Unfortunately, Corel said none of that, and in fact has meekly surrendered to Microsoft by all but abandoning ODF. An especially unpleasant element of that turnabout is that Corel has backtracked on assurances it gave Massachusetts that it would support the state's controversial effort to standardize on ODF -- a standard that Corel itself was instrumental in formulating.

Last fall, in response to former Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn's request for feedback on the Enterprise Technical Reference Model, which identified ODF as the state's standard for creating and saving official records, Richard Carriere, Corel's general manager for office productivity, was effusive in his support. Here's an excerpt from his response:

"Corel strongly supports the broad adoption of the open standards Massachusetts has outlined, including XML, the OASIS Open Document Format and PDF. ... Corel is an original member of the OASIS Technical Committee on the Open Document Format, and Paul Langille, a senior Corel developer, is among the original four authors of the ODF specification. Suffice to say, Corel remains committed to working alongside OASIS and other technology vendors to ensure the continued evolution of the ODF standard and the adoption of open standards industrywide."

So one can only imagine Quinn's frustration when in January Corel released WordPerfect Office X3, the latest version of the office productivity suite, without ODF support. And that frustration must surely be shared by Quinn's successor, Louis Gutierrez, as Corel executives tap-dance awkwardly around the question and distance themselves from ODF.

Corel's lack of fortitude to stand alongside IBM and Sun in the quest to popularize ODF as a viable alternative to Microsoft is disgusting. The going got tough, and the timid turned and ran.