[OpenDoc Announce] Request to Microsoft from OpenDoc Society

[Mailing list for announcements for all OpenDoc Society members]

Dear members,


(apologies if you have already received this mail through some other
way). Today the board of OpenDoc Society sent a request by fax and
courier to Redmond, WA to the company behind the Windows operating
systems, Microsoft. In that letter - the text of which you will find
below - we request access to their well-known software platfrom to
point users to the existence of different ODF applications as soon as
they first encounter an ODF file.

Microsoft used a similar technology to point users to a compatibility
pack for its new archiving format DOCX (an older precursor to the
controversial OOXML fileformat it brought to ISO for potential
standardisation) recently. Since Microsoft chooses not to officially
deploy ODF until this moment in time, its users do not get serviced
with an ODF solution.

We believe the technology behind this is straightforward, and so is
the anti-competitive context in which we have a right to acquire
such a service at a reasonable cost-based price. We have quite high
expectations of our proposal to mr. Ballmer, which might finally
provide equal access to the digital document market.

We  feel this has a very interesting potential to transfer a large
number of Windows users to ODF consumers in an easy and semi-automatic
way. As soon as we receive an answer back from mr. Ballmer, you will
hear from us.

Kind regards,

on behalf of the board of OpenDoc Society
Michiel Leenaars

----------------------------
Microsoft Corp
attn. Mr. Steve Ballmer
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-7329
USA

Date: 22/01/2008
Telephone: +31 20 888 4251
E-mail: michiel at opendocsociety.org

                             Amsterdam, January 22nd 2008

Dear mr. Ballmer,

on behalf of OpenDoc Society I want to request the following:

we would like to have the possibility to enable the users of the
Windows platforms to work with the Open Document Format (ISO
26300:2006, or ODF for short). We think there is a significant amount
of Windows users that would be helped with this technology.

What is the price your company would charge us for pushing a mechanism
to your users through the AutoUpdate-facility of Windows and/or
Microsoft Office that should activate at the first encounter of a user
with an ODF file? Your operating system Windows should then prompt the
user with some information about the available software that works with
ODF, and how to install that software that would enable him or her to
make use of ODF. Preferably we would like the user to have as little
work as possible during the whole process.

Can you tell us what the different options are in this respect, and
what these different options would cost? Potentially, we would be
interested in some other file formats currently not available under a
vanilla Windows installation too - such as SVG, RDF and SMIL. Are there
other options available to us to have third party applications
installed in Windows when a user encounters them?

As you will understand, we are eager to start using this post-factory
file extension facility as soon as possible. Would it be possible for
you to respond by February 14th 2008?

Kind regards,

Michiel Leenaars
Board of OpenDoc Society
					
For correspondence please use:

OpenDoc Society Intnl. secretariat
Wibautstraat 150
1091 GR Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Phone: +31 20 888 4251
Fax: +31 84 712 2055