An article by Steve Lohr of the The New York Times discusses the recent moves by IBM to further embrace OpenOffice.org as a way to promote the OpenDocument file format standard.
This is an attempt by various vendors to force a market correction to deal with the Microsoft Office monopoly. This is something that governments should be doing by properly including anti-trust/competition policy goals within PCT revision.
Any inroads IBM and its allies make against Microsoft, analysts say, will not come easily. "Three major players--IBM, Google and Sun--are now solidly behind a potential competing standard to Office," said Rob Koplowitz, an analyst at Forrester Research. "But it's a tough road. Office is very entrenched."
This article didn't adequately credit Novell which has also been a major contributor to the OpenOffice.org codebase.