Microsoft has created its own proprietary document format, Office Open XML (OOXML), as a rival to the community-developed OpenDocument Format (ODF). OOXML is used in Microsoft's latest applications suite, Office 2007.
Despite some efforts by the two camps, ODF and OOXML are, for the most part, not interoperable, meaning documents that are created in one format cannot be successfully read by applications based on the other format.
According to Novell's vice president of developer platforms, Miguel de Icaza, the situation won't change in the foreseeable future.
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"There's no end in sight to the ongoing disputes between the two camps," said de Icaza, speaking at XML 2007, a Microsoft-sponsored event, on Tuesday. "In 2006, there was lots of FUD [fear, uncertainty and doubt] about the problems behind OOXML and it went downhill from there," Icaza said.
"Neither group is willing to make the big changes required for real compatibility," de Icaza added.