Groklaw: MS Office 07 SP2 has very poor support for OpenDocument formats

[MaxIBoy]

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2009051922175320
I think we all saw this coming.

[CJ Master]

I just love the tags. Does anybody even actually know what they're used for...? They're for the search engine, not randomly insulting Microsoft.

Of course we all saw this comming. It's too bad, but it's how Microsoft works. I thought we'd be all used to it by now?

[MikeTheC]

That people, agencies and governments are aware of, much less concerned about, open standards is almost more important to me than Microsoft's actions in this matter. Besides, it's typical Microsoft tactics.

Wishing for Microsoft to play by the rules and be a good steward of technology is like trying to shoot pool with a rope. Or, worse yet, a snake. We would be miles and miles ahead if, as the F/OSS community, we simply focused on having (and using) the better solution, and then educating people and agencies and governments about that solution, what it means, and the fact that not only do we have the solution -- and that it's stable, mature and works -- but that it is also financially free.

Microsoft is slowly getting nibbled away by the $0 "free" part of F/OSS just as surely as they're getting nibbled by the liberation it offers users. The fact that F/OSS is also inherently something which leads to peer-reviewed/peer-improved code is something Microsoft can't compete against and has every reason in the world to be frightened of.

Why else do you think they try and pull stunts like this? I mean, apart from incompetence (of which Microsoft is also largely comprised) the last thing in the world Microsoft wants is to switch to something which empowers the user to replace THEM. Microsoft is as Microsoft has always been: prove to you that you have an itch, that they can scratch it for you, and then convince you how you can't live without their presence.

There's a line from "Pirates of Silicon Valley" between, um, I think Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. Anyhow, it's something to the effect that the goal of their business is to convince someone (ostensibly, a business customer) they have a particular need, and then convince them Microsoft is basically the only solution to that need.

In my two decades-and-change' worth of experience in the tech world and industry, whatever hyperbole you might want to put much of the dialog of that film down to, that really sums up Microsoft. Well, that and buying / destroying competitors, engaging in exclusionary deals, arrangements and contracts, and on and on.

How much more repetition of this whole "Microsoft is the bad guy" diatribe and mantra do we really need here? I for one am glad that Apple's still around to give them competition in the commercial space, and that Linux is around to give them competition as well.

Again, folks, this should be less about some of the personalities involved and more about letting the world around us know F/OSS is a legitimate, credible and technologically superior solution to actualized -- and not just theorized -- needs.