Microsoft's Open XML Project A Short-Term Fix

TechPro writes "In an interview with eWeek the managing director of the ODF Alliance (Marino Marcich) was pretty dismissive of Microsoft's Open XML Translator project. While the move was a recognition of the ODF Format's acceptance by government's around the world, the installable software plug-ins that would be created under the project were really 'only a bridge, a stopgap measure that will probably not be acceptable to government's around the world over the long term. Plug-ins simply don't give the benefits of open file formats and standards,' he said."

Comments

No Technical Support For The Plugin

[aymanh]

[...] a stopgap measure that will probably not be acceptable to government's around the world over the long term.

According to this blog entry at ZDNet, the author did an interview with MS representatives, and seems like MS doesn't plan to offer technical support for the plugin, and it will forward bug reports to the original authors. This plugin doesn't look different from a 3rd party plugin, so no, I seriously doubt any government will accept it as ODF support in MS Office.

Quoting the blog entry:

Microsoft is on the record as saying it will not be offering technical support to end-users for this translator. In fact, as far as I know, no one will officially be offering support (perhaps one of the three companies involved will, for a fee). As said earlier, Microsoft will accept bug reports and forward them on to the project's developers.