Jonathan Murray is Microsoft’s Worldwide Technology Officer for the Public Sector and has a post as to why he thinks IBM is making objections to Open XML becoming an ISO standard. This is interesting as I posted about maybe ODF wasn’t neceassrily the panacea that perhaps I had originally thought and Dave Overton added his comments to that discussion. Jonathan’s opening remarks are absolutely true and you can apply these to any company.
“I have written in the past, that the one of the most important things to look at when evaluating a company’s actions is the set of unspoken motivations driven by the company’s fundamental business model.”
It’s certainly true that IBM uses parts of OpenOffice/ODF for its products such as Workplace Services Express which is the equivalent of Sharepoint Services, so I guess they have some vested interest in it. So does that mean Microsoft is not being altruistic here as well?
![[This is a SBS Community blog you are reading. Are you subscribed to the Official SBS blog?]](http://www.sbslinks.com/images/sbsblogweb.jpg "This is a SBS Community Blog you are reading. Are you subscribed to the Official SBS blog?")
February 12th, 2007 at 12:32 am
Of course Microsoft is not being altruistc - no more than I am being altruistic when I offer to help companies get set up on Office Live for free. I’m doing it because I have more to gain than if I did not do it. Microsoft is simply defending itself from allegations of anti-competitive behaviour. How can you be anti-competitive when you’ve given your file formats to all and sundry? No matter that the competition has already nailed their colours to a different mast. No matter that they’d have to spend $10 billion to catch up. Microsoft has little to lose by publishing its file formats and lots to gain. What’s the down side?