IBM's Sutor: ODF SDK moves up on IBM's ToDo list

Moaning slightly about the public nature of our conversation (blog vs. blog), it looks like IBM's director of standards and open source Bob Sutor and I will have to agree to disagree regarding the importance of an IBM/Sun-produced open source-based OpenDocument Format (ODF) Software Development Kit (SDK).  In the final go around, Bob agrees on the virtues of having such an ODF SDK, but disagrees on the priority of having it (I said it was a miscalculation for there not to be one by now).  Responded Bob:

David, to be honest, think you are overstating the importance of an ODF SDK, but I think it would nevertheless a great idea to have one. These things are non-trivial and there is no guarantee that if someone whipped one up that it would 1) good, 2) useful and efficient, or 3) widely used. That said, again, the existence of a really well-designed SDK with multiple language support would certainly help accelerate things. You've certainly raised its priority on our collective todo list, though I do want to say that it's something that's been considered. In fact, seeing a big list of potentially really useful open source code that worked with ODF would be a fine thing, so perhaps this will light a fire under certain people. I say this jokingly, but you know who you are ...

Bob instincts could very well be better than mine on this situation.  He's been an ecosystem guy at IBM for a very long time and his experience probably counts more than the opinion of the few developers I've spoken to. I guess time will tell.  Oh, and Bob, the public nature of this conversation give IBM's customers (and ZDNet's readers) a degree of transparency that they're not accustomed to.  Only good can become of that.