From Slashdot:

mahuyar writes “Microsoft executives have accused IBM of leading the campaign against their initiative to have Office Open XML approved by the International Organization for Standardization. ‘Nicos Tsilas, senior director of interoperability and IP policy at Microsoft, said that IBM and the likes of the Free Software Foundation have been lobbying governments to mandate the rival OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard to the exclusion of any other format. “They have made this a religious and highly political debate,” Tsilas said. “They are doing this because it is advancing their business model. Over 50 percent of IBM’s revenues come from consulting services.”‘”

They say this like it’s a bad thing. It might be bad for THEM, but overall it’s a good thing. Isn’t this how the standards process is supposed to work? Interested parties get together and make proposals, vote on them, lobby each other to accept certain changes, etc. Microsoft should just drop OOXML. It’s not a standard, because only THEY are intereested in it, and it’ll only ever work for them. They should adopt ODF, and let their products compete on a level playing field. Or is that what they’re afraid of?