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.
One of the more important control points Sun insists on is that of commit rights and project managers. Only Sun employees have these rights and can hold these important positions..
The more important point is made by Marbux (below: ODF is an application specific format designed exactly for OpenOffice. While other applications might partially implement ODF, interoperability and successful ODF document exchange require the OOo code base!
From Marbux: This is the only article I've found to date where IBM (Heintzman) flat out says IBM wants changes in OOo licensing, more in line with the Eclipse and Apache licenses. See pg. 2. Significant because it feeds the meme that IBM's own ODF-based development goal is proprietary closed source built on the OOo code base, e.g., Symphony, et cet.
And that has huge signficance once you realize that ODF is not the real standard; the OOo code base is the real ODF standard. Look around the world and you see that ODF adoption decisions by governments are all in reality decisions to go with StarOffice, OOo, or OOo clones. I haven't, for example, seen a single instance where a government decided to ride with KOffice. Why would they, with the interop issues between KOffice and OOo? The fact that OOo's code base is the real ODF standard will figure strongly in the comments. Couple it with Sun's iron-fisted control of the OOo code base, and you have vendor lock-in with a Microsoft partner.
But with 70 developers committed in China, where developers salaries are inexpensive, IBM will soon be in a position to threaten to fork the OOo code base using proprietary extensions. Is that their real tactic to force changes in licensing and gov