Reg. 1 i am still waiting for a feature mapping that explains why ISO 26300 cannot serve the purpose, the justification for a second international standard DIS 29500.

This was a point I also tried to make somewhere in that mass of words: "making assumptions about the unsuitability of ODF without proper investigations". I really need to be more brief.

It happens with wikidot. You always need to login first, then open the forum. If you have the forum opened and want to comment, then log in, get to the main page and you have to retrieve the forum topic. Wikidot is still in development. You can ask e.g. michalf (a) wikidot.com
Unfortunately the sources of wikidot are still not released.

Converers

You claim that Microsoft promised flawless converters. That is weird. I seem to remember they always claimed that any such converters would loose information because of functionality differences. Can you provide us with information where Microsoft claims to deliver flawless converters ??

You mix two different aspects

1. technical possibility to convert between standard a and b
2. Implementation status and architecture

While the first is a potential semantic limitation the status of the second is that they provided almost useless technology preview converters in alpha state while they claimed it to be an applicable solution. Reg. 1 i am still waiting for a feature mapping that explains why ISO 26300 cannot serve the purpose, the justification for a second international standard DIS 29500.

How about all the other things I wrote? Any opinions on that? While I certainly appreciate the correction of details, I would appreciate even more a real discussion on the overall issue.

Particularly two sections stand out as remarkable (my translation):

We have gone as far as to secure the development of a converter between Open XML and ODF to enable interoperability. However, with this converter we cannot be certain that documents are converted without changes or loss of data, because Microsoft Office (Open XML) and Open Office (ODF) are far from having the same functionality. This last point is something our adversaries in the debate often forget.

This is a change of tone from what we have heard from Microsoft's own marketing: good, working translators between ODF and OOXML will be provided, so we don't need to worry one bit about interoperability. Also, we see here once again the inability to distinguish between file formats and applications. MS Office is directly equated with OOXML, which could actually be taken as a serious standpoint and a true lack of distinction because it is their software and their format. (How does that one-to-one correspondence foster interoperability?) However, Open Office is similarly directly equated with ODF, which is a simplification dangerously balancing on the edge of being an outright lie.

Which unique functionality of Microsoft Office is it that ODF cannot support, even using the extension mechanisms provided in ODF? Many have asked this question for a long time, and if Microsoft doesn't provide an answer, I see good reasons to suspect they are actually lying, or at least assuming things about the unsuitability of ODF without proper investigations. ODF is open, it is not evil in itself. Sure, it is the file format of Microsoft's competitors, but isn't that exactly what interoperability is all about: competing on equal ground and bashing the competition by having a superior product which everyone wants? If Microsoft Office had good ODF support, I would be more willing to use it, because then I could send MS Office documents in ODF format to people who can not afford MS Office or are on a platform where it is not available, and still expect them to be able to work with them.

We ask you to do this to secure the options for your business to choose IT systems which fit your current and future needs, without the public administration imposing standards on you which are not suitable for your business.

This is a strongly coercive statement, there is no doubt about that. "If you do not support this standard, you will be forced by the government to use another standard which will make it impossible for you to do business." The use of the seemingly nice phrase "We ask you" is deceptive. The statement is in fact saying "you need to do this if you want to remain in business". While that might be Microsoft's opinion, it is not stated as such, it is stated as a fact, and no judgment is left to the receiving party. Seeing as Denmark just before summer took a decision to actually allow OOXML to be used by public administration in addition to ODF (the decision is even quoted at the beginning of the message), this perception of a threat is strange and objectionable.

If Microsoft is really serious about trying to open up and cease their their lock-in tactics by offering real collaboration around international open standards, it is about time they come clean on why they have been playing so dirty here. If they do not address to satisfaction the many accusations of outright foul play and subversive methods, there will be no face left to save.

Microsoft, your silence in terms of technical reasons speaks far too loudly about hidden intentions. Regardless of whether this is inadvertent or not it is about time you started to really talk about the technical stuff and leave politics aside. You made this a political debate. You made it be about something else than technical standpoints. You made this take an ugly turn by your choice of actions. You. If you and ECMA would be prepared to retract the submission and fix it, people would not be nearly as negative to your opinion that you need a standard of your own. It just might be an OK solution, I really don't have a final opinion on that. However, there is no way I would sit and watch in silence while a standard as bad as ECMA 376 received ISO certification by use of illicit tactics. OOXML is bad. Broken. Not finished. Do you really fail to see that? Are you really, honestly, that incompetent? If so, I do not trust you to write software for me. And why did you even think that it would be a good idea to force a standard through the system? If you can't create a standard which is good enough to pass reasonably unscathed through a technical review, you simply do not deserve to have one. OOXML has been shot down on hundreds of technical issues, it's not just evil-minded political opposition. Face it, and stop pretending otherwise.

Now, after the result has been published, more and more details is coming out of the dark. It seems as if Microsoft in Denmark has playing dirty tricks during the process too. Of cause Microsoft in Denmark denies that they have tried to put any pressure on their business partners. But they have send this letter (Letter to business partners http://www.cw.dk/fil/13799) and this e-mail (e-mail to some business partners http://www.cw.dk/fil/13800). From an anonymous source (Microsoft business partner), we hear that he felt a huge pressure (http://www.version2.dk/artikel/3759).

In one of the letters, Microsoft asked if the partner would be willing to answer questions from a journalist called Thomas Breinstrup from the newspaper Berlingske Tidende.

Translation of the words:

• Would you take a position and contact the National IT- and Tele agency
• Can Berlingske Tidende, Thomas Breinstrup call you and ask so questions about your opinion ?
• Finally, could you contact Danish Standards about the subject ?

The problem is, that Thomas Breinstrup didn't know anything about this letter before yesterday.