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Ray Ozzie Effect: Microsoft takes a U-Turn on OpenDoc Support in Office 2007

Microsoft was never ready to include ODF Support in Office 2007 [or 2008].

So a group of software companies initiated the OpenOpenOffice Project to build an external add-in that will bring OpenDocument support in Microsoft Office suite.

Today, Microsoft reversed it's stand on OpenDoc support and they are launching an Open XML Translator project on SourceForge.net that will let users convert Microsoft Office documents to OpenDocument. Because Open Office XML is backward-compatible, the translator will work with older versions of Office.

Update: Microsoft has officially confirmed that is sponsoring open source project for Open XML-ODF file translation. The prototype is already available on Soureforge.net.

Brian Jones, program manager for Microsoft Office, says that ODF support for Office was built following requests [or, pressure] from Governments - there's no strong demand for ODF support from corporate or consumer customers.

What caused Microsoft to change their decision ? It's either the O3 project or the Ray Ozzie effect. I think it's the latter.

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