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Story: Microsoft: IBM masterminded OOXML failure

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A standard for every man, woman, and child

"Paoli said that Microsoft has never been an aggressor in the standards world and did not mobilise against Sun and IBM when they proposed ODF."

This attitude is ridiculous. Why would Microsoft mobilize against ODF? ODF was a genuine standard proposed to fill a genuine gap. Moreover, it was developed at OASIS, an organization Microsoft is a sponsor of. At any time, Microsoft could have contributed to the OASIS ODF committee. Instead, they sat in a corner.

Then, ODF got ISO approval, and it became clear that there would be significant adoption long-term. Microsoft then made their own nearly single-party "standard", with proprietary dependencies, and only the weakest efforts to make it non-redundant.

But here they tell us it's only fair. Sun and IBM got a standard, so why shouldn't Microsoft? Let's let everyone have their own standard for the same purpose, because that's clearly in the best interests of consumers.

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