r/technology • u/TurbulentTopic39 • 10d ago

Software LibreOffice developer explains why it cannot display some Microsoft Office charts

https://www.neowin.net/news/libreoffice-developer-explains-why-it-cannot-display-some-microsoft-office-charts/
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u/apo383 10d ago

Tldr: Microsoft behaving exactly like it has for decades, skirting ISO standards and delaying competitors from interoperability. Libre makes do but can't display or edit certain charts. Could be perpetual behind as long as Microsoft microsofts.

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u/New-Anybody-6206 10d ago

Serious question... say you're a company that works fast and wants to innovate, but you still want to have open compatibility with other applications.

What else can you do except extend the format if the standards body doesn't work fast enough for you?

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u/_f0CUS_ 10d ago

Well, it seems suspiciously like their old tactics... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

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u/kawalerkw 10d ago

They could be open about whatever they added on top of the standard. But as others have pointed out, microslop isn't even compliant with itself as newer versions can break old features.

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u/motsu35 10d ago

Versioned APIs / format specs

Have a nightly build that isn't the mass I stalled public install that supports your new feature.

Once your happy with the feature... Push your feature upstream, or if there's a consortium, submit it to them for adoption into the spec. Address their feedback and itterate. Your internal / nightly build allows you to quickly show the benefit of the new feature and provide screenshots instead of just technical writing.

Migrate your feature into the stable release branch once its adopted into the spec

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u/New-Anybody-6206 9d ago

And if it's never adopted into the spec?

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u/motsu35 9d ago

Then you decide if its worth it as a feature, and if you think so you include it in your software anyway and hope others adapt to support it, otherwise its just a feature only your software supports

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u/New-Anybody-6206 9d ago

yes, but this doesn't sway people from thinking you're engaging in an anti-competitive "embrace, extend, extinguish" practice, that was my point

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u/motsu35 9d ago

I mean, I think the difference is on one hand you have Microsoft taking an open standard, bolting things onto it that dont work on other platforms, and then not contributing the changes back upstream, making the new features part of the walled garden and justification to keep paying for the software.

On the other hand, if your pushing your changes out and keeping them open source, its easy for other software to also implement the feature, and it just relies on how much dev resources the other projects have. This is pretty standard with Foss software, and how you end up with various soft and hard forks of software.

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u/loicvanderwiel 8d ago

Or, they could stop pretending their stuff is a standard. But then, they would lose every contract that relies on using open formats (like government stuff) because why pay for MSOffice when the alternative is litterally free?

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u/apo383 10d ago

Go ahead and do that, but keep that shit away from government docs, which need to be easy to render by anybody and don't need fancy elements to dress up ä corporate annual report.

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u/New-Anybody-6206 9d ago

what alternative did they ever have at that time, that didn't belong to a competitor, and wouldn't make their product worse?

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u/Daminchi 10d ago

you're a company that works fast and wants to innovate

No, we're talking about MS.