My latest effort to create a catchphrase

The Dave Winer Contradiction Watch continues today!

Here's Dave on February 26, 2003:

...These days I hear a lot from Microsoft asking what will it take to get us to invest in them. The answer has become clear -- put some of your skin in the game. Implement our protocols and formats in your software, instead of trying to convince us to implement yours in ours. Been there, done that, lost, again and again. No more of that...

And here's Dave on October 12, 2005:

After years of maintaining absolute control over user's data in Microsoft Office, the new version promises to give total control to the user, and creates a path for developers to siphon users from Microsoft to new or specialized products. One would think that this would spawn an explosion of new products designed to please Office users but that's not what's happening. A group of large technology companies is proposing a competing set of formats, and has formed an alliance to confuse the market, and at least double the work of any developer who might want to support their products (with almost no installed base) alongside Microsoft's (with a monopolistic dominant installed base)...

A couple of conclusions can be drawn:

1. When Dave Winer says "our", he really means "mine mine mine!"
2. The OASIS OpenDocument format (published May 1, 2005) is based off of the OpenOffice format, which was based off of the StarOffice format -- at least six years of technological history. Meanwhile, Microsoft's new XML format is completely new as of June 2005, and currently only implemented in a "technical beta". Yet apparently OpenDocument is "confusing" the market.

How do we explain Dave's hypocrisy sudden change-of-heart? Maybe it's because his former employee, Robert Scoble, now works for Microsoft and spends a significant amount of time evangelizing Winer's formats and projects (e.g. RSS and OPML).

Mmmm, teat!