set someomes ideas about Mr Gates right.
FYI: it wasn't a bribe. It was a temporary takeover of the standards body. They paid for memberships of a bunch of new people on the board for the critical vote.
So, a bribe with the proper bureaucratic steps?
I think saying that they "bribed the standards body" suggests the body was in on it. The actual allegation (I don't know any facts, just these comments) seems to be that the body was subverted by other countries that were bribed by Microsoft. Being someone who doesn't know the details there's a worthwhile distinction there. Though that still opens questions about the board's reaction, and I might read up on it all later.
Let me assure you that the original board that was voting for Open Office's proposal was absolutely pissed off, short of dissolving but eventually unable to revert the decision because of it's formal correctness.
...and bribed the represenatives of the "new" IETF members as well as their governments to vote for Microsoft's standard. The latter was, of course, a matter strictly between "business partners" and probably barred behind NDAs, so "legal" as long as nobody would blow the wistle.
I kinda get it though. I think every single time in my life I’ve sent a document in the non-Microsoft format I’ve got a reply saying they couldn’t open it. That’s from LibreOffice and from Mac.
Trying to get tech illiterate people to use LibreOffice and to export their documents as PDF but they just keep sending the original files every single time... nightmare material
"Don't use that proprietary format ! Use PDF instead !"
PDF is also an issue.
PDF can be opened anywhere, that's my point.
* Only if you dont use the many still proprietary extensions of PDF I suppose.
Anyway I'm not sure following the Adobe standard in our institutions is the smartest move.
Not solely, but since sooooo many documents are already only available in PDF, you need to support it for backwards compat alone, plus all the people who just wouldn't migrate their data to a new format because the old one still works for them.
I'd love if there were a true open standard with the same capabilities and support, but you're not gonna get companies to adopt that out of the kindness of their hearts.
There are often also accessibility issues with PDF files depending on how they were created.
For best results, print your word doc and scan it back in on a flatbet scanner. Fun fact you don't even need to keep the piece of paper square to the scanner.
Or just take a picture of your monitor and text it.
Hire a barbershop quartet to sing it to them.
Unrelated anecdote, my brother's then wife post a picture of them on Facebook. Our aunt saw it, took a picture of her monitor with her phone, went to the store to have them print the photo out on photo paper, and then mailed it to my brother.
So he got his original photo back, but at a greatly reduced quality and with monitor glare added!
Do you have a better idea, pal?
This is a conversation about the issue of proprietary formats in our institutions.
And I think PDF is a problem in that regard. It's not fully open and the format still can break. Forms in particular are still very problematics. Forms are very useful in institutions...
In college my professor wouldn't accept pdfs for assignments because I guess he couldn't check the metadata or make comments or something.
So I literally had to download MS office just to submit assignments in their format...
There are some people who míght learn from a ransomware attack. Only if it personally hits them, of course.
I don't know enough to understand the connection. Can you please explain?
Ransomware attack are successful mostly against MS Active Directory and Ourlook based setups.
That's hilarious. Big corporation apparently can't afford basic cybersecurity. Always pinching pennies.
Anyway, any big organization should encrypt their core systems to prevent ransomware attacks. Individuals should too. It's just good practice.
Encryption alone won't prevent ransomware to encrypt it again. The original files need to be readable after all, so they are either unencrypted at boot or appear unencrypted to the (infected) client by machine/session key management. Nevertheless, adding an addittional, ""hostile" encryption layer will make them unreadable. The reasonable thing would be not to use a monocultural, standard setup that is known to be vulnerable to that kind of attack and first of all to get rid of fucking Outlook which has always been a dumpster fire.
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Damn, I was gonna say just use web version, but they do often have missing features compared to app, so I understand why you had to download it...
The web version is even worse! It's all cloud-based, and you need a subscription unless your University pays for a license.
The only reason to use it would be to write things in Libre and then copy/paste them into MS and manually fix all the formatting.
I hated it, because all the professors could just smugly say "You know you have free access to Office 365 with your student email, right?"
That's not the fucking point! I don't give a shit if it's free, I don't want to use a fucking microsoft product, especially one that's cloud-based, when there's a perfectly good open-source alternative that I can run locally on my own hardware.
Just one of the many problems with the corporatization, commodification, and enshittification of education. If the focus was on learning and academic freedom, FOSS solutions would be encouraged. But no, you're forced to use proprietary software, because "~~reasons~~" capitalism...
The web version is even worse! It's all cloud-based, and you need a subscription unless your University pays for a license.
You don't actually need a subscription for the cloud web version actually. It's ass though.
And everytime I get a document in a Microsoft format I send a reply asking if this or that is supposed to look that way or be that value. Yet it's the open format and tools that's an issue somehow.
One thing I do like from LibreOffice is the ability to save to PDF but also embed the original document inside it.
That way almost anyone can see it as intended, and the original is still there for editing.
Whoa I didn’t know that was an option, is it part of the export menu? That would make some of my - we needed to change something after all - situations much easier at work.
That is supposed to be even with Microsoft office, because it changes the fonts without warning and adjusts the margins according to the default printer. It's not a format designed to be shared with other people
Either the person is lying, because MS Office claims compatibility with OpenDocument files, or it isn't actually compatible and Microsoft itself is lying.
Give me CSV or give me death
i will also accept LibreOffice's format for formula purposes
csv is a pretty good data sharing format, but not very well suited for spreadsheets. Just because you can shove anything you want in there doesn't mean you should.
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Death it is, CSV is horrible effectively unstandardized trash that has led to uncountable hours of efforts wasted due to subtly corrupted data through incompatible serialization settings.
It actively makes the world a worse place by existing.
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this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2026
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