Matusow sounds reasonable only if you are not a file format
congnoscenti. He uses an appeal to ignorance. A single universal set of formats is entirely feasible from a technical standpoint; e.g., the example of HTML. But the chances of getting there by opening application-specific formats are dim at best, as the ODF experience teaches. You might acquire an entirely different perspective if you spent some time viewing the short sets of slides from the IDABC Open Document Exchange Formats Workshop 2007, which laid down the market requirements for 21 European government IT national bodies.
http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/6474 (.) I particularly recommend Dr. Barbara Held's report to the plenary session linked from this page,
http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/6704/5935 and the four workshop reports linked from the bottom of this page,
http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/6702/5935 (.) Those slides reflect a lot of careful research into the issue you and Matusow discuss.
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