ODF 2.0 and OOXML
In comments to a post on an interesting interview with former Massachusetts IT official Louis Gutierrez, Kurt Cagle offers some sensible advice to Microsoft:
If Microsoft really wants to put together a superior product, then it should participate in the ODF standard for a 2.0 version that moves a little closer to its own perceived needs, recognize that their monopoly isn’t going to last much longer anyway if they are at a stage where they are losing customers because of their own inability to work with them on something as basic as interoperability, and compete on quality. I don’t think anyone - the ODF TC, the ISO standards committees, the customers - would seriously have any problem with that, and it would show that Microsoft recognizes that the world has moved away from where it was in 1997.
I see this idea to bring ODF and OOXML closer in line floated in some future ODF spec more and more, and it seems quite a sensible way forward. I would certainly welcome it, and while I cannot speak for the rest of the ODF TC, I wouldn’t be surprised if they felt likewise.
