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

Re:Korea

[Anonymous Coward]

So they know the pains of vendor lockin.

Two different replies to this.

[Thanshin]

From two coworkers not directly related to computer science:

- What? Everybody uses Word.

- Oh, dear god, please let them reach a consensus.

Guess which one works as the step between scientific writers and printing services.

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

[dkleinsc]

I have no problem supporting a candidate who hires and listens to advisers that tell him to talk about the value of open file formats. Heck, acknowledging there's a problem that publicly is a great step. Compare that to another candidate, say someone named Willamy Blimpton, who listens to advisers that tell her to play down the issue or waffle so they can gain the support of Microsoft, and you'll see that the "he just listens to his advisers" isn't all that useful an argument.