Microsoft promises document interoperability

OK ... so if Microsoft is SO CONCERNED about interoperability why don't they just:

1. Integrate ODF into Office 2007+ 2. Put a few of their paid programmers on the ODF team.

That would benefit everyone.

They won't because they are not at all concerned about interoperability. What they want is their closed product (or as much of it as they can keep closed) as THE standard.

The problem is, they still don't get it ... REAL open source and REAL interoperability has been shown to the world now. It is harder and harder to sell the old "we're microsoft ... you can trust us" line nowadays.

The Genie is out of the bottle ... it won't go back.

They may end up totally opening their code for file structures, but only if/when it is demanded and certainly not out of the goodness of their hearts.

They would NEVER release a patch that would render older and/or competitor's files as unreadable in MS Word or MS Excel. I mean, come on, who are all the conspiracy theorists anyway.

WHAT .. they already did that .. hmmm ... never mind :D

The question that always comes into my mind when I see MS pretending to open things up is why they are putting on such a show.

The obvious answer is that it is demanded by their customers and their customers are willing to go elsewhere if they don't get what they want (ie the MS monopoly is dead). So why do they think playing games is a good idea? These games sound like a gas station putting $1.50/gallon on the sign to get customers and then charging $8.00/gallon to the credit card. It works in the very short run but it's not hard to see that you've been screwed.

Also, interoperability requires more than just a truly open OOXML. That's meaningless if MS Office does not follow OOXML 100%. I'd be shocked if they did. They could sell OOXML as an open format and then have a different OOXML in MS Office.

> why they are putting on such a show.

In order to understand Microsoft's actions, you must always look at their actions with the idea that it is to convince people not to use any other product than Microsoft.

"Oh, it's ok to buy Microsoft, because everything is interoperable. Microsoft said so."

That's why Microsoft cannot ever admit that ODF exists. The instant that Microsoft allows that there is another way to save files, someone might investigate and discover that ODF is what everyone _other_ than Microsoft is using.

Microsoft is pushing, pushing, PUSHING that it is the rest of the world that gets in the way of being interoperable with Microsoft.