OpenDocument Foundation To Drop ODF

poet sends us to Computerworld for a story on the intention of the OpenDocument Foundation to drop support for Open Document Format, OASIS and ISO standards not withstanding, in favor of the Compound Documents Format being promoted by the W3C. The foundation's director of business affairs, Sam Hiser, dropped this bomb in a blog posting a couple of weeks ago. Hiser believes CDF has a better shot at compatibility with Microsoft's OOXML, and says that the foundation has been disappointed with the direction of ODF over the last year.

Comments

Huh?

[LiquidCoooled]

is it April 1st?
Is this posted on theonion?
is taco drunk in charge of a keyboard?
has darl got a new job?

How much has ballmer paid to give such a turnaround?

Have you been bought, sir ?

[unity100]

compatibility with Microsoft's OOXML what the f**k does that mean ? we are trying to make ODF THE format, we dont care about what ms is pushing or its compatibility. ms should try to make whatever they have compatible with it. they have forced enough stuff to the i.t. world already, its time they adapt their ways to what majority wants.

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[oldosadmin]

As one of the founding members of the OpenDocument Fellowship http://opendocumentfellowship.com/ (although I no longer consider myself a member due to time constraints), I can say that in every effort made to get a real community going with ODF/OO.org there was always a pushback from Sun, and it's really sad to see. I don't think Sam is right that CDF is the answer, but I do think that his comments about Sun not caring about ODF are probably very true.

OpenDocument is an already vetted ISO format. Why should we return to the back of the line now? We have our format, it's approved, and has support in many applications. No need to start bickering between ourselves when we're already fighting a lot of the corporate proprietary software makers.

Re:This is Sun's Fault

[mmurphy000]

Blame Sun for this. With a few small additions, ODF could have supported Office formats as well, but Sun would not allow this. Their policy is that ODF will support what is needed for StarOffice, and nothing more. They control the ODF technical committee, and their patent license allows them to stop the ODF TC if the ODF TC goes in a direction Sun does not like.

Citations, please. If you're going to lob grenades like this, you owe it to your readers to offer proof of these accusations. I'm not saying you're wrong — I can see some factions within Sun taking this approach — but it'd be nice if you offered some proof.