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Rob Weir gets caught in another deceit and an apparent attempt to rewrite history. He condemns as Microsoft FUD what turns out to be his own statement, since removed from his web site but still preserved on other sites that quoted his article including Groklaw, which republished Weir's later article and called for an antitrust investigation of the Microsoft FUD Weir complained of. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2009061001520015 That call is somewhat problematic when Weir and Groklaw were the original sources of the information. Dare the world hope for retractions?

In 2007, IBM's Rob Weir roundly criticized OOXML because the principle justification for having a largely duplicative international standard was compatibility with the billions of extant legacy Microsoft Office documents in binary formats, yet the specifications for the binary formats were not included in the OOXML specification. Just how committed IBM management was to that position may be seen in the fact that IBM later instigated an antitrust investigation of Microsoft Office by the E.U.'s DG Competition through the European Committee on Interoperable Systems, alleging monopoly abuse by Microsoft on the same grounds, an investigation still ongoing. \n\nIn this blog post comment, IBM's Rob Weir takes a hard line position that the sufficiency of the OOXML standard's specificity must be determined on the basis of what is stated in the standard itself, as opposed to Microsoft's subsequent recoding of Office to remove compatibility defects between Microsoft's implementation of OOXML and the binary formats.\n\nThe quoted passage may be usefully compared to later IBM arguments and actions in regard to the OpenDocument.standard that will be included in later bookmarks. For example, Weir has been unyielding that vendor-defined extensions to the ODF standard must be classified as conformant in ODF 1.2, yet their specifications are definitionally not part of the ODF specification. As another example, in 2009 Weir attacked Microsoft for having implemented ODF 1.1 using formula markup different from that used by OOo, despite ODF 1.1's lack of specifications for spreadsheet formulas. Weir's rationale: that vendors must collaborate to code around holes in the standard. He came very close to arguing that data gaps in a standard are irrelevant. See e.g., http://www.robweir.com/blog/2009/05/battle-for-odf-interoperability.html \n\nHypothesis: IBM's treats ODF as a double standard rather than a standard. What IBM argues in effect is that what is required for OOXML does not apply

Here, IBM's Rob Weir takes OOXML to task for not specifying scripts and macros. But nary a mention of the fact that OpenDocument suffers from the same weakness. Yet another IBM double standard. He also tacks on an ad hominem attack against Gary Edwards, in lieu of addressing the merits of what Edwards said.

In the comments on Groklaw to its republication of his ODF Lies and Whispers article, IBM's Rob Weir portrays himself as being "accurate and trustworthy." Yet on this page of Alex Brown's blog that rebuts his Lies and Whispers article, Weir has been caught lying in the comments section and his Lies and Whispers article has dissembled as Weir ducks, bobs, and weaves rather offering any persuasive evidence of his article's truth. http://www.adjb.net/post/No-one-supports-ISO-ODF-today.aspx

Gareth Horton offers a satirical view of IBMer Rob Weir's recent arguments but captures the dilemma Weir's arguments put developers in.

Here, we learn that Rob Weir understands that ad hominem attacks are usually a fallacy, a way of changing the subject rather than addressing the merits of what was said. We may therefore deduce that when Rob Weir employs the ad hominem attack himself, he does so knowing that he is arguing a fallacy.

Here on a single page, we see several Rob Weir ad hominem attacks, including his ad hominem circumstantial innuendo suggesting that Alex Bown's motive in writing a bug report is to defend Microsoft's implementation of ODF. There is also a notable accusation that Brown is intentionally misleading his readers, which attacks Brown's honesty.

IBM's Rob Weir does it again. What's to be done when your company is caught patenting methods implemented in an open standard for years? Change the subject in an attempt to kill the messenger who bears the news. Score another vitriolic ad hominem attack for Rob Weir.