Microsoft is giving in to the unrelenting pressure to be more open, particularly with regard to its Office Open XML file format and interoperability with the Open Document Format alternative. The company will announce July 6 that it has set up an open-source project to create a series of tools that allow translation between the OpenXML format and the ODF format, and which will be developed with partners. The Open XML Translator project, as it is known, will be posted on SourceForge, the open-source software development Web site. 
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:2006-06-22
What's wrong with changing positions?
Fundamentally there is nothing wrong with changing positions, providing that it is sincere and not just for the sake of PR, desperately trying to prevent further erosion of customer base, and for the purpose of bying time. What makes me very doubtfull about this initiative is MS push to obtain ISO for "OpenXML". What benefit is there to having two standards? Look at metric and imperial standards, isn't the existance of the two just a source for confusion and costly mistakes(NASA)?. If ODF indeed presents some limitations why not join in and make it better for every one's benefit ... Instead MS chooses, like always, to break established practices (ie PATH in unix and windows) and re-invent the wheel albeit a crooked one but MS-wheel nonetheless
Member since:2005-07-06
Ok, what don't you understand here?
There wasn't a high customer demand originally, so they didn't want to do it.
There became more of a demand for it and they started to realize that more and more customers would be asking for it, so they decided to go ahead with it.
It's driven by customer demand and that's how it should be sometimes.
Member since:2005-11-11
//What benefit is there to having two standards? Look at metric and imperial standards, isn't the existance of the two just a source for confusion and costly mistakes(NASA)?.//
I don't find it a problem when there are two standards if institutions just choose the sensible one. In the case of metric and imperial, that is a no-brainer - just use metric throughout and consistently.
Similarly for office documents - again a no-brainer. Just use the one that carries the best guarantee of no lock-in to a single source supplier. Choose the most open and unencumebered one. Choose the one designed from the ground up for platform-independence.
Something tells me though that the US will choose the opposites. Their track record in no-brainer choices such as these so far is not good at all.
Edited 2006-07-08 08:30
Member since:
2005-07-06
What's wrong with changing positions?
"More and more of our customers have been asking for it, so we are going to make an effort to support it now."
What is wrong with that?
See, if they had started the project and worked on it themselves, people would make accusations of embrace/extend/extinguish, half-assed effort, etc.
So what's better than simply financially supporting an OPEN SOURCE project to do it?
I just can't understand how you're finding negative here. Again, it's open source. It's the BSD license. Anyone can take the code as it is now and continue developing it.
Christ.