Douglas Otis <dotis at mail dash abuse dot org> wrote:
The concern is about the application accepting document instructions > and text and then generating document output. When this application > is proprietary, it is prone to change where remedies might become > expensive or impossible.
The implication is that open-source software is inherently stable and commercial software is inherently unstable. That's hardly a safe across-the-board assumption.
The evolution in hardware tends to force the use of different > operating systems which may no longer support older applications.
"Tends to," "may." Sounds like FUD to me. I haven't had any trouble using Word 2003 under XP to read documents I created in Word 95 thirteen years ago.
IIRC, I did work back in the early 90's that contained Russian written > using Word 5. Conversion proved difficult since proprietary fonts > were needed. Document recovery then required a fair amount of work to > rediscover the structure and character mapping. Trying to get any > version of Word to generate plain text outputs consistently always > seemed to be a PITA, that varied from version to version, and never > seemed worth the effort.
All work involving Cyrillic text was hit-and-miss fifteen years ago. Every word processor or other application had its own custom format. Many used KOI8-R, some used CP866 (or worse, CP855), a few used ISO 8859-5. PDF files depended entirely on the embedded font to convey meaning; copy-and-paste from PDF was useless. Compatibility problems in the era before widespread Unicode adoption were hardly limited to Word.
When people are required to input Word Document "instructions" into > their Word application, they might become exposed to system security > issues as well.
"Might be." More FUD over security. Has anyone suggested *requiring* users to employ mail-merge-type macros as part of I-D preparation, or is this just a general flame against Word?
The variability of the Word data structures makes identifying security > threats fairly difficult, where many "missing" features seem to be an > intended imposition as a means to necessitate use of the vendor's > macro language.
Translation: I don't like Microsoft.
Inherent security issues alone should disqualify use of proprietary > applications.
Hey, maybe if I say the word "security" enough times, people will get scared and not use Word any more!
It would be sending the wrong message to mandate the use of > proprietary operating systems or applications in order to participate > in IETF efforts.
Who ever proposed to *mandate* the use of Windows or Word to write an I-D or otherwise participate in IETF efforts? The proposal was to ALLOW users to prepare I-Ds using Word, and translate the output of Word into a format the IETF tools and RFC Editor can deal with. Nobody ever said anything about *mandating* any of these tools.
After all, lax security often found within proprietary operating > systems and applications threatens the Internet.
Pure and complete FUD, despite the real macro threats of a few years back. The Internet will not fall apart if someone uses Word, feeds the output into a Word2RFC tool, and submits that output to IETF.
Open source includes more than just Linux, and the exposure of > requiring proprietary applications or operating systems would affect > nearly all IETF participants that maintain existing documents or > generating new ones.
Nobody, but nobody, has proposed requiring Word or Windows for IETF use. --Doug Ewell * Thornton, Colorado, USA * RFC 4645 * UTN #14http://www.ewellic.orghttp://www1.ietf.org/html.charters/ltru-charter.htmlhttp://www.alvestrand.no/mailman/listinfo/ietf-languages ˆ _______________________________________________Ietf mailing listIetf@xxxxxxxxxxxxx://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf