Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 19th Jun 2008 21:09 UTC, submitted by Rahul
The battle between the OpenDocument Format and Microsoft's Open Office XML was long, and here and there rather nasty, but it appears as if we finally have a winner. The company behind OOXML already conceded by announcing it would implement support for ODF in Office 2007 SP2, but now it has also said it quite literally: ODF has won.
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Member since:2006-01-16
You didn't get it. It's not about sabotaging ODF itself, it's about piggy-bagging Office into governments (or letting it stay would probably be more fitting) without really sacrificing the lock-in.
M.$ will provide some non-compliant ala-ODF format to it's office suite and that'll be enough for the government ****-heads to give it the stamp.
It's not about ODF itself.
Member since:2007-02-17
You didn't get it. It's not about sabotaging ODF itself, it's about piggy-bagging Office into governments (or letting it stay would probably be more fitting) without really sacrificing the lock-in.
M.$ will provide some non-compliant ala-ODF format to it's office suite and that'll be enough for the government ****-heads to give it the stamp.
It's not about ODF itself.
M.$ will provide some non-compliant ala-ODF format to it's office suite and that'll be enough for the government ****-heads to give it the stamp.
It's not about ODF itself.
You didn't get it.
It would actually be easier, probably far more effective, and cause far less trouble anti-trust-wise, and in the end serve exactly the same purpose, for Microsoft to make a compliant ODF format.
How would that hurt them?
Microsoft -> non-compliant ODF ... governments can still mandate a standards-compliant ODF product be purchased.
Microsoft -> compliant ODF ... cuts off the commercial air-supply of competing open Office suites for businesses ... there is suddenly no compelling reason for governments to get OpenOffice and Microsoft can resume making rumbles in the background about "open source software violates our patents" (but never actually showing where) without risking further trouble and fines with anti-trust committees any more.
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Member since:
2007-02-17
Sorry, but no.
Microsoft's opportunity to scuttle ODF was to join in the OASIS committee right at the start when they were invited to. The could have then sabotaged any harmony of purpose right from the start, and made their own implementation concurrently with others (such as OpenOffice and KOffice) ... and made their implementation in such a way as to exploit any ambiguities and make sure that interoperability did not work.
Then Microsoft could have simply abandoned the format, or let it stagnate ... citing as a reason that the format did not work when it came to interoperability and it was not as powerful as OOXML anyway.
Microsoft's problem right now is that, despite their saying that ODF is not capable enough to be an Office file format, they are very short of being able to cite features which it does not support. If Microsoft now try to claim that ODF does not support interoperability ... there are a number of Office suites including OpenOffice and KOffice that give the lie to that claim too.
Any attempt extend & extinguish (they have done the embrace now) of ODF will be easily seen as sabotage.
ODF is shown to be an open, freely implementable, interoperable and capable format. Despite constantly trying, Microsoft have not been able to stop it so far, and I think their chance to do so has passed.
I think Microsoft might have painted themselves into a corner, and they could well be left with no choice but to implement ODF properly.
Edited 2008-06-20 10:12 UTC