Re: LinuxWorld article –

“Yes, it’s correct and there is far more to come. We aren’t giving up on the goal of a truly open, universal, and interoperable set of rich document formats, although we have had it with trying to affect ODF development from inside OASIS. Sun managed to pretty much cripple ODF 1.2 in terms of interoperability not only with MS Office but also among ODF applications. We’re working to leave the big vendors in our dust and working toward community-developed standards. At this point we’re not committed either to forking ODF or to an entirely new set of formats. We think that’s for the community to decide once we get the story out on what’s been going on.”

I cannot say much more at this stage, but here is where Novell fits in:

“With Microsoft now driving enterprise free (as in beer) OOo enterprise users to the proprietary StarOffice and to Novell OOo on proprietary SLED, where all three companies profit, and with Sun, Novell, and Microsoft all taking active measures to prevent non-lossy round-tripping of documents, we have in effect declared a pox on all their houses, so to speak. We oppose both Ecma 376 and ODF 1.2 in the form we expect it to emerge from the TC. And the feature freeze for ODF 1.2 is scheduled for July 31. Once the features are frozen, we will have a sufficiently stable target to shoot at.”

There’s loads more, but I do not think it would be appropriate to share or discuss in public. From what I can gather, there are lies about Sun’s position, but that too is arguable/indecisive (they have been eerily quiet).

Let’s discuss this via E-mail.

Go ahead and air them. Transparency is our friend. We can even address them here.

I have some more information on this, but having spoken to some sources, it turns out that there are inaccuracies and contradictions in the arguments (at least the ones which I received via E-mail).

Does Mr McNaughten perceive we are supportive of OOXML? If so, that would be a mistaken conclusion.

We think neither OOXML nor ODF — now that Sun has thoroughly castrated ODF’s universal interoperability facets — are palatable to customers. We were the most ardent supporters of ODF since the beginning years of OpenOffice.org. We protest that ODF has gone in the wrong direction.

Readers are encouraged to read the LinuxWorld article carefully to see how ODF has been co-opted by Microsoft.