Over on Cliff Reeves’ blog a ran into a post about Microsoft filing for the ECMA standard for OpenXML. What I didn’t know was that IBM aparently heaviliy lobbied against it …
…It’s worth noting that IBM lobbied heavily to prevent ECMA from working on Open XML. It’s possible that IBM’s motives have little to do with long-term document access and the pursuit of standards. Exclusive support for ODF (thus blocking the use of Microsoft Office) would provide a much-needed market lift for IBM’s new Workplace product, which relies entirely on ODF and Open Office.
There’s nothing wrong with competing, but Is that what standards leadership is for?…
[Via Most of the time]
