RTF a standard? (Re: Like I KEEP saying)

I am not entirely sure why anyone would recommend using RTF with Microsoft Office. This "standard" is de facto controlled by Microsoft, and the RTF saved by Microsoft products is as ever-changing poorly document as all their other file formats. There has even been an anti-trust complaint about Microsoft's handling of RTF. It may be that there are published specifications for RTF, but, as with OOXML (or whatever it is called now), saying it is a "standard" does not help much when writing programs to deal with the junk created by Microsoft products.