Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 19th Jun 2008 21:09 UTC, submitted by Rahul
The battle between the OpenDocument Format and Microsoft's Open Office XML was long, and here and there rather nasty, but it appears as if we finally have a winner. The company behind OOXML already conceded by announcing it would implement support for ODF in Office 2007 SP2, but now it has also said it quite literally: ODF has won.
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Member since:
2006-10-25
Exactly.
If they implement ODF, but slightly off spec or with *cough*mistakes*cough*, then you would have ODF and MSODF.
You won't see Microsoft concede to release their grip on your data. Only when a significant number (say 10 percent) actually care if they can open their archived documents easily in 10 years and/or without paying money for the latest (possibly only available) version of MS Office will real standard implementation be dominant in the market. Which will make the data inter-operable, increasing competition, which will be beneficial to everyone - except Microsoft.
That is exactly why Microsoft has not, and will not concede. They will eventually lose, but you will not see them give up. If they did they would likely be facing shareholders in court.
When what is best for a corporation is not best for society or best for the advancement of the market that that the corporation operates in - the corporation is bound by law to maximize profit, even if that means stymieing advancement, even to such extremes as using all their power to actively damage their current markets if they believe will result in larger quarterly earnings.
Edited 2008-06-19 22:06 UTC