[odf-discuss] Huge Success for the ODF Community - Erwin's StarOffice Tango

[marbux]

On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 8:33 AM, Russell Ossendryver
<worldlabel at gmail.com> wrote:
> Huge Success for the ODF Community
> First, I warmly welcome Microsoft to the community of ODF supporters. As
> most of you will have noticed by now, Microsoft just announced that they
> will start supporting ODF out of the box with Service Pack 2 for Microsoft
> Office 2007. My favorite statement from the Microsoft announcement is the
> following promise: "It will also allow customers to set ODF as the default
> file format for Office 2007." Thus, very soon it should be very easy for
> organizations to standardize their document workflows on ODF, because the
> "average employee" does not need any special skills for saving to ODF
> anymore. Very cool!
> http://blogs.sun.com/dancer/entry/huge_success_for_the_odf
>

The more interesting part to me was Phipps' closing:

"Of course, I might also reflect on the fact they are finally doing
exactly what Stephe Walli said they ought to do to kill ODF. But for
now, it's huge, warm congratulations on giving your customers the
freedom to leave and the confidence to stay - and a small British
mutter of "about bloody time".

If one reads the linked piece from 2005 by former Microsoft exec
Stephen Walli, <http://stephesblog.blogs.com/my_weblog/2005/12/how_microsoft_s.html>,
one may only scratch one's head over Phipps' "small British mutter of
'about bloody time.'"

Best regards,

Marbux