Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft Says It Has Lost the Battle for Documents Lock-in

"Microsoft sees what's coming. Things like Word and Excel sort of like a drug now getting ready to go generic."

--Market Watch



The previous post served as a timely reminder of Microsoft's nasty battles against ODF. The company thought it could escape law enforcement. We previously wrote about the absurdity of failure to reach justice given insufficient money. Unacceptable conduct is all pretty well documented, but strong verification might be required by the courts.



To defend an aging cash cow, Microsoft relies on vast expenditures and the poverty of opposition that sees and understands the sheer abuse. Those who say that ODF advocates are overly obsessed with OOXML are simply using this as an excuse and method of diverting attention away from this abuse. But now comes some fairly major news.

Whether this was a slip of the tongue of something more official, ladies and gents will be pleased to know that Microsoft has just admitted that "ODF has clearly won." Yes, that's an exact quote. Found here in OS News, it is summarised thusly:

The battle between the OpenDocument Format and Microsoft's Open Office XML was long, and here and there rather nasty, but it appears as if we finally have a winner. The company behind OOXML already conceded by announcing it would implement support for ODF in Office 2007 SP2, but now it has also said it quite literally: ODF has won.


Here is the key paragraph from the article that's being cited.

"ODF has clearly won," said Stuart McKee, referring to Microsoft's recent announcement that it would begin natively supporting ODF in Office next year and join the technical committee overseeing the next version of the format.


There are other wins for ODF at the moment. We summarise a few of them below.

IBM for ODF



IBM steps up its effort and fulfills the promise of eradicating dependencies on Microsoft.

IBM's management has told 20,000 employees to change from Microsoft Office to Lotus Symphony, its own open source office suite.


There are some more new articles about Lotus Symphony, such as this one from The Bangkok Post.

Lotus, makers of the once mighty 1-2-3 spreadsheet, has announced its return to the consumer software space with the release of the Lotus Symphony 1.0 office suite which was the centre of attention at Lotusphere 2008, Phuket.


Here is a slightly older article from CRN. We do not advocate the use of proprietary software like Symphony, so we've hardly mentioned it before. We are, on the other hand, encouraging the use of software like KOffice and OpenOffice.org. Have a look at some news below.

OpenOffice.org in Italy



Bravo to Roberto Galoppini, who is pushing OpenOffice.org further in his country. Now, that's both patriotism and a fight for computer users' rights.

The event was opened by Roberto Galoppini, who talked about the approach and methodology available for a successful OpenOffice.org migration. After an introduction to the OpenOffice.org community and the way OpenOffice.org has been promoted in Italy, with significant results (doubling of download year over year), Roberto went ahead with advices on OpenOffice.org migrations, based on his own experience.


Here is a relatively recent article about adoption of OpenOffice.org in Italy:

According to Davide Dozza, Chairman of Associazione PLIO: "The numbers are exactly the same. If it's just a coincidence, it's a very strange one. Downloads of the Italian version of OpenOffice.org were 800.000 in 2006 and 1.800.000 in 2007: the difference is exactly in the million of Italians that - according to Microsoft - have downloaded the trial version of Office 2007. We think that these users have decided to switch to OpenOffice.org as soon as they have realized that the effort to get used to the new ribbon interface is higher than the effort to migrate to the open source suite. In 2007, the majority of information requests has been about the compatibility with Windows Vista, and the trend stays unchanged in 2008".


Italy is one among several countries in Europe that push strongly for a migration to Free software. ODF is clearly a prerequisite whilst the country's officials are being migrated to GNU/Linux -- however gradually. Based on recent press releases, there's good reception of Red Hat and JBoss over there. Not much from Novell in Italy.

Italy is not alone in recognising this need to evolve.

OOXML protests in India
From the Campaign for Document Freedom

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopwatch: Fake Articles About "Linux", Slop Images in VentureBeat, Linux Foundation Spam Made With LLM Slop and Slop Images
The only relief or upside - if any exists - is that the pace of slop was down a bit this week
Richard Stallman (RMS) Talk in Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress Will be Remote
This past week RMS received lots of accolades online
Links 28/08/2025: Chatbots Distorting/Fabricating History and Also Driving Suicide
Links for the day
 
Downlplaying the Impact of "UEFI 9/11" is a Losing Strategy
we won't publish much whilst on holiday
In Many Places in the World Vista 11 "Market Share" is Going Down, Not Up
In some countries Windows is already down to third place or lower
More Microsoft-Connected Layoffs, at Least Third Time This Month! (Also Another Death on Campus)
Microsoft as a "gaming" company is where studios, projects, games, and even developers come to die
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, August 28, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, August 28, 2025
Gemini Links 29/08/2025: Poems, Games, and Java 25 Performance
Links for the day
Links 28/08/2025: Greenland 'Interferences' by US and Skinnerboxes to Get Banned in Korean Schools
Links for the day
The Register MS (Run by Microsoft Operatives): Free Software is Putin, Hence Evil and Dangerous
The current editor in chief is an American Microsofter, the previous one went to work for Google (US)
Gemini Links 28/08/2025: Back in Japan and Why "Hacker News" Sucks
Links for the day
A Much-Needed Wake-up Call to Users of Wordpress.com, Blogspot, Substack and All Those Other Outsourced (and Centralised) Platforms
There are several lessons in there
The UEFI 9/11 - Part II - Campaign of Censorship and Defamation Against Critics
In dictatorships, humour serves an important role. It's tragic.
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Resists Software Freedom, Even by Attacking Its Own
The OSI is compromised
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, August 27, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, August 27, 2025
Slopwatch: linuxsecurity.com, Slopfarms in Google News, and More
Some readers of ours end up sending us links that are from slopfarms, not realising those are slopfarms
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Katrina Memories and Google Versus Software Freedom
Links for the day
Links 27/08/2025: Police Against Media Freedom in the UK, Energy-Hungry Countries Targeted by China
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows Fell to All-Time Lows in Egypt This Summer, Vista 11 Adoption Decreases While GNU/Linux Increases
Vista 11 is going down rather than up
Links 27/08/2025: Microsoft Demoralises Staff With Slop Demands, Leaving Mastodon Explained
Links for the day
12 Hours Ago The Register MS Published a Fake (Paid-for) Article, But This One for a Change Did Not Promote a Ponzi Scheme
There are also Free software alternatives, but they don't pay The Register MS for "synthetic" so-called 'journalism'
More People Need to Call Out and Put a Stop to Serial Sloppers
Unless slopfarms are stopped, people will read and share Microsoft propaganda made by chatbots
Gemini Links 27/08/2025: Headphones and Tartarus
Links for the day
Morale at Microsoft is Terrible (Proprietary Plagiarism Machines Have No Future, LLM Slop is a Bubble)
The slop sceptics/critics are going to have lots of "told you so" moments
GNOME "governance issues, staff reduction, etc." amidst Albanian whistleblowing and women trafficking
Notice the connection to Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) and GNOME
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, August 26, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, August 26, 2025