My Comments as Posted to the UK Cabinet Office Standards Hub (now it's your turn)

....Office has been a core driver of its financial success for decades, and its products are successfully employed by billions of users to enable the world to work as it does today....

[start rant] I don't know about you, but to me there is a difference like black and white, between " having " an office suite and " using " an office suite. Here, in this country where I reside at the moment, """every one""" has an office suite, and I give you a money-back-guarantee that on the very very most 5% knows what to do with it. Opening and closing is not using in my book

And as far as " to enable the world to work as it does today...." is concerned, I would take that as a joke. [close rant]

OK, thanks for reading. I think I go for breakfast and a cup of coffee. I wrote this because my fingers needed some morning exercises :-)

Grrrrrr...billions !!!.....users !!!......successfully employed..!!!

It's funny, the core issue is not Microsoft Office at all.

The core issue is the Open Document Format.

ODF is fully documented, and there are many different applications and application suites that use it perfectly well.

If Microsoft Office is so very great, then people will want to use it REGARDLESS of the format of the files it reads. ...right?

The problem for MS is not that people will stop using MS Office but that they will lose control of the Upgrade Threadmill, through incompatible file formats, they have forced on the unsuspecting public for so many years....

Yes, the upgrade treadmill is it exactly. It's amusing how Microsoft promised to forsake the upgrade treadmill in two different ways, but then (very purposefully) copped out on the promise in both ways.

They promised to support ODF, but their support is broken and incompatible with every other software package.

They promised to create their own open standard format, but the version they documented is not the same as the version they actually use. Of course this is just an oversight. They promise updates to the standard that will make it match the version they use (or vice versa; it doesn't really matter). Of course, as long as they can help it, that will never happen because an open standard that they share with everyone else would mean the end of lock-in for too many customers (they would still have VBA to fall back on for others).

Does Microsoft really think we can't see what they're doing? Do they really think the pretense of believing in their sincerity about moving to an open standard by certain tech journalists fools us? If we are to believe that they have not moved to open standard document formats for the reasons they have put forth, then we have to believe in a degree of technical incompetence at Microsoft that staggers the imagination (and my imagination is fairly extensive when it comes to Microsoft technical incompetence).

"Does Microsoft really think we can't see what they're doing?"

Microsoft management is not stupid. They recognize this perfectly well, and they don't care.

Microsoft is depending on the fact that "You can fool some of the people all of the time".

Microsoft calls those fools "customers".