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Yesterday, Microsoft voted to approve ODF as an American National Standard. Uh, that's a good thing, right? Yeah, well...
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By issuing this press release, Microsoft is tmaking it appear that it is rising above the squabble to do the right thing, and therefore setting the stage to make IBM, Sun, or anyone else that supports ODF look bad if they later vote against OOXML when/if it comes around.
But there is a second point to note, and this one is more revealing, I think. For the first time (that I'm aware of), Microsoft started talking in the Fortune piece about a specific number of patents – 45 – that it claims OpenOffice (and presumably any other implementation of ODF) would infringe. So on the one hand, Microsoft is saying "Nice standard you've got there," while on the other hand, warning "Implement it if you dare, but only for a price." Full Story |
