Linked by Adam S on Wed 21st May 2008 19:28 UTC
According to BetaNews, Microsoft has announced that they will support OpenDocument (ODF) and PDF in Office 2007 SP2. This comes as a major victory not only for OpenOffice.org and its offshoots, but also for open source in general. Microsoft is planning on making Office 2007 SP2 available in the first half of 2009. 
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Member since:
2007-02-17
If Microsoft would finally be really playing fair in the Office place it would clearly hurt their sales. No one i know would still shovel 150€ towards Microsoft for their unsupported student version if they could get a really compatible Office suite for free.
Well maybe they really start playing fair this time, but after all those years lying, sabotaging, blackmailing, bribing, stealing and deceiving it would be naive simply to take their word now.
Pamela Jones at Groklaw:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080522012330406
... and also the ODF Alliance:
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/st...
"The ODF Alliance today greeted with scepticism Microsoft's announcement of its intention to include support for the OpenDocument Format in the first half of 2009."
... are similarly sceptical.
I sincerely hope that all that scepticism is unjustified.
Sigh!
As I said before: paradoxically if Microsoft were just to do a good honest implementation of ODF it would actually do more to stop open source adoption than fighting against open source would.
A good honest Microsoft Office implementation of ODF would mean that everybody wins ... probably even Microsoft themselves!