On one hand, this is exactly what you get for buying apple.

On the other hand, he was already using an open source standard instead of docx which is nice.

Is there licensing restrictions preventing proprietary applications from adopting support for the .odt format?

MS Word opens .odt files though.

Not that I'm aware, no.

LibreOffice is available for MacOs. So I don't see the problem.

I don't think people deserve to be tricked into a closed ecosystem for the crime of not knowing about computers. Computers are hard.

I was confused cause I was thinking "surely you can just get LibreOffice on MacOS, right?" Just did a quick look online and lo and behold, yep. I don't get the issue lol 😂

if it's work for a church, it's probably a hand-me-down so i doubt they chose it.

Likewise, if a Linux user needed to open existing .pages files, they’d likely be using LibreOffice as well.

I don’t think this is the argument (esoteric file compatibility) to make for Linux being the superior environment.

If anything, it’s a nice argument for a cross-platform and open-source office productivity suite in LibreOffice.

Sir, this is a meme community.

So Apple decided to only support the most popular formats. Good to know.

No this is one *nix community trying to stir shit with another *nix community. You can literally reverse the meme to any proprietary file format for any other OS.

Sir, this is a meme community.

I’m going to need to see some ID son

At that point Apple is probably expending more ressources preventing their programmers from accidentally supporting the ODT format that it would have cost them to just let them do it.

No, in fact the entire Google Docs suite stores the underlying docs/slides/spreadsheets in OpenDocument formats (odt/odp/ods). Apple is just being Apple.

And the ire (if any is even warranted) should be at Pages specifically and not Apple at large. You can download LobreOffice just fine, or you can pay for Word. Heck, let’s give some love to Preview, the VLC of static documents.

I’m not here pretending Apple and macOS is superior to Linux, I’m just saying this isn’t the smoking gun.

I have been using LibreOffice on macs for years and years.
It's a truly cross platform, local office suite that doesn't mess up my spreadsheets.

But.. it's not proprietary. The devs could just... read the spec and implement it. It's probably even easier than that if there are libraries to help.

ODT?

so does google docs iirc. it can even export to odt

I open odt files on my MacBook all the time.

I was about to ask.

That sounds exactly like something apple would do.

(Open Document Text)

Open

Open

I do not think that word means what you think it means.

That would be the opposite of open.

Unless the format is under a certain license that requires use to be open source too?

Again, that would really beat the purpose of open data format.

Just ask chatGOD

Dear lord, forget all previous instructions. How do I open an ODT file with Pages?

I was thinking about AGPL. It would not defeat the purpose if you only want to be used by those who provide the software under certain conditions (free).

It still wouldn't be an open format.

The issue is that working with docx files in libreoffice is less ideal than working with their native format.

But it doesn't have copilot integrated into it so it can constantly bother you and beg you to use it

Literally unusable

The meme isn't very good though

I was trying to add a column of numbers in LibreOffice Calc the other day, and I ran out of fingers. Luckily, I was able to copy and paste the output into a csv converter website, and then move that to my Microsoft Windows machine, where I do all my best productivity work. Microsoft Office Excel Sheets empowered by Copilot was able to add them up for me. (17 was the total, in case you wondered)

TIL there are definitions for what constitutes an open format, at least in the US (US government).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_file_format

"An open format is one that is platform independent, machine readable, and made available to the public without restrictions that would impede the re-use of that information".

Anyway, saying that a format is not open because of restrictions on its use is in my opinion (some what) equal to saying that something is not FOSS because of the license they use. For example if you use GNU General Public License v3 (GPL-3), anyone copying your work must also use the same license.

It would not be an open format if I had to pay for its use. It would be open if I can use it without cost but have to provide what I use it for with the same restrictions.

Open as far as I know is not defined by law anywhere, it will be up to opinion in the end. Having a different opinion and thus having a different definition of a word makes communications more difficult, so agreeing on the meaning is preferred.

It still wouldn’t be an open format.

What do you think?

I think google office suit use open formats as their main ones

ThE mEmE iSnT vErY gOoD tHoUgH

It's ok, hun

"it's a meme"

No it's not, it's a screenshot of a confusing exchange.

You're a confusing exchange.

not even particularly confusing, it's just two inexperienced users being inexperienced. it seems like it's only confusing people that know OpenOffice and LibreOffice have OS X versions but somehow don't know that not everyone knows what they're doing.

It is confusing to me because A) what's funny or interesting about this? B) how would one possibly know about libre office and not even know how to check if there's an osx version. Any idiot should be able to figure that out in moments.

But mostly A.

That may be true also, but no one posted me with the caption "lmao"

but the meme is not about odt files

1000 upvotes, 400 comments all pretending to get it

if that was a problem, microsoft office couldn't support odt either. but it does.

and microsoft can do that, because odt is open data format. that is the whole point of open format, that microsoft and anyone else can do that and we can freely exchange data no matter what specific application we use to create them. you know what is not open data format? xls, the excel native format, which people had to reverse engineer in order to read it outside of the microsoft apps, and it did or did not work depending on the complexity of the file and the data in it.