In a feat almost unheard of Microsoft is listening to it’s customers and taking steps to support ODF.
They’re sponsoring a French partner company to create a connector software that will allow saving to and reading from ODF files in MS Office.  And offering it with a BSD license.
The only baffling part is why it took […]

Ignoring the reality of the situation, Massachusetts politicians are hammering down on.. er.. a document format. That’s right folks. You’re paying them to be incenssed over a format.
A format which, I might add, is perfectly usable and doesn’t really have any downside. Only it doesn’t restrict the user to Microsoft’s software.
Anyone can […]

What would you call outpouring a donation almost equivelent to the cumulative total of your past five years of donating to one state on the eve of their voting to mandate open standards?
Trying to buy a state, of course. And who better to purchase off state senators with *ahem* charitable donations than Microsoft.
After all, […]

If you were looking for a format to store your document in, what would you look at?  Robust support for whatever it is you’re doing and maybe cross compatibility, right?
Not Microsoft.  They’re so divorced from reality over in Redmond that their number one priority is on a format’s performance.  Over here in CT, we’re not […]

I’ve got to say, out of all the Bloggers out there Andy Updegrove is definately earning my respect.  He clearly gets to the point of the matter without pussyfooting around.
To wit, why journalists insist on presenting “two sides” and think this is “objective”.  Let me illustrate.
If I say “The moon is made of cheese!” and […]

Massachusetts is just abounding with special interest groups that don’t want the government to use Open Standards.  They’ll do everything from stifle innovation to give you cancer (but only in the state of California).  Funny how these groups come out of the woodwork to oppose any kind of standards yet remained silent on the fact […]

It looks like the IT crowd will soon be able to have their cake and eat it, too.  A small concern named Open Document Foundation Inc. is releasing a plugin for Microsoft’s Office that allows read/write to ODF formatted files.  This gets rid of a roadblock on the way toward open office document formats, as […]