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ODF Alliance Tests Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 ODF Support - Finds Serious Shortcomings

By Pamela Jones et al.

The ODF Alliance has prepared a Fact Sheet [PDF; also available as text on their website, if you scroll down] for governments and others interested in how Microsoft's SP2 for Office 2007 handles ODF. The ODF Allliance says their testing revealed "serious shortcomings that, left unaddressed, would break the open standards based interoperability that the marketplace, especially governments, is demanding". The Fact Sheet itemizes the major problems testing revealed. Marino Marcich, managing director of ODF Alliance, points to one huge shortcoming:

"For example, even the most basic spreadsheet functions, such as adding the numbers contained in two cells, were simply stripped in an ODF file when opened and re-saved in Microsoft Office 2007. A document created in one ODF-supporting application, when re-saved in Microsoft Office 2007, rendered differently - missing bullets, page numbers, charts and other objects, changed fonts - making collaboration on an ODF file with Office 2007 very difficult. Indeed, some of the so-called 'plug-ins' were revealed to provide better support for ODF than the recently released Microsoft Office 2007 SP2. This is no way to achieve the interoperability around ODF that the marketplace is demanding."

It would be a major disappointment, if I ever had any hope that Microsoft would actually allow true interoperability. However, having formed the opinion during the BRM over OOXML that Microsoft had no such goal, I was spared any disappointment when my suspicions came true. But it's a crying shame, and I feel for any government entities trying to figure out how to get to actual interoperability for all their citizens. How can they insist that a citizen has to buy proprietary software in order to interact with their government? It just sticks in your throat, doesn't it? Unless you are Microsoft, of course. To Microsoft, vendor lock-in is not a bug, I suspect, but a feature.

The Fact Sheet made me smile in one aspect. It says Microsoft's announcement of the release of SP2 provides no promise that it will keep its "support" of ODF up-to-date with the latest version, but frankly, with "support" like this, what difference does it make what Microsoft promises or doesn't promise? They obviously, to me, don't intend to be interoperable with ODF, unless someone forces them, and even then, foot dragging has been known to occur.

Full post as published by Groklaw on May 19, 2009 (boomark / email).