Here's what Updegrove reports:
To find out the facts, I interviewed Chris Lilley, the W3C lead for the CDF
project, and his answer couldn't have been more clear: "The one thing I'd
really want your readers to know is that CDF was not created to be, and
isn't suitable for use as, an office format." In fact, it isn't even an
format at all - although it has been matched for export purposes with
another W3C specification, called WICD - but WICD is a non-editable format
intended for viewing only. Moreover, no one from the Foundation has joined
W3C, nor explained to W3C what the Foundation's founders have in mind.
It is highly unfortunate that the founders of a tax exempt organization
that solicited donations, "To support the community of volunteers in
promoting, improving and providing user assistance for ODF and software
designed to operate on data in this format," should publicly announce that
it believes that ODF will fail. By endorsing a standard that has no
rational relationship to office formats at all, they can only serve to
confuse the marketplace and undermine the efforts of the global community
they claimed to serve.
So, there you have it, straight from the horse's mouth. CDF can't replace ODF, according to Lilley. It wasn't designed to be used as an office format. It's good for other things.
So, was all this media push really about ODF? Or about damaging it with FUD and giving support to Microsoft's assertion that the world craves more than one office format standard so we can all struggle with interoperability complexity for the rest of our born days? And is it a coincidence it all happened on the eve of the next vote in February on Microsoft's competing MSOOXML? Was Microsoft behind this? Or did they just get lucky? Microsoft representatives, like Jason Matusow, certainly gave support to what the 3-man crew was saying, so much so that ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley wrote that, "the ODF camp might unravel before Microsoft’s rival Office Open XML (OOXML) comes up for final international standardization vote early next year." Dream on. ODF is doing fine. It's the OpenDocument Foundation that is shutting down.
But here's my question: did the Microsoft reps not understand the tech, that CDF can't replace ODF? How trust-inspiring do you find that? Or did they think that *we'd* never figure it out? Whatever the story might be, unfortunately for Microsoft, people aren't as dumb as Microsoft needs them to be. FUD has a very limited shelf life in the Internet age. There is always somebody who knows better. And they'll tell the world.
