Today I experienced two moments of bewilderment, the second one mixed with dismay. At first, when I googled for something unrelated, on one of the returns I saw a forum post where someone said "Icaza himself says that OOXML is superb". Well, first I was amazed, then I shrugged, and wrote it off as a troll, and continued with my other tasks. Two hours later I remembered again.

So I googled once more. This time simply for OOXML +superb. And sure enough, I found this (may also be found here).

The Google group where this quote (which is only 5 days old) is from, is setup by Miguel himself, specifically to provide a feedback forum for his blog. Here is the quote. The emphasize was added by me:

 

OOXML is a superb standard and yet, it has been FUDed so badly by its competitors that serious people believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with it. This is at a time when OOXML as a spec is in much better shape than any other spec on that space.

Besides, it is always better to have two implementations and then standardize than trying to standardize a single implementation.

Come on, Miguel! Please tell us this is not what you said. This must be a forgery. Google must have f+cked up with its archive. Microsoft hackers must have cracked the hosting server. Or your email account, and they posted under your name. Or you didn't mean it. You had a terrible headache that Wednesday night. You thought it's April Fool's Day, and it was a good joke. You just wanted to test if it gets noticed.

Whatever. Just tell us that it is not what you really think about OOXML.

Update: So it's true. It IS his opinion, and it is not misrepresented. -- I'm speechless. Returning to the base office after a long workday spent on a customers' site, not only do I find my blog entry having been submitted by someone to Slashdot and to Digg, but also Miguel has now personally confirmed above quote in a long Slasdot comment. If you want to read all of his arguments, be sure to search for 'miguel (7116)'   on   each   of   the   expanded   Slashdot   pages. I'm tired now, and I myself haven't yet read all of his reasonings (and probably never will). I'm also speechless... (oh, I said so already...).