I would like to invite Microsoft to publish, with no strings attached and under the GPLv3, the full and complete specifications to all of the .doc, .ppt and .xls formats. All the various incarnations/versions of the formats should be placed out to the whole world and have it published at sourceforge. Let ooxml fail on its own. I will be more than happy to help in getting good ideas from the .doc, .xls and .ppt formats added into ODF to make it the one Global Document Format that we all need. Enough said.
Thats exactly what customers need!
Instead of abstracting the binary information in XML, Microsoft should just go straight to the binary source and document and standardise its binary format. This is what the billions of customers need, and what the gazillions of documents require for the data to be free.
Customers have been demanding this for over 15 years now. Put up!
yk.
Re: Thats exactly what customers need!
Thanks for agreeing. We need MS to see the simplicity of this argument. Naturally, their larger, let’s-lock-them-in mindset is something else that needs to be fought. The battle is far from over. It will be when they open up.