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That would never happen ... (SCO + Caldera anyone?)

But I think you and me been waiting too long. The gap between the MS world and Linux can be summed up to two things, proprietary standards and Linux driver support (which could be reduced to the former). Bridging this gap is like a jaded lover whose love interest keeps dangling the hopeful carrot in front of their eyes. This time it will be different! Things have changed since last time! We have both matured and grown. We can make it work if we really want it. It still doesn't work. Things have changed; things are better. But the dream is one sided. Yet, the love affair still lives on. Glimmers of hope keep it alive. If only the other side would come around, it could've been beautiful.

It would seem so. This article (dated 2003) even mentions concerns in the banking sector. But it all seemed to blow over.

As SCO is penniless maybe they should tell McBride to give back some of the 1/4 million dollar bonusses he keeps taking.

http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=2005 053100093171
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=2006 1118000708715

As SCO is penniless maybe they should tell McBride to give back some of the 1/4 million dollar bonusses he keeps taking.

http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=2005 053100093171
http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=2006 1118000708715

SCO did some procedural jiggling to make sure they're not 'undervalued' during any procedure (i.e. the directors get more money than they're worth).

Take a look at this Groklaw article for a bit more detail.

I'm sorry, but to give credit to M$ here would be like giving credit to the thief that snatches a little old ladies purse, then, noticing a cop watching, gives it back and pats her on the back. Should we be saying "Well, at least he saw the error of his ways" ?

What M$ did was wrong, clearly wrong, and they knew it at the time, and now that they can't get away with it they are trying to pretend it was all a misunderstanding and they're not really bad people.

M$ has a history of repeatedly doing things like this, and worse, not just to other companies, but to their paying customers (forcing unstable/insecure ie code on them, anyone?). Not to mention what they might be planning (http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070128 08444146).

This sort of thing is the main reason I don't want to live in a world with M$ in it...

/me quietly leaves for a M$ free world of linux only, where he's in control of his own computer, and politely closes the door behind himself

Well if any software house wishes to buy/get a license to play WMA and/or Microsoft PlaysforSure on Linux they can, Microsoft gives it to you.

And one of the conditions of such contract with Microsoft, is that you will support WMA & MP3 only. Few have managed to get better conditions out of Redmond. Most (e.g. Creative, Philips) are out of luck and stuck with MP3 or WMA. Some (e.g. iRiver) didn't bowed to M$ conditions at all (what allow them to support e.g. OGG).

In the end, M$ would try to cripple Linux experience (just like it tried with Win2k to "unsupport" e.g. AVIs) so that it can later brag about how wonderful Wind0ze is.

The problem is if you want to do the same with Apple DRM u just cant, period. [...] I love windows much as u do, but comparing what Apple is doing to anything else like PlayForSure ( for example ... ) is just plain stupid sorry ...

I'd rather have a clear "NO" from Apple, rather than fuzzy "YEAH" Microsoft is infamous for.

Link

So, we've had an ODF "production ready" converter ready since May 2006. http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200605040 15438308

Where is it? Why won't Gary Edwards of the OpenDocument Foundation say anything?

Hey people, how about some promoting of ODF?

If it's true, is anybody really surprised? This is MS after all.

There is a another analysis on groklaw.

Check out the article on Groklaw Searching for Openness in Microsoft's OOXML and Finding Contradictions for further comments. The article also has links to a couple of wiki pages with further comments.

Matt Said: If you take and modify a piece of BSD code you are NOT required under the BSD licence to put your additions under the same terms Well the license says Redistribution and use ... with modification are permitted provided that .... xyz Does the 'with modificaton' extend to just the original code, whatever is left after the modification, or all of it? "The wording does not support identification of a specific subset of the source code (ie the portion which is unmodified) for the license to apply to." (4.2) (From Here) which leads to the implication that the requirement applies to all the code, new and old. So other then just wishing it was so, I wonder if in th e long history of BSDL if there has ever been a discussion or even precedence on this?

Employees may perceive that their work is under-valued using 'cheap' OSS products.

Case in point: Remember when Linus voiced his complaints on Groklaw about the DRM clause of GPLv3? He completely failed to make any sort of valid legal argument. I actually thought the guy who was claiming to be Linus was an imposter, because his complaints just seemed too clueless to be coming from Linus. I patiently waited for the email to linux-kernel where Linus would say "that's not me on Groklaw", but it never came. I guess Linus really doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to the law.

I now think that although Linus Torvalds is a central figure in the free/open-source software phenomenon, he just doesn't understand it the way other people do.

Well, anyone stupid enough to buy SCOX deserves what they get ... but I notice the #1 article is boston.com (Boston Globe) - the same people who did the hatchet job on Peter Quinn for advocating ODF for Massechussetts

We know who was behind THAT one ... Microsoft. And of course they're behind the SCOX stuff ... perhaps this is just another Team99 tactic?

1. Novell owns the copyrights and not SCO.
2. SCO needs to give Novell a full accounting of unreported money it owes Novell for SVRX licenses.
3. Novell wants to court to order SCO to comply with their contract, which gives all the royalties from SVRX to Novell.
4. Novell has the right to waive SCO's claims on UNIX code. Including those against IBM.
5. Novell wants the court to issue a "declaratory judgment" that Novell has the right to audit SCO's performance to make sure that it doesn't take any more of Novell's money.
6. SCO needs to put all the money it "converted" (i.e., "stole") from those licenses into a constructive trust. (This is the one they're fussing about now. Sun and Microsoft gave SCO a bucket of cash to carry on the lawsuit against Linux under cover of a UNIX license. But SCO is supposed to give UNIX license money to Novell.)
7. Number seven repeats number six and asks for the trust again. Eh, lawyers. Go figure.
8. Number eight asks for the trust again, but adds punitive damages for swiping the money in the first place. Since SCO has already spent most of the cash, this is pretty much just adding insult to injury.
9. Finally, Novell wants a complete accounting of all SVRX agreements or "other agreements relating to royalty bearing products." That's because SCO was claiming that the Sun and Microsoft agreements weren't "real" SVRX agreements, so SCO didn't owe Novell any money. Novell wants an accounting to make sure SCO isn't hiding any more ill-gotten gains.

1. Novell owns the copyrights and not SCO.
2. SCO needs to give Novell a full accounting of unreported money it owes Novell for SVRX licenses.
3. Novell wants to court to order SCO to comply with their contract, which gives all the royalties from SVRX to Novell.
4. Novell has the right to waive SCO's claims on UNIX code. Including those against IBM.
5. Novell wants the court to issue a "declaratory judgment" that Novell has the right to audit SCO's performance to make sure that it doesn't take any more of Novell's money.
6. SCO needs to put all the money it "converted" (i.e., "stole") from those licenses into a constructive trust. (This is the one they're fussing about now. Sun and Microsoft gave SCO a bucket of cash to carry on the lawsuit against Linux under cover of a UNIX license. But SCO is supposed to give UNIX license money to Novell.)
7. Number seven repeats number six and asks for the trust again. Eh, lawyers. Go figure.
8. Number eight asks for the trust again, but adds punitive damages for swiping the money in the first place. Since SCO has already spent most of the cash, this is pretty much just adding insult to injury.
9. Finally, Novell wants a complete accounting of all SVRX agreements or "other agreements relating to royalty bearing products." That's because SCO was claiming that the Sun and Microsoft agreements weren't "real" SVRX agreements, so SCO didn't owe Novell any money. Novell wants an accounting to make sure SCO isn't hiding any more ill-gotten gains.

I posted about this earlier on http://www.groklaw.net/

Ithink that the last major UK EMI release with DRM was Coldplay's X&Y back in 2005, any other releases I noticed on EMI was on the budget/reissue EMI Gold label, which was usually sold at about £2.99 in the bargain bin's at Sainsburys (a posher version of Walmart for our American chums ;) )

Why they kept it on the cheap stuff and not the latest releases I don't know, I suspect they were trying to see how many returns as "faulty" they would get on the budget range, maybe it was too high a percentage and they decided the cost of the returns on a big selling CD was too high.

They used to have a pro-drm site at http://www.emimusic.info/uk/ printed on the DRM'd CD's but they seem to have pulled it.

Funny to see how cocky the record companies were back in 2002 compared to now - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/21/all_cds_wi ll_be_protected/

Jonathan

Ever heard of ? Of course, PJ is actually a journalist, so perhaps it's not the best example, but still.

Fork because you have to FTP the very latest releases? Bit drastic, don't you think?

No; we all know what the free software foundation stands for. There has never been any hint that they would in any way interfere with the freedom of software users. Nobody has ever sustained such an allegation against them. That they may interfere with the freedom of software developers, where that is opposition to the freedom of users is a known and clear fact. We know that the primary objection to the GPLv3 is that some developers want to be able to develop restrictive software which makes it difficult to copy information.

The clear reason MySQL would make this change is because they intend to interfere with my freedom. Making a Fork now and committing it to switch purely to the GPLv3 if they switch to a purely to the GPLv2 is an important strategic move; if we wait until after the GPLv3 is completed, the version we release will be far behind in bug fixes. The point to do it is now.

Please don't claim MySQL is committed to software freedom or even to Linux. We've already had clear evidence that they are not when they chose to work with SCO at exactly the time when that could only do harm. MySQL is not a company to trust.

Really? I guess there's no good advice at all in the 766 comments to his question at this link, huh?:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200612291 71726760#comments/

She knows it all.
http://www.groklaw.net/

Apologies for presumably teaching one's grandmother to suck eggs, but if this expert has been retained in every RIAA suit so far, it becomes necessary to ask what remuneration he has received for his work, and how that compares to his Iowa State U salary. There was a thread on Groklaw you might refer to, where Cravath Swain Moore sought similar financial details from one of SCO's experts, and I think there should be a transcript with the relevant citations where such information was compelled.

Similarly, one might seek to determine what his role actually is at Iowa State, and how that permits him so much time to be an expert witness - if his position is a sinecure, and he does not publish, then how expert can he be?

You might get a better response there (i.e., less noise than /.), especially since Groklaw is about legal issues surrounding tech.

If it threatens to, the main author of Samba just gave Google a shovel. From the article at http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200612210 81000710:

        "Unfortunately the time I am willing to wait for this agreement to be changed to remedy the GPL violation has passed, and so I must say goodbye."

He starts work for Google in early 2007, and is answering a lot of questions with silence. But his letter is painfully clear. I think we can also expect Samba development to get a real boost from this.

Neither judge has thrown out anyone's claims. The ruling was only on evidence TSCOG submitted in support of some of their claims against IBM. In fact, IBM pointed out in their own briefings and motions supporting their (eventually granted) request for exclusion of the evidence that TSCOG was playing word games in trying to interchange claims and evidence. Obviously, the judges are smarter than TSCOG thinks.

Saying that claims have been thrown out is the lie that TSCOG has repeated enough times in their arguments that even the press and now Slashdot is treating it as fact. You don't have read some semi-obscure ten second summary to know what really happened (November 14th - weeks ago). Go to Groklaw and read that actual court papers yourself if you really care.

Groklaw now has up a redacted version of IBM's reply memo to SCO's motion, which lays out numerous reasons why SCO is yet again full of what my grandfather called "condensed canal water".

as news for nerds that is one week old is still news...

I use the AMD-64 version of Ubuntu/Kubuntu Linux at home and use Windows XP in a small business at work. Both operating systems seem to be about equally easy to use. Installing and properly configuring Ubuntu was much easier than with earlier versions of Linux that I had used a few years ago. It correctly identified all my hardware with the exception for having to use a GUI to select the correct printer driver. It automatically found my DSL modem and automatically connected me to the Internet. Whenever I insert a USB Flash drive or a CD, an icon for that device appears on the screen (like Windows). There are easy to use point and click GUIs for configuring things. It is not only easier to install and use but feels much more polished and refined than the older versions of Linux. So the Linux desktop is getting better.

When downloading new software, I use either Synaptic or Adept which are easy to use GUI front-ends to the apt-get package manager. I then select a program from the the amazing list of available free programs. Then after about a minute or so the free program has been downloaded and installed. To get new software for Windows XP, I typically need to drive to town, pay for the software, agree to the the stern threatening terms of the EULA, perhaps respond to a pop-up warning from my firewall, and then enter the activation code. With Windows software, I frequently also discover that other software I hadn't asked for was also installed. With Ubuntu Linux removing software with Synaptic or Adept is just as quick and easy.

The typical Linux desktop applications have also improved noticeably over the last few year. Five years ago, the typical Linux application had all the necessary essential features but did not seem like full featured commercial quality software. Now most of the major free Linux applications seems mature and full featured and equal to commercial software. Linux has never had a problem with viruses or spyware, so I don't need to bother with downloading virus signatures or scanning for viruses and spyware. When I had to reinstall Windows 2000 on a computer, I had to first spend about 10 hours looking for the original installation CD before I could even get started. With any version of Linux I would have just downloaded the free iso and burned a CD.

I realize that most commercial games are not offered in Linux versions. I am not a gamer so for me that doesn't matter to me. Some popular industry standard programs such as AutoCAD and Microsoft Office do not come in Linux versions but as a home user, I don't really care about that either. Most companies don't bother writing any Linux drivers themselves, so inevitably there is some hardware out there that is not supported in Linux. Perhaps, as the author suggests, KDE and Gnome developers should get moving, but at the moment I am a happy Linux user. Besides, for me, it isn't purely about who has the latest and greatest new features. I don't want to have to deal with Windows product activation or licensing issues. I recently heard a commercial on late-night talk radio where the Business Software Alliance (BSA) was encouraging people to call them to get a reward for reporting the use of unlicensed software by their employeers. They said that each violation could cost a company $150,000 per seat. I have read elsewhere, that just using licensed versions of Windows and Office and the original installation CD is not always enough to be avoid being accused of software piracy. They must also be able to find records showing where and when they purchased the software. I feel much more comfortable just using Linux instead and knowing that I have the freedom to use it however and wherever I please.

Most people have never even heard of Linux, and even if it is free and getting better all the time, I don't expect many people to give it a try anytime soon. There will continue to be a passionately loyal group of Linux desktop users. I value my freedom too much to even consider using Windows on my main home computer.

I doubt the ECMA would approve both and allow a patent bomb.

According to the ECMA Code of Conduct in Patent Matters there is no requirement that any relevant that patents pertaining be opened, merely that they are made available for licence under Reasonable And Non Discriminatory (RAND) terms.

The problem here is that RAND is not further defined, meaning that a company like MS can charge a peppercorn licence fee, and still place the licences out of the reach of FOSS projects who can't pass on the overheads to their customers.

Additionally, ECMA don't seem require the patents to be actually licenced, they just require a statement of policy from the patent holder. If the patent holder later declines to issue the patent, they may be excluded from further participation in that committee, but by that stage you could still have a whole hell of a lot of deeply entrenched patent violations, so I don't take much comfort from that provision.

Oh, and if they ask the patent holder if they have any undisclosed patents, and the holder doesn't respond, the technical committee is free to vote on adoption, and therefore presumably adopt, the standard anyway.

So, as it turns out, there's absolutely nothing in the ECMA procedures prohibiting patent bombs, at least in so far as Free Software is concerned.

IANAL, Groklaw has a bunch of them who examined this in detail at the time of the Massachusetts ODF flap. Check it out!

It isn't. They got their thirty pieces of silver.

I'd like to see the GPL upheld in court once and for all. A valid license is a valid license, and it'd be nice to see at least some of the FUD surrounding it smacked down via a court ruling.

It has been... several times in several countries... most recently is was the fool Wallace who got told where to go by an American court

I forgot to mention an article from earlier this year, that talks about the European Commission's decision to fine Microsoft because of their lack of compliance with the courts decision that they should make interoperability information available to competitors as a necessary precondition to allow fair competition. Here is a link to info about that:

FSF Europe's Statement on the EU Commission Fine on Microsoft

Here is an article that mentions BeOS as an example of Micorosoft's anticompetitive practices:

Iowa Antitrust Litigation Update

"forefront leaders" makes no sense (did you mean "foremost"?)

Apart from that, what a dumb question. Are you trolling, or just inexcusably ignorant? Go educate yourself, read Groklaw - you may as well start here.

This article and many others on Groklaw might give you a clue. Microsoft has:

• Destroyed Netscape and BEoS.
• Bribed government officials in India and other countries to use their operating system.
• Funded SCO's litigation against IBM and Linux in general.
• Bribed Novell into betraying the Linux community.
• Forced entire school systems to audit their computers and pay "non-compliance" fines.
• Profited off of Linux and Mac installations without paying royalties by forcing a per computer "tax" on all Licencing 6 customers.
• Slowed down the Internet with their virus ridden software.
• Made it impossible for me to buy the laptop I choose without paying them, even if I do not use their software. (The guy at the store laughed at me when I asked if I could just get the hardware.)
• Supported software patent legislation in Europe.
• Created the most DRM restricted operating system in existence with plans to extend the DRM to MY hardware and encrypt MY information on MY hard drive and give control of all that to someone else (read: Hollywood).

Just go http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page= 2005010107100653 do the math. Despite what some say MS does not invent much, they just acquire what they want. If they can't acquire it they take it, one way or another, but not necessarily in that order. They are business, men with a vengeance.

MS's format is technically superior, and produces smaller file sizes because of the compression algorithms.

I have to call troll on this:

1. Open XML is an verbose, human-unreadable tagsoup that looks more like a memory dump then a real file format--it's technicaly superior (faster to be precise) if, and only if, your Office suite is MS Office.
2. Both use zip for compression

Fair enough. So here's a comparison of the ODF and MS-XML formats.

In this case, it means "unwieldy".

...that people might find interesting:

• Fellowship of FSFE: Is OpenXML now a standard?
• Groklaw: Novells "Danaergeschenk"

About assumptions: I don't think we can reason without making assumptions; in fact, if you look at math or formal logic, making assumptions is fundamental part of the process of inference. The trick is to keep an open mind, so as to be willing to re-examine those assumptions in the light of new evidence.

So, for example, I will admit to making the assumption that if Microsoft are involved, they are probably up to something and that they do not have our benefit in mind. Similarly, you seem to making the assumption that since SUSE are an established and respected distro, we should therefore give Novell the benefit of the doubt.

And that's were we part company, I think. I'd like to draw a clear distinction between SUSE and Novell, and try to avoid assuming that the ethical culture of SUSE as a distro has somehow percolated upwards into Novell as a side effect of Novell's purchase of SUSE.

For that matter we should be wary of anthropomorphising Novel too much. Most corporations would, were they human, have a touch of Multiple Personality Disorder about them, with different factions pushing different corporate agenda. And while I'm sure there are plenty of Novell execs who "get" the whole open source thing, and who genuinely want to play nice with the community, I'd be very surprised if there weren't some hoary old bean counters there who couldn't give a hoot for anything beyond the bottom line, and who learned their trade the hard way, trying to compete with Microsoft.

I'd be very surprised if some of the latter camp haven't look at the Linux marketplace and thought "We might not be big enough to compete with Microsoft, but we're big enough to steamroller the competition here". And some of them might even have added "especially with Microsoft backing our play".

I would like to think so and am prepared to wait a while before condemning or exonerating their actions and would hope that a few others may do so too.

Innocent until proven guilty is fair enough. But if you had a suspected ax murderer, you would surely try and keep sharp objects out of their reach, even before the case came to trial. And while Novell haven't killed anyone, it still seems wise to be cautious in our dealings with them whilst their motives are in question.

Actually, PJ did not use quotation marks around the word "Fork", she either doesn't know what the term means or, if she does, she used it cynically. The contributor to /. who submitted the story used the "fork" notation to try and indicate that it wasn't.

Meh. They're there now. Maybe she was persuaded to the view that she got it wrong in the first draft and amended the article. That's one of the things I like about PJ. She tries to tell the truth. I'm willing to cut her a lot of slack for that. Enough I don't assume FUD (as Miguel de Icaza evidently does) when PJ voices an opinion.

They have got a pretty cheap but highly visible and potentially very damaging FUD/Flame/Firefest going without actually having to do a thing themselves.

Agreed. But as I've said elsewhere in this thread, I don't think Redmond strategists do single objective plans; you only have to look at the possible payoffs for them in the SCO business to see how deeply they thought about that one. I'd be very surprised if all they're only objective here was a FUD opportunity. I don't think even MS pays a third of a billion dollars just for FUD.

I've had similar conversations elsewhere on /. and my principal feeling remains unchanged, that the (F)OSS community has enough problems trying to keep adhesion (think Debian) without contributing to a messy civil war that benefits only Microsoft.

"Incorrect. Ballmer stated that the purpose of the Novell-Microsoft agreement was to protect customers against patent litigation (from any possible company). Microsoft made no such statements that they would sue Linux users. If you have a quote from Ballmer or any other Microsoft representative to support your ignorant claim, please provide it."

God I hate shills. Sigh ok then.
http://news.samba.org/announcements/team_to_novell /
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200611032 01234813

Note the quote from Ballmer:

  "Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said his company is open to talking to other Linux distributors about reaching mutual patent coverage deals similar to the agreement signed Nov. 2 with Novell.

Such talks would be a good idea, Ballmer suggested, since now only Novell's SUSE Linux customers are the only Linux vendors that have any assurance that Microsoft won't sue for patent infringement...."

"Done. Here's the first relevant link: (the first link was actually an article about how Apple (a litigious company itself) sued Microsoft over user interface issues: "

Ah the classic astro turfers tactic. When proven wrong try to blame apple!. The first link I got was about how MS sued people over their FAT patent and how the patent was challenged in court and eventually upheld.

But hey no need to face reality when you can pull out the apple wookie heh?

"Did you actually read the article? It clearly disproves the claim that Microsoft sues over its patents."

But it did sue. It sued over FAT patents. It also threatened many companies over other IP and they stopped without going to court. Hell MS sued a 16 year old kid over a domain name!

Why? Well, FLOSS code doesn't have NDA provisions, so Coverity can use the results that they get with FLOSS code in their marketing literature without having to worry about getting sued. As a result, everybody gains. Coverity gets a public testbed for their code, and the OS community gets free access to a tool that many proprietary companies can't afford.

This is the kind of synergy that you get from GPLing away your code.

Really? Just where in the agreement is that?

The two companies also announced an agreement to provide each other's customers with patent coverage for their respective products.

Novell will use its patent portfolio to protect open source products against potential third-party patent challenges, meaning that Novell is prepared to asserts its patents against such third parties.

I can't think of any reason to go to the trouble of removing that page, unless it should turn out that they no longer intend to keep the promise. In combination with the patent coverage deal, I find I have great difficulty imagining Novell emerging as the Defender of Open Source.

So, yeah. "Really".

A plug-in isn't a fork! This is a plug-in development that can be found on SourceForge

MS & Novell Pact:
Good Guys/Bad Guys: Uncertain.
Caught in between: SuSE developers.
Suspicious: Just about anyone caught in the latest paranoid/conspiracy spotlights.
Losers: Novell.
Outright FUD winners: MS and and roving conspiracy theorist(s).

I think there's a little room in the spectrum between... "Novell Enthusiast" let's say, and "Conspiracy Theorist". Room for a little healthy scepticism, perhaps? After all, there are one or two indications that Microsoft may have hatched the odd conspiracy here and there in the past. Given that history, it's hardly irrational to consider that this may be the start of a new one.

The OpenID is in no way related to e-mail address.

Though it's true that when you have well established identity on web, chances of identifying your identity in real world are big. OpenID doesn't change that fact. For example, I have to put my personal info on web so that it can be found by potential customers. And of course spammers know that info too. No way I can make info public and avoid that info being misused. More data are public - more precisely one can link web identity to real person.

As practice have showed, that's still at large not trivial. Recall case with Pamela Jones of GROKLAW when SCOG tried to identify her real identity to silence her. SCOG somewhat succeeded in identifying, but was immediately stroke back for using pretexting/etc to acquire that information. Only few of SCOG corporate shills agreed to publish that info and withdrew it off web in few days afterwards: it is plain illegal to publish private info w/o consent of the person.

"PJ sometimes tends to get emotional - which is absolutely fine by me .."

Shouldn't these comments be directed at the relevent web site. Apart from her emotional state what do you have to say regarding the NOVL/MS deal. I notice in your long response you managed to not mention any of the points in the original article by PJ.

"Groklaw is no longer a reliable source of information. Because it is so obviously biased"

You mean like Hilf or Ballmer are unbiased don't you. Will a non Novell version of OpenOffice.org that includes support for OpenXML be in violation of a MS patent.

was Sometimes (Score:4, ad hominem )

Does anyon know if there's any such thing as a "corporate petition" that I could pesuade my company to join?

There was a petition, but it's largely over and the result of MS at least giving lip service to OpenDocument support has been achieved. It remains to be seen what really happens with the third party plug-ins for MS Office, which is what the support amounts to it may be unsupport. Though the MS sponsored plug-in is the only one that makes the news, the one that has actually entered testing is the OpenDocument Foundation's ODF Plugin for MS Office.

As far as petitions go, about the closest thing right now would be for your business to sign onto the OpenDocument Alliance.

At least groklaw claims it's related.

http://groklaw.net/