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Python and Microsoft: Pandas Should Have Known OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Microsoft Excel Are Different and Competing Things

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Feb 15, 2025,
updated Feb 15, 2025

pandas

Related:

The above links remind us of Microsoft's influence from within Python. It keeps "sponsoring" (bribing) for Python events to push proprietary "drugs" like Azure and it also hired the creator, who then become "fixer" and promoter. That's just money talking.

As for Deb Nicholson, she proudly raised money from Microsoft for several years by selling Microsoft keynote slots in a conference about what Microsoft is attacking.

But today's focus isn't people but projects. That's because the last paragraph of this new article "misses Microsoft's 30+ years of software format monopolies," as an associate explained. It's a problem "that continues to this day as big data has become dependent on Python which has been captured by Microsoft to exclude interchange formats like ODF from modules like pandas."

For proof, note the name, though the tool can actually handle ODS too: [1, 2]

pandas.read_excel

pandas.ExcelWriter

Who decided to put Microsoft brands in the interfaces? That seems like a very dumb decision. They could instead say "spreadsheets" or something to that effect. To me it seems more or less the same as saying "just google it" (when referring to search, not Google specifically), "do a powerpoint presentation" (in university many people used to say that; many probably still do) and outside the realm of technology there's also "take aspirin", "kleenex", and "xerox" (as a verb).

Google had to take steps to prevent the brand "Google" becoming genericised and getting 'powerpoint' onto that Wikipedia page "would be a coup," the associate said, knowing that both Microsoft and Bill Gates bribe Wikipedia in exchange for bias [1, 2, 3]. "It is in practice already genericised," he said, "but the win would be to get Microsoft to admit that fact".

""Windows" and "SQL Server" and many others are, technically, ineligible for trademarks, but the law is never enforced in any jurisdiction."

It's "interesting how Microsoft violates these rules too; they are extra careful to avoid mentioning or even hinting at the generic terms, e.g. presentations graphics, word processor, or spread sheet."

Changing interfaces in pandas (Python) would cause problems and may break some applications (like the whole issue with supposedly "racist" words... that aren't). However, it's very bad that Python ended up participating in this coup; now we're meant to think that in order to open ODF files we need some functions with "Excel" in their name.

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