Microsoft Supporting ODF? -- Close, But No Cigar - I wish I could wholeheartedly applaud the Microsoft announcement about native support for ODF, but I can't. Of course, it's better to have native support for ODF, no matter what motives may have influenced Microsoft's announcement, and I'm glad about that for the sake of end users. But it hasn't happened yet. Was the word 'vaporware' not coined for Microsoft? In any case, I'm in the "I will believe it when I see it" category when it comes to Microsoft. They've earned my caution.

And I see danger signs for FOSS I'd like to share with you, so you can consider them. Once again, the problem is software patents. Internet News indicates that commercial Linux/FOSS vendors, and the GPL license that Linux comes with, will be excluded:

Microsoft, however, frames its latest moves as part of fulfilling a company-wide interoperability initiative that it announced in February.

Uh oh. Remember this from February, when Microsoft announced the availability of APIs?

Ars Technica has reported that the OOXML document format is now an ISO "standard". I find it ironic that this was announced on April 1st. I'm still hoping that its really an April Fool's joke, but it is not.

I find it pathetic that no one has even implemented this standard yet. Not even Microsoft. Usually there are a number of groups that begin implementing a hot standard before it is even ratified as an ISO standard. But not here.

I don't trust Microsoft to do the right thing for its customers. They do a good job of doing the right thing for themselves. The Microsoft track record of even doing the right thing for themselves isn't very good lately either after the total disaster that is Vista. They are cleary willing to make an inferior product just to implement nasty terrible anti-consumer things like the DRM that is built into Vista.

I imagine that they can't wait to fool governments around the world with their new ISO document standard to lock everyone into expensive, bloated, proprietery Microsoft products. Buyer beware!