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Perhaps the most significant news this week in the battle between OOXML and ODF was Micorosoft's decision to escalate the air wars by sending IBM an open letter "valentine" yesterday, posted at the Microsoft Interoperability Web page.
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In that letter, Microsoft summarizes its position on the importance of the specification, it's passive role in the adoption by ISO/IEC of ODF, and most forcefully, it's contention that IBM is waging a global, hypocritical campaign to thwart the approval of OOXML in JTC 1.
The action is hardly surprising, and perhaps even overdue. OOXML's first few weeks in the ISO process have not gone as well as Microsoft would have hoped, with many national bodies filing responses during the initial one-month contradictions period. Microsoft has taken the position that many of these comments will prove to be neutral (or even laudatory), rather than overwhelmingly negative, but in the not-too distant future the comments themselves will become public. If in fact the comments received by JTC1 are largely negative, as I have been led to believe, Microsoft will need to revert to a Plan B, such as a conspiracy theory by ODF-compliant vendors "to limit customer choice," which is exactly what is laid out here. Full Story |
