ODF Alliance: Microsoft Support for ODF is Lacking
The Open Document Format (ODF) Alliance has analyzed whether Microsoft’s Service Pack 2 for Office 2007 fulfills the promise for compatibility with the free document standard. Their findings give little reason to hope.
The standard organization sees the conversion as a kind of litmus test to see just how serious Microsoft is regarding interoperability. Upon analysis, the enterprise has apparently not done a particularly good job of realizing this aim: "unfortunately, serious shortcomings have been identified in Microsoft’s support for ODF.“, stated Marino Marcich (director of the ODF Alliance). “A number of basic interoperability tests between Microsoft Office 2007 and various ODF-supporting software suites revealed that the level of interoperability is far short of what governments around the world are demanding”, according to Marcich. For example, simple spread sheet functions such as addition do not function under the conversion as well as page numbers, diagrams, and other objects are simply missing when opened in the tests.
In addition, the standards activist Rob Weir a couple of days ago came to a similar conclusion using Excel 2007 with Service Pack 2. Pamela Jones of the legal platform Groklaw was also of the mind that Microsoft had failed to deliver „To Microsoft, vendor lock-in is not a bug, I suspect, but a feature.” She elaborated by explaining she never expected a change of opinion regarding the enterprise, but felt for the various worldwide governments truly trying to attain electronic communication interoperability for their citizens. ODF Alliance boss Marcich also sees this goal as endangered with Service Pack 2 for Microsoft Office 2007: “Putting potentially millions of ODF files into circulation that are non-interoperable and incompatible with the ODF support provided by other vendors is a recipe for fragmentation.”
The test results are available as a Fact Sheet on the ODF Alliance Web site.
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.5 Released
Notify your friends, loved ones, and colleagues that the latest version of RHEL is available with plenty of enhancements.
-
Linux Sees Massive Performance Increase from a Single Line of Code
With one line of code, Intel was able to increase the performance of the Linux kernel by 4,000 percent.
-
Fedora KDE Approved as an Official Spin
If you prefer the Plasma desktop environment and the Fedora distribution, you're in luck because there's now an official spin that is listed on the same level as the Fedora Workstation edition.
-
New Steam Client Ups the Ante for Linux
The latest release from Steam has some pretty cool tricks up its sleeve.
-
Gnome OS Transitioning Toward a General-Purpose Distro
If you're looking for the perfectly vanilla take on the Gnome desktop, Gnome OS might be for you.
-
Fedora 41 Released with New Features
If you're a Fedora fan or just looking for a Linux distribution to help you migrate from Windows, Fedora 41 might be just the ticket.
-
AlmaLinux OS Kitten 10 Gives Power Users a Sneak Preview
If you're looking to kick the tires of AlmaLinux's upstream version, the developers have a purrfect solution.
-
Gnome 47.1 Released with a Few Fixes
The latest release of the Gnome desktop is all about fixing a few nagging issues and not about bringing new features into the mix.
-
System76 Unveils an Ampere-Powered Thelio Desktop
If you're looking for a new desktop system for developing autonomous driving and software-defined vehicle solutions. System76 has you covered.
-
VirtualBox 7.1.4 Includes Initial Support for Linux kernel 6.12
The latest version of VirtualBox has arrived and it not only adds initial support for kernel 6.12 but another feature that will make using the virtual machine tool much easier.