One worrisome aspect of Novell's relationship with Microsoft is support for OOXML, which achieves nothing that benefits Novell (it's an impossible mission), yet plenty that brings benefit to Microsoft (e.g. pseudo industry support). Rob Weir is now telling us that, not only is OOXML incompatible with other office suites, but it is also incomptatible with itself (urging people to 'upgrade', lacking proper backward compatibility). As a result, it gets rejected by some high-tier publishers. See and judge this analysis for yourselves:

It appears that Science, the journal of the America Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), itself the largest scientific society in the world, has updated its authoring guidelines to include advice for Office 2007 users. The news is not good.

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Uh oh. Not only cannot you not submit files in OOXML format, but you can't even use Office 2007 and save in the old binary formats. The choice to invent a new "Open Math Markup Language" rather then use the well-established existing standard, MathML, appears to be a serious flaw.

Of course, this type of 'flaw' (whether deliberate or not) is also going to affect compatibility and interoperability that involves non-Microsoft office suites. In the mean time, all one can do is reject OOXML as a matter of principle and also advise people not to use Office 2007.

Over the weekend, ComputerWorld covered Microsoft's crusade against OpenDocument format in the US government. It's ironic and absurd because only OpenDocument enables free access to government documents.

In a resounding victory for Microsoft Corp., bills seeking to mandate the use of open document formats by government agencies have been defeated in five states, and only a much-watered-down version of such legislation was signed into law in a sixth state.

How much lobbying can one accept? Political manipulation and punishment have gone quite far.