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On July 10, Microsoft announced that Asian Linux distributor Turbolinux is the latest Linux company to join its Ecma Open XML-Open Document Format Translator Project.
Unlike the earlier Microsoft/Linux partnerships—Novell, Xandros and Linspire—theres no patent agreement or any other technical partnerships. This project seeks to create tools to build a “technical bridge” between Microsofts Open XML Formats and ODF (Open Document Format).
This is not Turbolinuxs first partnership with Microsoft. In 2004, Turbolinux made a deal with Microsoft to enable its desktop line, starting with Turbolinux 10 F, to ship a media player thats could legally play movies and music encoded in Microsofts proprietary WMF (Windows Media Format).
As for this newest deal, in a statement, Koichi Yano, CEO of Turbolinux said: “We support the work the Sourceforge open-source community has done to date and felt it was important to become a part of this amazing collaborative effort. Our hope in joining this project is to not only contribute our own expertise in working with ODF files, but also to enable choice in formats for our own customers in the near future.”