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India Decides to Vote "No" For OOXML

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the still-undecided dept.

Indian writes to mention that after an intense meeting at Delhi's Manak Bhawan the 21-member technical committee has decided to vote against Microsoft's Open Office Extensible Mark Up Language (OOXML) standard at the September meeting of the International Standards Organization (ISO). "Microsoft said it respects the government's decision. 'There were only three options "Yes", "No" and "Abstain" to be taken and we respect the government's decision,' Microsoft's legal affairs head Rakesh Bakshi said. He, however, added that India's 'No' vote will become a 'Yes' if Microsoft is able to resolve all technical issues with OOXML before the ballot resolution committee of ISO."

7 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. In related News: Germany will vote YES by Alphager · · Score: 4, Informative

    Germany's DIN has voted to vote YES (sorry, article in german) at ISO.

  2. minor gripe by farlukar · · Score: 5, Informative

    Office Open XML, not Open Office

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    Ceci n'est pas une .sig
  3. Re:Oh goodie, MS has to patch bugs on a deadline by e6003 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Depending on one's definition of "technical problems" then there's a lot of patching to do because many of the problems are very deeply embedded. I don't just mean the infamous "auto space like Word 95" tags, but the lack of support for dates before 1900, the redefinition of the colourspace to clash with existing ISO standards and the hard-coded definition of non-working days to be Saturday and Sunday (which they are in Western culture but aren't in the Arabic world). A fairly comprehensive list of OOXML's failures is at http://www.grokdoc.net/index.php/EOOXML_Objections _Clearinghouse and it's an editable wiki as well.

  4. Details on Indian campaign by anivararavind · · Score: 5, Informative
    Some quick links on Background of this campaign:

    ODFAlliance India Mirror on Wordprocessing-ML subcommittee discussions

    Issue List submitted to the Technical Committee by the WordProcessing ML Sub Committee

    Why ECMA OOXML is not a Free Document standard :Paper By Dr. Nagarjuna

    My Earlier Post : Defeat M$ efforts to push Ecma OOXML in Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) Economic Times Report says

    "We unanimously agree on the disapproval of OOXML with comments. The same will be submitted to ISO," National Informatics Centre head and BIS technical committee chairperson Nita Verma said after a marathon meeting that lasted over six hours. There was no need for a voting as only Infosys Technologies and CSI supported Microsoft.
    Shame on You Infosys
  5. Re:Respect by ozmanjusri · · Score: 4, Informative
    Microsoft (or "M$", as your adult-self calls it) wasn't involved in the deal.

    No, Microsoft's statement was:

    "We provided no financial incentives to Paramount or DreamWorks whatsoever,"
    Amir Majidimehr, head of Microsoft's consumer media technology group. Microsoft (and others) provided money to the HD DVD Promotion Group. The HD DVD Promotion Group provided money to the studios.

    It's called "plausible deniability".

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    "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
  6. Re:123 countries vote for a standard by ozmanjusri · · Score: 4, Informative
    About 123 counties are participating in the vote. Does anyone here know which countries, and what they voted for, if they have voted already?

    Some of those countries "participating" are observers.

    This is the best explanation of the voting process I have seen.
    http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/02/merely-flesh-w ound.html

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    "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
  7. Re:Is ODF really much better? by Twinkle · · Score: 5, Informative

    ODF is fully specified, OOXML is not.

    There's no comparison, ODF is a complete description of a document, OOXML has things like "use word 95 rules" or "important undocumented binary blob here". OOXML is a Trojan horse.