[conspire] (forw) unexpected computer changes from .docx and ...

[Rick Moen]

Bruce is a regular & longtime CABAL person, but keeps sending stuff
offlist:  I don't know why.  This mailing originally included two .ods
OpenDocument spreadsheets, omitted for this forward.

.docx and its sister so-called Office Open XML (OOXML) formats from
Microsoft occasion predictable discontent.  OOXML was/is yet another
Microsoft bait and switch, sort of:  The prior .doc/.xls (etc.) binary
formats were notoriously terrible and prone to self-corruption, and MSFT
was under pressure from OpenDocument aka ODF (the _real_ open formats)
invented by the ex-Sun OpenOffice.org office suite and today best
represented by LibreOffice.

So, MSFT responded between 2000 and 2005 by inventing a
confusingly-similarly named set of office-suite formats (the OOXML
formats) built out of compressed XML -- and implied that it's "open" and
fully documented for public view.  Which it isn't.  A _subset_ of OOXML
is publicly documented in literally thousands of pages, but the full
spec is proprietary and viewable only under NDA, to see the secret
sauce.

Genuine open-source projects like LibreOffice cannot work (well, at
least cannot release) under NDA.  So, they do their best to
reverse-engineer the secret-sauce bits without insider proprietary
knowledge. 

Who _can_ pay MSFT to view insider proprietary knowledge under NDA?
Fellow proprietary software firms can.

But, surprise twist!  Ascensio System SIA's Only Office (styled
"ONLYOFFICE" by them, but screw that) turns out to be, indeed, genuine
open source under Affero GPL v. 3.  So, they apparently have some very
talented people working on reverse-engineering OOXML without NDA.  (Or
maybe not?  Hold that thought.)


Ascensio's choice of licence makes commercial sense, in that it protects
them from the "ASP loophole" and other similar ways to game copyleft,
but sadly this means LibreOffice cannot share their code, as LibreOffice
is licensed under MPL v2 and GNU LGPL v3+.

Ascensio System SIA is a Russian firm, albeit lately headquartered in
Riga, Latvia.  I am cautious about code out of the Russian Federation.

_Anyway_, second surprise twist:  I gather the code you install to run
Only Office Desktop is _not_ a stand-alone application:  I gather it
relies on "Software as a Service" operation relying on connection to
Ascensio's servers.  Is the server-end code available as open source?
I'm betting heavily on "nope".  And _that_ would be where they keep
their secret sauce.  Review implies the above.
https://itsfoss.com/review-onlyoffice-desktop-editors-linux/

The Linux version of Only Office Desktop (the client piece) is available
only as Flatpacks, Snaps, or AppImages.


For me, Flatpacks, Snaps, and AppImages are all huge turnoffs, all of
them IMO being efforts to reinvent .exe or Docker badly, and _very_
undesirable instead of a real distro package using distro shared libs.
Distros pushing them including *buntu and Linux Mint are doing a
disservice to their users, and IMO should bite the bullet and maintain
actual packages rather than oursourcing the effort to distro-generic
"snaps" and such.  It's an even worse idea than outsourcing to poorly
policed PPA repos, and that was bad enough.  (Again, *buntu and such.)

And, by the way, that talk about "sandboxing" is nonsense.  There isn't
meaningful security isolation, any more than there is from Docker
containers.

All of this, to me, is nope, nope, nope:  No SaaS, no Russian code, no 
Docker-wannabe packaging.  Tusen takk, men nei.  Caveat emptor.


----- Forwarded message from Bruce Coston <jane_ikari at gmx.com> -----

Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2023 03:04:17 +0200
From: Bruce Coston <jane_ikari at gmx.com>
To: [RM: to me and 17 other individuals]
Subject: unexpected computer changes from .docx and ...

   Some of you will want to dump this email relatively fast so these 2
   attached pages don't clog your inbox capacity . Most of these changes
   stem from trying to accomodate a .docx file for a 2nd ed. ad&d game .
   Libre Office didn't handle that one at all well . Other .docx were fine
   or ok. but not this one . So I got a document revision and could have
   stopped . Some people not in the game may like having the stuff list
   for other games [ Stuff ##.# on your sheet means you got everything in
   that column above named item at that sum , inclusive . [ this version
   should not have the guard goose . Weirdly , I only ever seem to use the
   pure cheapest 1st item column over the other column where I carefully
   picked exactly what my character should buy 1st . ] ] I only expect
   people in the game to care about my current colorful character sheet .
   While I don't think .docx people should feel entitled to keep acting
   that way , I researched the problem .
   Libre Office doesn't seem to care that it's ~worst among free office
   suites at accomodating .docx  [ It has basically won the libre software
   world ] .  That x probably means it's .xhtml based ; where that x means
   extensible [ thus potentially any and every crazy proprietary thing ] .
   So microsoft has warned us that it's made those saved file sizes
   suspiciously small , by means likely to need harder reverse engineering
   [ ; than the hopefully consistent saved program state called .doc "
   file format " ? Thus many desperately prefer .rtf files . Although some
   enjoyed calling their linux friends .  ] .

   Only Office looks the best but Synaptic doesn't find it in my extended
   debian repositories . But the' Only' site says Mint has it . So I click
   on [ how to install Linux Mint ] [ that's actually not helpful ] .
   Remembering my epic journey restoring Trinity Desktop Environment after
   a major Mint Upgrade , [ Mint should not have excluded that but it's
   xfce desktop = shockingly good ] I check the annoying nany-stae Mint
   tool/s .
   [ While I had made Mint my main distro. for it's online websettings , I
   had since chosen lighter fare that left me to do more work as my cheap
   boxes [ $99 on ebay for a genuine Toshiba Laptop with 4 whole G. of
   RAM.  - WOOT ! ] don't like heavier OS.'s . But power sags finished off
   killing  my main box and my ebay vendor kindly stuffed xfce Mint on it
   , adding TDE. went well [ except adding more than "kworldclock --dump
   --size %xx%y -o %f" to redraw desktop background every 5*4 minutes . ]
   and that box eventually dies . So I ebay this box , fail badly at UEFI.
   [ toxic crypto misdeeds ] installing a wholly superior distro. setup
   and transfer this HD. into this box . ] I investigate . It's a modular
   Flatpack . I could mess with my ppa. repositories and the crypto hell
   of signing packages or ; No I won't just press the button . Unless I
   know about updates . Debian people like sound policies more than
   modularity , in combination these can work well . The nanystate Mint
   Tool about maintenance lets me get Flatpack Updates automatically and I
   also let it do some cleanup jobs while visiting it . Flatpacks are
   ~better than Snaps and Appimage , as they run fast due to the small
   overhead of their safety sandboxing . I'd like good sandboxing on my
   strange new application so I pressed the button to get the nannystate
   to install the ''Only' editor/s' and started writing this . It;s
   downloading 1.1 G. more to support Only Office which will take >3x more
   extra  storage for my first Flatpack . I often use a nifty <400 MB.
   distro [ porteus version from ikki boot tools ] so my install just made
   me a heavyweight and editing all the different types of documents from
   the one application may not help . And I launched it from a 'Lauch'
   button on the sub window from nanystate Mint installer [ next to a
   uninstall button ] , as I don't find it in main menu unless it's the
   red tag with "Library" written on it .
   Only Office took it's time coming up  , even after I told it to grab
   the 0 level spells document instead of the big ~'make a local
   onlyoffice cloud' button . Ok. for a 1st use . I need it on the main
   menu with reboot or I'm very disappointed .

   Mint is taking good care of me but the next time it interrupts with
   Timeshift marking a new restore point , I'm using top to find it's
   processnumber and making it's priority lowest / harmless with
   changetaskpri .
   I will also drag my power converter to game now to use Kaisen and it's
   beautiful Libre Office 7.4.1 implementation to do upkeep . Versus
   Gnumeric from porteus distro. <400MB. butchering my character's
   colorsheet .

     --  Best Wishes  --  Bruce


   PS.
   I will also consider GECKO L. light enough having booted it from a big
   Ventoy and it works well . Now to solve my '2TB. usb.' problems , one
   of them doesn't get seen by my boxes anymore [ wow I hate 'free windows
   tools' ] . I'm turning a 2TB. usb. into big Ventoy with the token
   Windows10 laptop . I might not get character sheet printed in time .




----- End forwarded message -----