[steve1977]

Thanks for the comment. I could imagine that some of the points you mentioned might be related to Microsofts focus on backward compatibility. Some of the points certainly might also have less noble reasons.

[rstuart4133]

So less noble that the Swedes invalided their own yes vote on the acceptance of OOXML once they discovered how it was obtained: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070830155109351

Quoting the article:

   "Microsoft Corp. admitted Wednesday that an employee at its Swedish
   subsidiary offered monetary compensation to partners for voting in
   favor of the Office Open XML document format's approval as an ISO standard."