PC Pro: News: New file format causes Mass panic at Microsoft

OASIS is the basis for the XML and PDF file formats used by the open source productivity suite OpenOffice. The endorsement of OASIS has not gone down well in Seattle on the other side of the
continent. Even though the development of OpenOffice as a serious challenger to Microsoft’s dominant Office is still some way off, Microsoft clearly wants to prevent it becoming established as an alternative in Government in the same way that Linux has.

Good for Massachusetts! I’m glad to see them adopting more Open Source Standards. The whiny product manager from MS should STFU. He is all going on about how the next version of Office file format is going to be royalty free, and anyone will be able to develop applications for it. Well who cares ! It wasn’t a community developed so why should people write software to read your stupid file format when MS has full control over the format to change it however they see fit in the future.