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France Leading Charge Against OOXML

Posted by kdawson on from the ceci-n'est-pas-ouvert dept.

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.'"

5 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. Not France, the UK is! by FredDC · · Score: 4, Funny

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

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  2. Re:Korea by MichaelSmith · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

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    http://michaelsmith.id.au
  3. Re:Viva la french! by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Funny

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

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    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  4. Re:Two different replies to this. by Algorithmnast · · Score: 3, Funny

    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. :)
  5. Re:Barack Obama called for data to be stored in... by ozmanjusri · · Score: 3, Funny
    The less you intend to do about something, the more you keep talking about it.

    That would explain this Vista site then.

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    "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."