Linspire pays the cost of Volish agreement

LINUX DISTRIBUTOR Linspire has shown what it is costing it to sign a deal with Microsoft over patents.

This morning a press release winged its way from Linspire which said the outfit was "joining the current efforts to improve the ability of OpenOffice.org users to work with the Office Open XML format by increasing the interoperability between ODF and Open XML".

These efforts are being carried out by other Volish pact members Novell and Xandros who apparently want to create bi-directional open source translators for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations between ODF and Open XML.

Open XML is Microsoft's effort to create something to rival the ODF and having its recent defectors on its side it makes it possible to kill off attempts by local authorities to use ODF exclusively.

The spin is that users of Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org will be able to more easily share files, as documents will better. In reality it will mean that the ODF standard could become less popular even among Linux users.

Kevin Carmony, CEO of Linspire claimed that for Linux to gain acceptance beyond the server, it must interoperate within something he calls "the broader desktop computing ecosystem". This means that working with Microsoft Office documents is critical, he said.

Another idea is that Microsoft could adopt the Open Document Standard and merge its Office functionality with Linux, so why is lobbying for that unacceptable to members of Vole's new axis? µ