Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft Continues to Snub ODF (and Why Microsoft is Losing This Battle)

Warriors of chess



Summary: Office 2010 Starter Edition said not to support ODF but it helps OpenOffice.org adoption; Microsoft ecosystem raises issues with ODF

THERE is a lot of good news for ODF this week but also developments that merit caution. This is a highly compressed post with links to these.



Rob Weir from IBM writes about an ODF spreadsheet for Android, which is called Androffice. It seems to be new at the scene and the word about this gets spread by Bob Sutor, Lynne Pope, Simon Phipps, Jomar Silva and a few others.

People are still being reminded that Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 does not support ODF properly [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] and Weir has a whole new post on the subject (this was pushed by his colleague at IBM, Bob Sutor).

[N]o amount of disclosure from Microsoft on how they interpret the ODF standard will help. We see that today, with Office 2007 SP2, where it strips out ODF spreadsheet formulas. Having official documentation of this fact from Microsoft, in the form of "Implementation Notes" is useless. Why? Because when I create an ODF document, I do not know who the reader will be. It may be a Microsoft Office user. But maybe it won't. It very well could be read by many users, using many different programs. I cannot adapt my document to the quirks of various ODF implementations.

When you deal with formats, interoperability is achieved by converging on a common interpretation of the format. Having well-documented, but divergent interpretations does not improve interoperability. Disclosure or quirks is insufficient. Interoperability only comes when all implementors converge in their interpretation of the format.


According to this message which links to an article from Maximum PC, Office 2010 Starter Edition will not support ODF. And regarding this ZDNet UK article about Office 2010 Starter Edition, Glyn Moody argues that Microsoft is "getting worried about OpenOffice, perhaps."

More here:

MS Office Starter Sports Ads, OpenOffice People Ecstatic



[...]

Works usually included more programs than just a word processor and a spreadsheet and usually did not include advertising. Giving users a glimpse of the Office 2010 experience may prompt them to buy the paid version for fuller functionality and no ads. But if I had to choose between a program that cost $150 or more and one that did less and flashed ads at me, I would look for a third option. One exists, of course: OpenOffice.


Very little was said by mainstream press sources about the fact that Microsoft essentially killed Works.

Going back to OpenDocument, the technical committee is organising today to discuss matters while the ODF Workshop's Jomar Silva uploads CONSEGI 2009 videos. The ODF Plugfest is coming up (old details in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 9 10, 11]) and Bart Hanssens speaks about the schedule while IBM folks watch from a distance.

“To counter the threat, the Microsoft ecosystem has been trying to injure ODF from the inside.”IBM may be very prominent in the ODF arena, but IBM, unlike Microsoft, does not attack Free software. It's also far from the only player in the ODF arena, unlike Microsoft with OOXML.

To counter the threat, the Microsoft ecosystem has been trying to injure ODF from the inside [1, 2]. The insidious behaviour continues as hAl, for example, adds hostility to the ODF entry at Wikipedia. As usual, he is making the article about ODF disparage ODF.

Other Microsoft cronies are getting close to ODF just to talk about problems with it. They are using the same Microsoft-esque party line of "they are equally evil" or "all platforms are not secure" to defend their hidden (but previously well documented) agenda. Weir needs to be nice to them because of threats.

Jesper Lund Stocholm, for example, is linking to old news and we find the the same talking point coming from Alex Brown [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22]. They were getting a chair inside ODF by pretending to be agnostic after they had done their services for Microsoft (they hope people will forget this).

To end with some more positive news, Officeshots turns out to support only ODF. Given that no office suite supports OOXML, why even bother with anything other than the international standard, ODF?

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

European Parliament and Council Directive on Privacy is Vanishing
"edited / censored some time more recently"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Slopwatch: The March of Slopfarms, From UbuntuPIT to Linux Journal and to Various Fake Sites Still Promoted by Google News
It's so worrying to see what the Web has become
Links 29/10/2025: CISA, Ukraine, and Amazon Problems
Links for the day
[Teaser] The EPO's Spokesperson, a Cocaine User, Fancies Young Women
How's that for "optics" in the EU and Europe's second-largest institution?
How Will António Campinos Respond to the EPO's 'Cocainegate'?
That's the same thing we saw and still see when the press deals with enablers and partners of Jeffrey Epstein
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part IV: There Cannot be Free Software Without Free Press and Free Information
One day, one can hope, more people will recognise that for Software Freedom we need free press and free thinkers
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part III: Principled Stance Is Never Cheap
Protecting the truth and insisting that the general public is made aware of things that really happened isn't cheap
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part II: Because Scarcity of Accurate Information Breeds Collective Ignorance
we too will strive to share information that's aggressively suppressed
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: More New Arrivals at Geminispace, xkcd on "Document Forgery"
Links for the day
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part I: Defence of the Truth
This year we make a very strong, firm statement for truth, even if that means explaining our work to the top media judge in the country
Links 28/10/2025: Meta and Fentanylware (CheeTok) Age-Restricted Down Under, "Britain Needs China’s Money"
Links for the day
Links 28/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Charter to Cut 1,200 Jobs
Links for the day
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part II: The Person Who Planted Paid-for Fake News for the European Patent Office (EPO) is a Cocaine User, Friend of António Campinos, Now on Record as Having Been Arrested
Background: High-level manager at the European Patent Office caught in public with cocaine, arrested
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 27, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 27, 2025
Google News Drowning in Slop (and Slopfarms That Hijack About Half the Results)
Google News seems to be drowning in this stuff
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: "How to Maximize Your Positive Impact" and ASCII Art and Artist Attribution
Links for the day
PETA and Activism
Being staff or volunteer in PETA isn't easy
Big Blue, Huge Debt
debt will soar again
Links 27/10/2025: Mass Surveillance Sold as "AI", People Reluctant to Lose Physical Media
Links for the day
Parties and Milestones Again
we've begun putting up about 40 balloons
Techrights' 19th Anniversary: Bronze
Time to go back to preparing for this anniversary
Our Latest European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Last Several Weeks, Will Ask the EPO Management and the European Union (EU) Very Difficult Questions
If nobody loses a job (or jobs) over this, then the EU basically became no better than Colombia or Nicaragua
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, Brian Fagioli, and Google News
We focus on stories that are fake or LLM slop that disguises itself as "news" about Linux
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood
Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say)
LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees
Against its most faithful enablers
19 Years, No Censorship
No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us
Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top
Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine
High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers
Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter
If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete