Back to Edinburgh after two weeks’ holiday on the Isle of Mull off Scotland’s west coast. The island lived up to its reputation as a wildlife paradise, with otters, seals, deer, golden eagles etc visible from our two cottages on the southern and northern edges of the island. A whole fortnight without internet access!

However, the mobile phone still kicked into life in the oddest places where a break in the geography suddenly provided a signal. As a result I’d find myself answering calls from journalists half way up a mountain, or wandering along a remote coastal path. Not the easiest of places to formulate a coherent response to what sounded increasingly like a concerted Microsoft onslaught against OpenDocument Format (ODF) and OpenOffice.org:

• Why is Microsoft so against ODF and its proponents (especially IBM)? Maybe you should ask Microsoft – why are they trying to set up a rival ‘standard’ when ODF has been endorsed by the ISO and of course by leading industry players like IBM? more
• Why is Microsoft supporting the adoption of ODF as an ANSI standard? (I’m sorry, would you repeat the question? did you say supporting ?) Maybe MS has at last seen the light – the lion is lying down with the lamb, warriors are beating their swords into ploughshares, world peace has broken out, and famine and disease has been abolished from the face of the earth. more
• What about Microsoft’s claim that OpenOffice.org violates over forty MS patents? Microsoft and other US hi-tech companies have been taking out patents on everything: from the way we click our mice to how websites work. These patents are ridiculous and would be thrown out by a court. more
• Microsoft states that ODF is incapable of storing MS-Office documents More nonsense. Try this simple experiment: create a document in MS-Word and store it in .doc format. Open it in Writer and save it in ODF. Open the ODF in Writer and compare it with the original MS-Word document. They are identical. Therefore, ODF is capable of storing MS-Office documents without any loss of information, formatting, etc. more

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