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Comment by TazeTSchnitzel | Hacker News Reader

LibreOffice, descendent of OpenOffice, descendent of StarOffice, has a project leadership that believes OpenDocument is the best and most open format. That's very convenient for them, considering that OpenDocument is a standardisation of the native file format of that lineage of office suites.

Microsoft Office has a project leadership that believes that Office Open XML is the best and most open office format. That's very convenient for them, considering that Office Open XML is a standardisation of the native file format of that lineage of office suites.

Now, OnlyOffice is presumably something written from scratch, unrelated to those two lineages. They chose to prioritise compatibility with the market leader's standard, and the second place in the market is upset that a competitor isn't favouring them instead.

I think this is a bit silly.

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I think this is an unfair take. ODF is an actual file format, while OOXML is a serialization format for Microsoft Office specifics, as debated here 6 months ago. [0]

Beyond marketing fluff, I don't think anybody at Microsoft genuinely believes they have an "open office format" or an actual "standardization". Even Apple back in the day had to reverse-engineer the Microsoft formats. [1]

Whether you'd like to denounce OnlyOffice taking part in this masquerade or not is a political issue. But giving Microsoft any form of benefit of the doubt on this matter is historically wrong and, I believe, ethically evil.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45144758

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interopera...

Indeed, the basic point is fine - just 2 competitors standing up for their own choice - but the use of the words "and most open format" ruins the GP's point and perhaps is the reason for the downvotes. There's no way one can argue that Microsoft believes their format is the most open.

What is an “actual file format”? Every file format is a serialisation of some kind of data-model. I'm sure the OpenDocument data-model might be simpler and cleaner in some ways than the Office Open XML one. But for something with the complexity of an office document, you can't escape the fact that every file format is full of assumptions about the application interacting with it. I find the examples in the article from [0] unconvincing, it reminds me of arguments about programming language syntax.

(I do not doubt that the OOXML standard is a mess though.)

I'm sorry you were not convinced. Of course a "file format" could be anything. I personally am convinced that a standard file format (filed for ISO) should have proper semantics that precisely escape assumptions about the application's internal state and framework.

That's why administrative interop formats are standardized XML files with a schema and not a random Oracle SQL export from any given entity with their custom database layout.

That link for Apple reverse-engineering Microsoft formats is talking about before Microsoft OOXML existed.

Correct. I simply placed it for historical context on Microsoft being hostile to competition, interoperability and free software for much longer than OOXML has existed.

I do see your point but i think your giving Microsoft to much credit. I wouldn't trust their commitment to their own open format. I think Onlyoffice supporting it is unfortunate, but necessary

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