I am Swedish, which means I can read Danish reasonably well, and I was very puzzled by the wording of that e-mail. This is such very strange behavior. Why even mention Thomas Breinstrup at all? They even play a game of deceit on their own partners by pretending that this journalist was somehow involved.
Particularly two sections stand out as remarkable (my translation):
We have gone as far as to secure the development of a converter between Open XML and ODF to enable interoperability. However, with this converter we cannot be certain that documents are converted without changes or loss of data, because Microsoft Office (Open XML) and Open Office (ODF) are far from having the same functionality. This last point is something our adversaries in the debate often forget.
This is a change of tone from what we have heard from Microsoft's own marketing: good, working translators between ODF and OOXML will be provided, so we don't need to worry one bit about interoperability. Also, we see here once again the inability to distinguish between file formats and applications. MS Office is directly equated with OOXML, which could actually be taken as a serious standpoint and a true lack of distinction because it is their software and their format. (How does that one-to-one correspondence foster interoperability?) However, Open Office is similarly directly equated with ODF, which is a simplification dangerously balancing on the edge of being an outright lie.
Which unique functionality of Microsoft Office is it that ODF cannot support, even using the extension mechanisms provided in ODF? Many have asked this question for a long time, and if Microsoft doesn't provide an answer, I see good reasons to suspect they are actually lying, or at least assuming things about the unsuitability of ODF without proper investigations. ODF is open, it is not evil in itself. Sure, it is the file format of Microsoft's competitors, but isn't that exactly what interoperability is all about: competing on equal ground and bashing the competition by having a superior product which everyone wants? If Microsoft Office had good ODF support, I would be more willing to use it, because then I could send MS Office documents in ODF format to people who can not afford MS Office or are on a platform where it is not available, and still expect them to be able to work with them.
We ask you to do this to secure the options for your business to choose IT systems which fit your current and future needs, without the public administration imposing standards on you which are not suitable for your business.
This is a strongly coercive statement, there is no doubt about that. "If you do not support this standard, you will be forced by the government to use another standard which will make it impossible for you to do business." The use of the seemingly nice phrase "We ask you" is deceptive. The statement is in fact saying "you need to do this if you want to remain in business". While that might be Microsoft's opinion, it is not stated as such, it is stated as a fact, and no judgment is left to the receiving party. Seeing as Denmark just before summer took a decision to actually allow OOXML to be used by public administration in addition to ODF (the decision is even quoted at the beginning of the message), this perception of a threat is strange and objectionable.
If Microsoft is really serious about trying to open up and cease their their lock-in tactics by offering real collaboration around international open standards, it is about time they come clean on why they have been playing so dirty here. If they do not address to satisfaction the many accusations of outright foul play and subversive methods, there will be no face left to save.
Microsoft, your silence in terms of technical reasons speaks far too loudly about hidden intentions. Regardless of whether this is inadvertent or not it is about time you started to really talk about the technical stuff and leave politics aside. You made this a political debate. You made it be about something else than technical standpoints. You made this take an ugly turn by your choice of actions. You. If you and ECMA would be prepared to retract the submission and fix it, people would not be nearly as negative to your opinion that you need a standard of your own. It just might be an OK solution, I really don't have a final opinion on that. However, there is no way I would sit and watch in silence while a standard as bad as ECMA 376 received ISO certification by use of illicit tactics. OOXML is bad. Broken. Not finished. Do you really fail to see that? Are you really, honestly, that incompetent? If so, I do not trust you to write software for me. And why did you even think that it would be a good idea to force a standard through the system? If you can't create a standard which is good enough to pass reasonably unscathed through a technical review, you simply do not deserve to have one. OOXML has been shot down on hundreds of technical issues, it's not just evil-minded political opposition. Face it, and stop pretending otherwise.
