France Leading Charge Against OOXML

Bergkamp10 writes "As Microsoft's Office Open XML document format waits in ISO limbo, South Africa, Korea, and the Netherlands are now actively pursuing the alternative Open Document Format instead, said the ODF Alliance. The Alliance now claims 500 members, and by their count 13 nations have announced laws or rules that favor the use ODF over Microsoft's Office formats. Those nations include Russia, Malaysia, Japan, France, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, and Norway. The French have been the most aggressive in their rejection of Microsoft's standard; nearly half a million French government employees are being switched to OpenOffice. There has been no similar move in the US, though in a speech at Google last week Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama called for data to be stored in 'universally accessible formats.'"

Comments

Not France, the UK is!

[FredDC]

The UK is even going as far as open sourcing their data!

Not quite that open yet

[RuBLed]

Would they let me cvs changes I made back in?

*ducks*

Re:Korea

[MichaelSmith]

how many websites there relied on active x code that was incompatible with Vista

God don't get me started. I spent a week working at a customer site in S Korea about a month ago. At one point I had to get a deb package for my laptop and asked if I could plug it into their internet facing network. But it was no-go. Whatever URL I put in got back a javascript redirect to a page apparently telling me I had to use IE. Not an easy thing to do in Ubuntu.

So I gave a USB stick to a Korean co-worker and he tried to download the same file. Again no go. Gets the same page. Then he gave me the USB stick back and retried the page on the off chance and the bloody thing worked. This machine only gets you to real web pages if you are on windows and don't have a USB storage device mounted. Its meant to be secure I suppose.

For some reason the Koreans just love hacks like that. I don't know why. I was happy to get back home after that.

Great, now the U.K. has to support Microsoft.

[gbulmash]

The general opinion of many of the Brits I've known has been: "if France is for it, there's got to be something wrong with it." Maybe the British can still support OOXML, but the French will pronounce the acronym as "oohjemel" while the British will annoy the French by pronouncing it "oxemul".

- Greg

Really Accessible

[professorfalcon]

Barack Obama called for data to be stored in 'universally accessible formats.'

Like printouts?

Re:Really Accessible

[Oktober Sunset]

no, like your mom.

Sorry, I couldn't resist, you gave it to me on a plate.

Kinda like your mom did.

Re:Viva la french!

[Hognoxious]

It's just an interim move until OnStrikeOffice comes out.

Re:Two different replies to this.

[Algorithmnast]

What, don't all scientific writers use some form of TeX? I'm shocked. Shocked to the core! Some day they'll discover that Word's binary format is actually Microsoft's best attempt to encrypt TeX source. :)

Re:Korea

[Oktober Sunset]

you have an ass and a half? What is that like 3 butt cheeks? wow

No, 'universally accessible' the British way

[cheros]

You store it on CDs and then put it in the post. That way, potentially anyone can get it :-).

Re:Viva la french!

[Anonymous Coward]

To Hell with them, I still eating "freedom fries".

Re:Viva la french!

[smittyoneeach]

Hmmm...sending all those coke-addled Hollywood degenerates to France...not such a bad idea...
Oh, and maybe they can take Rendition with them.

Re:Viva la french!

[DFJA]

I don't think they lose pay when they go on strike in France. If they ever tried to introduce such a measure then the whole country would go on strike.

Oh hang on.........

Re:Barack Obama called for data to be stored in...

[ozmanjusri]

The less you intend to do about something, the more you keep talking about it.

That would explain this Vista site then.