-- Leo's gemini proxy
-- Connecting to gemini.techrights.org:1965...
-- Connected
-- Sending request
-- Meta line: 20 text/gemini;lang=en-GB
Posted in IBM, Microsoft, Office Suites, Open XML, OpenDocument, Standard at 8:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft brings the most familiar shills to assist with spin and disinformation; it also wants Rob Weir out
THERE IS unnecessary drama brewing at the moment because — as John Drinkwater puts it — Rob Weir said: “Microsoft [is] calling for my removal as Co-Chair of the ODF TC [technical committee]. Evidently I’ve hurt their feelings.“
“And now Microsoft wants to remove Rob Weir.”Hurt their feelings by showing the expected outcome? Let’s face it, Microsoft has attacked ODF right from the start. There is no reason to believe that it changed its ways. On numerous occasions over the past few months we’ve provided evidence to show that Microsoft is still hostile towards ODF.
Microsoft’s attempt to pretend to embrace, extend and extinguish support ODF are made clear by a half-hearted, semi-baked implementation (yes, that too is a Microsoft products ‘standard’). As Balrog says in the IRC channel, “even Microsoft’s sponsored ODF plugin performs better.” And as this man puts it, “Microsoft [is] deliberately subverting ODF universal document format in new Office 2007 release. Flood help lines! Demand proper usability!”
And now Microsoft wants to remove Rob Weir. How dare they?
Heise describes this horrible mistreatment from Microsoft merely as a “dispute” between two vendors.
> Microsoft’s release of Open Document Format (ODF) support in Service Pack 2 for Office 2007 has triggered a war of words over the handling of spreadsheet formulas. Rob Weir has posted the results of his interoperability testing of various applications which claim ODF compatibility. Weir’s results show Microsoft ODF support as failing on spreadsheet tests with nearly all other applications.
Microsoft already brings out the shills from the Burton Group, whom it paid handsomely to attack ODF in the form of several jobs (full-time wages) and contracts. Wake up and smell the coffee. It’s no coffee, it’s AstroTurfing in suits. Or as Microsoft calls this:
“Analysts sell out – that’s their business model… But they are very concerned that they never look like they are selling out, so that makes them very prickly to work with.”
–Microsoft, internal document [PDF]
There is some more coverage of this from Eric Lai at IDG, but both him and the publication are Microsoft-oriented. We wrote about this many times before. The same goes for ZDNet, which at least opens with:
> Microsoft has come under fire for spreadsheet interoperability issues in its latest release of Office 2007 SP2, but the company said it is an issue inherent in ODF (Open Document Format) 1.1.The software giant released last week the second service pack for Office 2007, which provides support for documents saved in the ODF 1.1 format.
Charles too is already weighing in.
> If we are to believe several reports who all link to Rob Weir’s own thorough review , Microsoft has not only done a poor job implementing ODF, it has also ended up into a quite unique endless loop phenomenon . What this basically means is that in some instances ODF documents created by Microsoft Office will only be readable and editable in… Microsoft Office. How was this possible? Apparently when you want to mess up something, you always find ways to do so.
While it’s clear that Microsoft uses paid mouthpieces to borrow some lip service and pseudo-support, one must careful of what is said out there. It could, after all, come from the army of hundreds of Waggeners & Edstroms [1, 2]. Microsoft uses PR against objective press. It has always done that. █
“It’s a Simple Matter of [Microsoft’s] Commercial Interests!“
–Microsoft on OOXML
Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Permalink Send this to a friend
----------
➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.
-- Response ended
-- Page fetched on Sat May 18 04:58:40 2024