Embrace, Cripple and Extinguish

Back to the lost cause of document interoperability (I just love lost causes): as you may or may not remember1, back in 2008 – almost exactly 1 year ago, after the OOXML fiasco – I wrote a tirade about how Microsoft can attack the (really) open OpenDocument Format by botching their implementation of it in MS-Office 2007 SP2.

Well, guess what – they did botch that and while Rob Weir takes a Hanlon’s razor view on this, I can only say: “Told you“.

But if anyone thought that this is the extent of Microsoft’s effort on this issue, they are sorely mistaken.

Here is how Microsoft addresses complaints about interoperability problems between their product and other vendors products’:

Well, nothing new here, move along now, move along.

For some anti-FUD data, check out Groklaw. In the mean time, if you want to get your MS-Office (2003 or 2007) to work with ODF documents properly, try the Sun (now Oracle) ODF plugin for Microsoft Office.

  1. probably not as no one commented on the original article []

Leave a Reply