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Microsoft Windows Discriminates Against ODF, FSF Denounces Microsoft for ODF Abuse

Summary: New ODF developments and observations

A reader has just sent us a pointer to the following:

Date: Tue, 09 Jun 2009 11:58:15 -0500 From: Wade Smart <wade at wadesmart.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Subject: [users] Windows Vista Search doesn't find ODF files....

Gordon wrote: > I have two documents, one a .odt and one a .doc. (They are the same > document, just different formats). > If I search using Vista Advanced Search by Modified Date, (they both > have the same Modified Date) ONLY the .doc file is shown. > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe at openoffice.org > For additional commands, e-mail: users-help at openoffice.org >

20090609 1157 GMT-5

I have noticed that too. A little preferential treatment maybe?

Wade


This just shows how much Microsoft likes ODF, does it not? Microsoft has fought against ODF all along [1, 2] and now it is trying to fragment it with its pseudo-ODF (MSODF [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]).

At the same time, Microsoft is subverting Wikipedia's article on ODF in order to hide the effect of its actions. Just looking at the past couple of days, there are many edits from the usual suspects, e.g."Ghettoblaster" [1, 2] and Albert Zonneveld (most people know him as "hAl"). Look how hard he has been working in tandem with "Ghettoblaster" in the past couple of days, all to glorify Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] (and not just in the article on ODF by the way).

The Microsoft proponents are editing so quickly that those correcting them with messages like "suspected advertisement in promoting microsoft's product, please provide valid source" are being overridden vainly and swiftly. When it comes to "Ghettoblaster", here is a person trying to correct his/her promotion of Microsoft and another one correcting an insult of OpenOffice.org.

How about interesting edits that state: "(Undid revision 295165923 by user:HAl how is it not relevent that Rick Jelliffe has admitted recieving money from Microsoft to edit wikipedia, and demanding a sources for unsourced fact)"

For more information about what the Microsoft folks have been doing in Wikipedia (to the ODF article alone), see:



What Microsoft is doing gets noticed too. Make no mistake. Microsoft "technical evangelists" (TEs) and staff are participating in this from a distance. We offered proof.

The FSF has meanwhile joined wide opposition to what Microsoft is doing to ODF. The headline states, "Microsoft Office tries to break ODF."

Just a quick update to our OpenDocument campaign, with news that Microsoft Office has added support for ODF, but in a state that leaves it incompatible with every other ODF capable application out there, including OpenOffice.org and KOffice.


Microsoft has many reasons to be afraid of ODF (which is interoperable). Brazil makes more obvious moves to ODF and as Tony Manco puts it, "open office brasil (BrOO.org) adopts odf and uses more foss software like firefox. [...] BB accepted foss since 2001. 60% of there computers use Linux [...] the rest use another os but have OOo and Firefox installed."

In other very interesting ODF news, there is more support for this standard from Google.

Google Translator Toolkit currently only allows users to upload HTML, Microsoft Word, OpenDocument Text, Rich Text and Plain Text documents up to 1MB for translation. Alternatively, it's possible to enter the URL of a file on the web, select a Wikipedia article or a Knol for translation.


Google was among those publicly opposing OOXML, which is proprietary.

“It’s a Simple Matter of [Microsoft’s] Commercial Interests!“

--Microsoft on OOXML



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