08.21.10

Microsoft Decides to Embrace and Extend ‘Plugfest’

Posted in Deception, Formats, Marketing, Microsoft, Office Suites, Open XML, OpenDocument at 8:31 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: Microsoft describes its proprietary, binary-only formats in the context of a “plugfest” — a term implicitly reserved for ODF events

THE TERM “plugfest” — at least when it comes to document formats — has a connotation to do with ODF. Last year we showed how those plugfests got ‘infiltrated’ (Microsoft’s term [PDF]) by Microsoft employees and partners, who sought to change the agenda there [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13].

One of the vicious campaigners against ODF, Microsoft’s Mahugh, is now co-opting the term “plugfest” by using it to describe discussion about Microsoft’s proprietary document formats.

Former Open XML evangelist Doug Mahugh announces a “Binary Format Plugfest” for October 18/19

We have given many similar examples where Microsoft hijacks words to paint OOXML, for example, as something “open”, which also sounds a little like “Open Office”. These are not coincidences; these are merciless marketing tricks. █

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