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. 
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Member since:2006-06-22
I don't understand you, or better the point you are trying to make if there is a point to be made. Are you an MS employee, in marketing dept. maybe? Because it would appear that you are familiar with customer's demands and their "change". When a state in US (Mass.) presents a demand to support an open document format does it not qualify as customers demand, or when a govt. of a country(Belg) asks the same...? These demands are not new. If I know about them for almost a year I suspect MS knew way earlier and yet they thought they can strong arm them. They couldn't!! Hence the title "...Bows to the pressure...". All that wasted time and nothing to show for it. The reason for most people looking at this change of heart with suspicion is due to MS track record as a very iresponsible leader of IT (MS spyware, security flawed OS, bugg ridden browser, non-compliance with court rulings, etc)
The one, and only, thing where MS truly shines at is using catch frases and adopting somebody elses inovations while modifying them in such a way that nobody else can use them.
Member since:2005-07-06
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.