IBM has officially launched the commercial version of its Lotus Symphony suite of productivity applications, and looks set amount a challenge to Microsoft Office in its enterprise heartland.

There seems to be a push to rewrite history about Microsoft's aggressive fight against ODF

Venezuela became the latest in a string of countries to appeal the approval of Microsoft's Office Open XML file format as an international standard. The format was approved in an international vote after a fast-track process that several participating countries say was flawed.

ComputerWorld Denmark is reporting that a strong letter of protest has been sent to ISO from Open Source Leverandørforeningen in Denmark (OSL): President Morten Kjærsgaard from OSL have today lodged an official complaint to the ISO Vice President Jacob Holmblad, who also sits as managing director of Danish Standard.

Microsoft is citing customer demand to explain its change of heart. While I doubt that many customers asked for ODF in particular, it's clear that there's sufficient demand for better document format standards in general. Microsoft believed that it could satisfy these demands by crafting its own format, and by pushing it through the ISO standards process.

Increasing levels of evidence that ODF gives Microsoft a run for the money, a run from the law (and a runaway from EU fines).

There are reasons to be repelled by Microsoft's attempts not just to deceive and freeze, but also to approach 'enemy lines', maybe maliciously.

The ODF Alliance today greeted with scepticism Microsoft's announcement of its intention to include support for the OpenDocument Format in the first half of 2009. "The proof will be whether and when Microsoft's promised support for ODF is on par with its support for its own format.