Linked by Adam S on Wed 21st May 2008 19:28 UTC
According to BetaNews, Microsoft has announced that they will support OpenDocument (ODF) and PDF in Office 2007 SP2. This comes as a major victory not only for OpenOffice.org and its offshoots, but also for open source in general. Microsoft is planning on making Office 2007 SP2 available in the first half of 2009. 
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Member since:2006-05-29
That doesn't say much. Microsoft was also a member of the OpenGL standards board, that didn't stop them from the unholy things they did to OpenGL in Vista.
If Microsoft would finally be really playing fair in the Office place it would clearly hurt their sales. No one i know would still shovel 150€ towards Microsoft for their unsupported student version if they could get a really compatible Office suite for free.
Well maybe they really start playing fair this time, but after all those years lying, sabotaging, blackmailing, bribing, stealing and deceiving it would be naive simply to take their word now.
Member since:2007-02-17
That doesn't say much. Microsoft was also a member of the OpenGL standards board, that didn't stop them from the unholy things they did to OpenGL in Vista.
If Microsoft would finally be really playing fair in the Office place it would clearly hurt their sales. No one i know would still shovel 150€ towards Microsoft for their unsupported student version if they could get a really compatible Office suite for free.
Well maybe they really start playing fair this time, but after all those years lying, sabotaging, blackmailing, bribing, stealing and deceiving it would be naive simply to take their word now.
If Microsoft would finally be really playing fair in the Office place it would clearly hurt their sales. No one i know would still shovel 150€ towards Microsoft for their unsupported student version if they could get a really compatible Office suite for free.
Well maybe they really start playing fair this time, but after all those years lying, sabotaging, blackmailing, bribing, stealing and deceiving it would be naive simply to take their word now.
Pamela Jones at Groklaw:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080522012330406
... and also the ODF Alliance:
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/st...
"The ODF Alliance today greeted with scepticism Microsoft's announcement of its intention to include support for the OpenDocument Format in the first half of 2009."
... are similarly sceptical.
I sincerely hope that all that scepticism is unjustified.
Sigh!
As I said before: paradoxically if Microsoft were just to do a good honest implementation of ODF it would actually do more to stop open source adoption than fighting against open source would.
A good honest Microsoft Office implementation of ODF would mean that everybody wins ... probably even Microsoft themselves!
RE[4]: Comment by Kroc
by PlatformAgnostic on Mon 26th May 2008 09:36
in reply to "RE[3]: Comment by Kroc"
Member since:2006-01-02
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2007-02-17
Microsoft have announced that they are joining the OASIS committee that designs ODF.
http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/may08/05-21ExpandedFo...
"Consistent with its interoperability principles, in which the company committed to work with others toward robust, consistent and interoperable implementations across a broad range of widely deployed products, the company has also announced it will be an active participant in the future evolution of ODF, Open XML, XPS and PDF standards.
Microsoft will join the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) technical committee working on the next version of ODF and will take part in the ISO/IEC working group being formed to work on ODF maintenance. Microsoft employees will also take part in the ISO/IEC working group that is being formed to maintain Open XML and the ISO/IEC working group that is being formed to improve interoperability between these and other ISO/IEC-recognized document formats. The company will also be an active participant in the ongoing standardization and maintenance activities for XPS and PDF. It will also continue to work with the IT community to promote interoperability between document file formats, including Open XML and ODF, as well as Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY XML), the foundation of the globally accepted DAISY standard for reading and publishing navigable multimedia content."
That never happened with Java ... Sun had control.
If Microsoft want to participate in OpenDocument development ... great! Fantastic! It means that everybody will be able to implement whatever goes into the format.
This was actually what was intended for OpenDocument from day 1 ... Microsoft were invited to participate, but refused to do so.