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Let's try to focus on the issue at hand, rather than muddy the waters with talk of web browsers and other irrelevant stuff.
The OpenXml spec is open, it's freely available, you can download it, and it contains a covenant not to sue. The only people who are upset with these terms are those who want to co-opt its IP; namely, OSS devs who want to reimplement it under a different name and find that they can't do that.
It is still dependent on a single vendor. Understanding other people concern, Microsoft cannot keep their own promise. We are talking about an open format which has nothing to do with OSS developers because it is about datas. It is really clear Open XML is an example that Microsoft does not want to compete on equal field with other products using Open Document Format.





Member since:
2005-07-06
Easy: look at web browsers and tell me that Microsoft care about specification.
And makes no mistake what truly matter is users interoperability, not specification compliance: if OOo is 100% compliant but MSOffice is not, users will complain that OOo is not compatible with MSOffice..
Also Microsoft could play again the upgrade treadmill changing (extending) the format specification, ensuring that OOo still be incompatible.
Microsoft has a really poor history of interoperability: embrace and extinguish.
Edited 2006-12-05 06:24