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Sorry, but I think you didn't get the point.

Nobody's saying that IBM is doing right. IBM is irrelevant here (at least for me and many others).

What amazes most of us is that *Microsoft* is now childishly complaining about *others* (IBM in this case) not wanting to have healthy competition and open standards so that users (governments, corps., etc...) can have a choice.

Have you ever heard about the .doc format??? Do you know how many millions of copies they have sold just because users were forced to buy it to be fully compatible with this "de facto" standard? Do you know that the format had to be reversed engineered to be able to read it in other programs (OOo) because it was a closed format and MS didn't open it up?

Now users (governments, etc...) have finally turned back on MS and it's .doc format, and now MS complains about *others* not respecting open standards and not allowing competition and freedom for users.

Come on !

Um, reversing formats has been the norm since word processing applications were around. How do you think Microsoft implemented WP support, or other formats which existed before Word? They sure as heck didn't whine about it or buy the specs from their competitors. They reverse-engineered them.

I'm not sure what the internal format of the DOC format actually is like, but I'd bet that it's an OLE structured-storage document with nodes representing Word's internal memory layout of the document, that is based on piece-tables of text with compatible formatting. It's probably not pretty, and it's likely not easy to render it outside of its native home, but whose fault is that and why should it have been Microsoft's responsibility to release a file format that works with applications other than its own??

I really don't understand why it's a crime to own a 'de facto' standard on office documents. And it is certainly not a crime to have a suite with more features than your competitors. Sure, it's hard to implement a fully-compatible system that'll open Word documents, but why should Microsoft do their competitors' work for them??

IBM Shill and Astroturfer? I don't think so.

Point 1&2: IBM was the only ECMA committee member voting against the initial ratification. But MS didn't vote against ODF.
Counter: MS had months to include any product-specific requirements to save Office documents in ODF, but never bothered. On the other hand, most ECMA members don't sell software at all (Apple, IBM, and MS being obvious exceptions). Why would GE bother to read through the document, much less object? ECMA is in place solely to push through standards as quickly and efficiently as possible, not to critique or fix them. Apple has no dog in this hunt, IBM does.

Point 3: IBM lobbied governments for exclusive use of ODF while MS is not mandating any exclusive format.
Counter: IBM is not the sole organization requesting sanity in archiving government documents and files. This is requested internally and externally on a cyclic basis, usually when MS finally turns out a new product and forces upgrades throughout the industry due to incompatibilities. Underdogs always want a standard they can build to. As pointed out elsewhere, OOXML is a standard only Microsoft has the resources to build to because they own it in totality.

Point 4: "You guys hate Microsoft"
Counter: I work with their products constantly, far more often than any other vendor's wares. 'Hate' isn't part of the equation. More like 'Frustration', 'Experience', and 'History'. Every MS standard for the past 20 years has existed to break other guys products. The Win32 API (redone repeatedly until finally IBM quit trying to replicate it), J# (Nobody else felt a need to make an incompatible Java), and now OOXML... Why would we expect different behavior now?

Point 5: "IBM is advocating restriction of choice"
Counter: That is an extremely loaded statement. ANY standard restricts choice. Yes, I choose international measures instead of creating a measuring system based on the length of my femur. We choose to use a standard for predictability and re-use. OOXML lacks either attribute. It bases behavior on undocumented programs and is not currently implemented by any program in wide use.

Point 6: "Let users...etc use whichever standard they choose based on the merits"
Counter: What is advocated here is not choice based on merits, but choice based on application usability. Unfortunately, with out an interoperable standard all organizations are locked into a single vendor, the 'most common' one. Gee.. Who might that be?

Point 7: "Microsoft isn't afraid" "IBM .. afraid of competing"
Counter: Microsoft _is_ afraid. They have successfully avoided having to interoperate with other vendors for years. They have such dominance that other vendors have difficulty even attaining a foothold. If IBM had no wish to compete, by the logic here, they should create the 'IBM Office' standard and push for that! Why bother being compatible with a dozen other vendor's products through the limited standard like ODF? IBM is not the only person pushing for a better choice, I want one too.

A final note: I am not paid by IBM in any way shape or form for the work I do. I base my livelihood on the use of MS products, using them every day.

IBM is also lobbying governments to mandate *exclusive* use of ODF, while Microsoft is not mandating *exclusive* use of any particular format.

Sorry, but the Microsoft XML it is only implemented in one product that have been available in the market for only a few weeks. as such that product currently have a very low market share. It also have very specific demands of operating environment in the form of quite new OS and hardware. It has not yet become an ISO standard (and 20 out of 66 principal standards bodies have already filed contradictions). When/if it becomes a standard it is highly unlikely that this standard will be fully implemented by multiple vendors due to the fact that the standard refers to the behavior of closed not openly documented Microsoft products.

Compare that to ODF that have been around for a while, and even reached ISO standard status. It is allready implemented by multiple vendors, there are even one open source implementation (important for long term document recoverability).

If you had a consulting company and had to recommend a product to your customers, would you recommend the product that already was an ISO standard, that had the least risk of vendor lock in, that already had been widely tested or something nonstandard completely new?
Naturally, just like IBM, you would have recommended the existing standard.

From your customers point of view this is also the answer that seams to make most sense. It's business 101 to if possible avoid having only one supplier for mission critical equipment.

Besides, Microsoft was part of OASIS back when ODF was developed. If they felt that ODF needed improvments to support some feature in MS-Office they could have worked with the ODF people to have it included. they didn't. Instead they remained silent and created their own noninteroperable file format. Not exactly a sign of good faith.

Microsoft was one of the members of the ISO committee that ratified ODF, and Microsoft raised NO objections to ODF becoming an ISO standard.

Do you have any resources on that?

I always thought only national standards bodies were voting members at ISO, or is Microsoft and ANSI already the same?