The Inquirer has an interesting opinion piece called "Microsoft twists and turns over ODF" in which they pick up on the MS-OOXML conversion hoax:

The problem is that if Robertson and Paoli's early claim is correct would be theoretically impossible to convert a plane into a car? If Open XML is so complex it would be a bugger to convert into something as simple as ODF. Unless they have got it all wrong of course.

And link to the six questions about MS-OOXML that are meanwhile available in eight languages. If you want to add more, please check this page on how to get involved in FSFE's translation effort. FSFE will continue to offer information on

• the MS-OOXML archival myth
• the MS-OOXML conversion hoax
• why MS-OOXML means "Microsoft only"

as deep links for the time being, because the topic is still not as widely discussed as it should be. Only yesterday did I have a journalist from a well-known news agency tell me about fearing the topic might be too "technical" for their readers. Formats and protocols are like languages. And formats for office applications concern virtually every computer user and every citizen of every government that makes use of software. So practically everyone who could read this. That ought to be a large enough potential readership to publish something.

In a democracy it is the responsibility of the media to oversee the government, analyse their work and criticise when democratic principles are being thrown overboard -- which unfortunately happens all too often when there is no public scrutiny. A sad example was recently delivered by the Swiss standardisation body for e-government (eCH), which in an act of anticipatory obedience approved MS-OOXML as an Open Standard for Switzerland with a description that reads like it was written by Microsoft's spin-doctors, including the obviously false claim of free implementability across vendors and platforms.

Microsoft certainly has huge advertising budgets, and it is known that they like to wave this fact in front of publishers to get friendlier treatment. So stories about their barely concealed manipulation of UN processes or US state governments usually have a hard time gaining traction in mainstream media.

The BBC and The Inquirer have now given some coverage to this issue, but most journalists are still unaware of the significance of what is going on. So we will need to make them aware. Help us spread the word.

Here are two things you can do easily:

1. Email the newspapers and journalists you may know and ask them to have a look at
   • the MS-OOXML archival myth
   • the MS-OOXML conversion hoax
   • why MS-OOXML means "Microsoft only"
   As well as
   • Dual Standards: More Choice, Or Less?
   • Rob Weir's blog
   • Bob Sutor's blog
   • ODF Alliance web page
   Because unlike MS-OOXML, the Open Document Format (ODF) has support from a large group of independent and competing vendors and implementations.
2. Put this banner on your web page and use it to link to the six questions on MS-OOXML that are still unanswered:
   
   

   <a href="http://fsfeurope.org/documents/msooxml-questions" border="0"><img src="http://fsfeurope.org/graphics/msooxml_small.png" /></a>

Microsoft has been quite busy signing up various associates such as Novell, Xandros, Linspire and Turbolinux to work on its MS-OOXML converter. This was somewhat surprising.

To make myself clear: It was no surprise that Microsoft would try to enroll the help of other companies to make its proprietary format seem more interoperable than it is. It also came as no surprise that some companies were interested enough in improving their cash-flow balance to agree promoting the Microsoft agenda. What came as a surprise was the unquestioning acceptance of the possibility to achieve full interoperability through a converter when Microsoft had already stated that it did not support the Open Document Format (ODF) because it wanted features that ODF did not have.

Ignoring for a moment the point that ODF does not have those features because Microsoft remained a passive observer of the Open Document Format (ODF) standardisation process -- something they could change with the investment of participating in two telephone conferences -- there is a striking weakness to the idea of conversion.

So I wrote a guest commentary for Heise.de, titled "The Converter Hoax" which is online now. The core sentence is probably this one:

If these converters were actually able to do what they promise to do, they would be unnecessary.

The converters ultimately establish a one-way street into vendor lock-in on MS-OOXML, so they end up helping promote lock-in and dependency instead of supporting interoperability and freedom of competition.