In spite of their public opposition to Microsoft’s attempt to get the ISO standardization nod for its Office Open XML (OOXML) document format, IBM and Google quietly are supporting OOXML.

Although Microsoft publicly testifies from every available pulpit of their deep longing for multiple document formats, a quick glance at reality shows that this love remains unrequited in their products. For example, what new formats does Office 2007 include out of the box?

In a resounding victory for Microsoft Corp., bills seeking to mandate the use of open document formats by government agencies have been defeated in five states, and only a much-watered-down version of such legislation was signed into law in a sixth state.

Sun has released the final version of its Open Document Format (ODF) plug-in for Microsoft Office, designed to allow the ODF standard to better compete with Microsoft's dominant Office formats.

For years Microsoft has had the de facto "standard" everything simpy because the majority of people use it and think it is the standard. Microsoft never did anything about this. It enjoyed the de facto standard position and never actually sought to makes it formats actual standards. But in 2006 something happened.

Few people in the open source community have touched as many projects as Leslie Hawthorn, the now-former open source program manager for Google. As one of less than ten employees in Google's open source programs office, Hawthorn was at the center of the Google Summer of Code — a project that has worked with hundreds of projects and thousands of college students since its inception in 2005.

During the LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco, I met with Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president of open source and standards. We discussed document standards and the implications of ISO's controversial decision to grant fast-track approval to Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) format.

Following criticism from the Open Source Industry Association (OSIA) over its ambition to have the Office Open XML (Open XML or OOXML) format accepted as an international (ISO) standard, Microsoft's group product manager for Microsoft Office, Gray Knowlton, spoke with Computerworld about why the world needs two standard document formats.

For the sake of free software, please help defend Taiwan from Microsoft's docx file format invasion. Please help odf plugin for firefox more than you do with the docx plugin. Otherwise, you could be hurting open file format as you contribute to one controversial piece of free software, and ultimately hurt the entire FS landscape as a whole.