I was talking with a friend about OpenDocument, and why I think it is just a name empty of an effective ability to share the documents saved in that format between different software (remember my thoughts about ODF?), and I was pointed at a blog entry of Uwe Hermann (Debian developer, if I remember correctly), read of it here.
Yes, probably the specifications of OpenXML are overly comprehensive, to the point they are most likely useless (I maintain that too long specifications are pointless, too), but OpenDocument specifications are too empty of content; they don’t seem to specify enough details so that the documents can be shared between two implementations, like KWord’s and OpenOffice’s.
And yes, it seems like the bug I reported about two years ago it’s not fixed yet. So maybe, but just maybe, this time Microsoft might make something good for Free Software too, if OpenXML is absolute enough for the same document to be rendered in the same way on Office, OpenOffice and KOffice.
Of course, it would be of no use if they patent it.