Oracle's ODF Plug-in Pricing: What's up with That?

So like many others, I expect, I’m trying to get my brain around Oracle’s reasoning in deciding to charge $90 for a formerly free ODF conversion plug-in developed by Sun Microsystems. That downloadable plug-in was intended for Microsoft Office users who wanted to import ODF-compliant documents created, most obviously, by users of the free, open source OpenOffice.org (OOo) version, or of Sun’s StarOffice, the for-sale, supported productivity suite based on the free OOo code.

Moreover, it’s not just $90 you’ll need to fork over – the plug-in is only available in packages of 100.

For me, this raises three important questions:

1. What is Oracle trying to accomplish?

2. Is it likely to work?

3. Given that Oracle controls OpenOffice.org, developer of the most widely used desktop direct implementation of ODF, what does this indicate for the future of that software?

Here’s my best take on answering those questions, but first here’s some back story on how the plug-in came to be created to begin with, and why it was so important.

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