TheODF
Alliancehas greeted with scepticism
Microsoft's announcement of its intention toinclude support for the Open Document Formatin the first half of 2009.
"The proof will be whether and when Microsoft's promised support
for ODF is on par with its support for its own format. Governments
will be looking for actual results, not promises in press
releases," said Marino Marcich, managing director of the ODF
Alliance.
"Clearly this announcement reflects the strong demand from
customers worldwide, especially governments, for access to ODF, a
truly universal, open standards-based file format," Marcich
said.
He claimed that until Microsoft enables its Microsoft Office
users to create and save in ODF by default as easily and fully as
in Microsoft's own formats, governments will continue to adopt a
"buyer beware" attitude.
Microsoft is promoting its own "open standard" OOXML data format
to persuade users that their data will not be locked into Microsoft
platforms.
OpenOffice.org 3.0 released to public beta >>