I have no idea what this article is intending to express. It is artificially complex to dump the exact implementations of your legacy products into a giant data structure and call it a standard. Nobody can implement that. Which is why they had to bribe, stuff committees and bully people to get it done.

I don't think anyone cares about debating the word "artificial," I don't think that was anyone's point. It's just not a standard. It was, as is made clear here, a way to head off a standard that would be possible to competitors to implement with a fake standard that Microsoft couldn't even implement.

I also don't think that it is "a counterproductive reflex that’s common in open-source circles: scolding users for accepting proprietary tech." I don't even know wtf that's supposed to mean. People are stuck with it because of corruption, they're not being scolded for using it.

edit: "LibreOffice itself, as ODF’s flagship, still suffers from rough edges in design, interaction, and performance. As a result, even as Office hobble itself with bloat, most people still find it easier."

Yeah, it'd be a lot easier if they didn't every have to deal with OOXML and could just work on their own product.