I’ve been so busy with other stuff that I’ve only peripherally been paying attention to an ongoing meme on the Internet about how the World Wide Web Consortium’s Common Document Format (CDF) had been identified by the OpenDocument Foundation as a superior document format to the OpenDocument Format that it had been backing for so long.

When in mid-October 2007, the OpenDocument Foundation announced that the World Wide Web Consoritum-backed Common Document Format (CDF) was the heir-apparent to what it believed was a dead-on-arrival OpenDocument Format, many confused the ODf to be one in the same with the ODF and the latter to have one foot in the grave.

You must admire their tenacity. Gary Edwards and the pseudonymous "Marbux". The mythology of Silicon Valley is filled with stories of two guys and a garage founding great enterprises. And here we have two guys, and through blogs, interviews, and constant attendance at conferences, they have become some of the most-heard voices on ODF. Maybe it is partly due to the power of the name?

Rob Weir of IBM has just posted a lengthy reply to concerns raised by Marbux and Gary Edwards (OpenDocument Foundation).

The OpenDocument Format Alliance (ODF Alliance) is an organization of governments, academic institutions, associations and industry dedicated to educating policy makers, IT administrators and the public on the benefits and opportunities of ODF. Launched in March 2006, the ODF Alliance now has over 480 member organizations in 53 countries.

"The Open Document Foundation, which consisted of three individuals, disbanded," said Marino Marcich, managing director of the ODF Alliance. "The Foundation's proposals in OASIS did not receive sufficient votes -- quite common in any standards-setting body. Over the past few years, I have worked with the individuals involved. It's unfortunate that they chose to eventually disband the Foundation, but I wish them well."

In shocking news, Microsoft's support of ODF in Microsoft Office is basically unusable in many respects, according to the OpenDocument Format Alliance.

The ODF Alliance today greeted with scepticism Microsoft's announcement of its intention to include support for the OpenDocument Format in the first half of 2009. "The proof will be whether and when Microsoft's promised support for ODF is on par with its support for its own format.

The quest for OpenDocument gets grounded by the hard realities of Microsoft Office-bound business processes. What's next for enterprise users who really want document interoperability?