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The wookie here is the lack of native ODF support in older versions of MS Office, together with the earlier-announced intent to develop a new special API for other vendors to add native file suport via MS Office plug-ins. As part of its previous effort to backport OOXML support to earlier versions of Office and to port it to Office for the Mac, Microsoft engineers internally added OOXML support using the Office 2003 native file support to the Office 2003 native file support plug-in APIs, ripped it out of Office 2003 for Office 2007, wrapped it as a module with the same interface as the older APIs, then back and cross ported the module to the earlier versions and Office for the Mac. The new APIs for use by competitors must of necessity be integrated with the existing module. Anytime Microsoft needs to issue a bug fix for OOXML in the earlier versions, it would seem that the most efficient manner for Micriosoft to do so would be a patch for all versions that support OOXML. A patch that adds ODF support for the other Office versions would seem to be a fairly trivial task that could be rolled out with the patches that bring the older versions up to date with the final version of ISO/IEC OOXML In my view, the only conceivable reason for the new APIs is to limit the Office functionality available to competitors who write plug-ins for Office.

Another key point in the silver lining here is that Microsoft will add native support for ODF to Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 "and beyond". However support for ODF in previous versions of Microsoft Office will not be native but through the CleverAge Converter on SourceForge. It will in other words be XSLT-based translation of ODF to/from OOXML with the known issues with translation such as bad quality and performance. http://idippedut.dk/post/2008/05/Document-translation-sucks-(When-Rob-is-right2c-hes-right).aspx

Exactly! This is also the reason why ODF failed in Massachusetts! Reducing the interoperability or functionality of of any workgroup related business process is unacceptable. Which is why IBM's rip out and replace MSOffice approach as the means of transitioning to ODF is doomed. The Office 2.0 (er 3.0) crowd is at a similar disadvantage. They offer web based productivity services that leverage the incredible value of web collaboration. The problem is that these collaboration services are not interoperable with MSOffice. This disconnection greatly reduces and totally neutralizes the collaboration value promise. Microsoft of course will be able to deliver that same web based collaborative comp[uting value in an integrated package. They and they alone are able to integrate web collaboration services into existing MSOffice workgroups. In many ways this should be an anti trust issue. If governments allow Microsoft to control the interop channels into MSOffice, then Microsoft web collaboration systems will be the only choice for 550 million MSOffice workgroup users. The interop layer is today an impossible barrier for Office 2.0, Web 2.0, SaaS and SOA competitors. This is the reasoning behind our da Vinci CDF+ plug-in for MSOffice. Rather than continue banging the wall of IBM's transition to ODF through government legislated rip out and replace mandates, we think the way forward is to exploit the MSOffice plug-in architecture, using it to neutralize and re purpose existing MSOffice workgroups. The key is getting MSOffice documents into a web ready format that is useful to non Microsoft web platform (cloud) alternatives. This requires a non disruptive transition. The workgroups will not tolerate any loss of interop or functionality. We believe this can be done using CDF+ (XHTML 2.0 + CSS). Think of it as cutting off the transition of existing workgroup business p

Bingo!

Rather than replace MSOffice, why not move the desktop bound business processes to the web? Re write them to take advantage of web collaboration, universal connectivity, and universal interop.
Once the business processes are up in the cloud, you can actually start introducing desktop alternatives to MSOffice. The trick is to write these alternative business processes to something other than .NET 3.0, MS-OOXML, and the Exchange/SharePoint Hub.

Uh, the diffusion we really should be focused on involves the OOXML plug-in for MSOffice, IE 7.0, MSOffice 2007, and the Exchange/SharePoint Hub. 

The Exchange/SahrePoint juggernaught is now at 65% marketshare, with Apache servers in noticeable decline.

So it seems the improtant "diffusion" is going forward nicely.  The exploitation of the E/S Hub has also started, and here the Microsoft deelopers have an uncahllenged advantage.  Most of the business processes being migrated to the E/S Hub are coming off the MSOffice bound desktop.  Outsiders to the MS Stack do not have the requisite access to the internals that drive these MSOffice bound business processes, so they have little hope of getting into the "exploitation" cycle.

This aspect was on full display at the recent Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.  The only way a O2 provider can position their service as a collaborative addon to existing business processes is to have some higher level of interop-integration into those processes beyond basic conversion to HTML.

Most O2 operatives struggle to convince the market that an existing business process can be enhanced by stepping outside the process and putting the collaboration value elsewhere.  While this approach is disruptive and unfriendly, it tends to work until a more integrated, more interoperable coolaboration value becomes available.

And that's the problem with O2.  Everyone is excited over the new collaboration possibilities, but the money is with the integration of collaborative computing into existing business processes.  This is a near impossible barrier for non Microsoft shops and would be competitors.  If you're Microsoft though, and you control existing formats, applications and processes, the collaboration stuff is simple value added on.  It's all low hanging fruit that Microsoft can get paid to deliver while O2 players struggle to f

What is he talking about? Does a developer write to Vista? Or do they write to MS Stack ready .NET - OOXML-Smart Documents, XAML, Silverlight stuff?

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at the Harvard Law School held an Open Document Conference, October 23rd, 2006. Just a few weeks after the October 4th, 2006 resignation of Massachusetts CIO Louis Gutierrez. This is the summary report of organizer Manon Ress. Sam Hiser represented the OpenDocument Foundation. The ZERO Interop problems that plague ODF implementation were not discussed. Strangely :) Another point not discussed is the fact that ODF is not an Internet file format. It's a desktop office suite only format. This constraint is written into the ODF charter. Interestingly, one of the problems of making ODF Web ready is that of highjacked W3C standards. Highjacking occurs when a specification or application takes existing W3C standards and changes the namespace reference to it's own. This is what ODF does. The reason for doing this is to constrain and limit the W3C standard to just those aspects implemented by the ODF reference application, OpenOffice. XForms, SVG, SMiL, XHTML, RDF/XML and RDFa are problematic examples of W3C namespaces that have been highjacked by ODF to meet the specific implementation constraints of OpenOffice. This impacts developers who rely on standard libraires to do conversions and processing. The libraries are built to the proper W3C namespace, and unfortunately assume that ODF complies. It doesn't, So developers have to investigate how OpenOffic eimplements XForms and SVG, and build special ODF libraries before they can use ODF on the Web. It can be done, i think. But it's a train wreck of a mess guaranteed to destroy the high level of web interoperability users and developers expect.