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India Third to Appeal ISO's OOXML Approval
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "India is now the third country to appeal the ISO's approval of OOXML, with their appeal arriving just before the deadline last night. According to PC World, this makes OOXML the first BRM process under ISO/JTC 1 to be appealed, which leaves us in uncharted territory. Although there was substantial confusion in the comments on yesterday's story, Brazil is really appealing, not merely disapproving, of OOXML, having sent a letter that begins with 'The Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas (ABNT), as a P member of ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC34, would like to present, to ISO/IEC/JTC1 and ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC34, this appeal for reconsideration of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 final result.' Groklaw speculates that this may have something to do with Microsoft hedging their bets by supporting ODF 1.1 in Office 2007, though we probably won't see any more countries appeal now that the deadline has passed."
Uh, actually, I'm sure they're thinking plenty hard about playing nice, and seeing as there is a competitor (OO is taking away some of their customers, even if only the ones who don't care about spread sheets going beyond 256 columns, and since it keeps getting markedly better where Office keeps getting markedly more irritating...) have decided that is a risk they simply cannot afford to take.
You must have been asleep for the past 2 decades, because otherwise you'd know by now that Microsoft's version of "playing nice" is creating a de facto standard that they alone control then avoiding making any changes 9even positive ones) to it so long as nobody else is in the game.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
Second and third world countries that represent a huge market.
Brazil for example, is in the top 10 countries by both Internet Users and Time Spent Online, usually in the 2 top spots in the latter. Ok, most of this time is spent by teenagers in useless thing like Orkut and MSN, but whatever.
The important thing in this is: information can and WILL spread like a wildfire. And be sure that many people will embrace it.
If these "not-real" countries continue their "line of thinking", in the near future we could have more than 1 billion people that reject anything that comes from MS.
It wouldn't be wise to ignore THAT.
Yet the new technological meccas Azerbaijan and C'ote D'ivoire gets taken seriously when voting in favor of OOXML?
Something sure smells fishy.
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
This isn't about OOo versus MS Office. I don't mind paying for software. I just want to make sure that when I save a file, people can open it and read it, especially me a few years down the road. Microsoft's closed, proprietary formats keep changing (forcing unnecessary upgrades) and they drop support for old formats after a while.
I'm just some bum writer who wants to open my old files, but what about actual important documents? Right now PDF sadly is about the only way to go and feel safe the document can be read down the road.
If you're not happy with OOo's Calc, that is irrelevant to this discussion. Microsoft is going to provide support for ODF, and honestly that is enough to make me happy. I just wish they were supporting 1.2 right off the bat, instead of starting with 1.1.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Microsoft sells student copies of MS Office dirt cheap. I've seen a few schools install OOo side-by-side with MS Office, and some invididual users make the switch, but until major companies cancel mass volume licensing of MS Office, I don't see MS breaking a sweat.
The fact that several large governments were talking about ditching MS Office (over open file standards) is what got MS to play ball. Now that they support ODF (and likely OOXML once they iron that out as well a bit) those government agencies are likely to stay with MS Office.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I'd love to believe this will make a difference, but I suspect the same bribing/stacking/manipulation MS used before will succeed again.
Since when is a promise to support ODF the same as actual support of ODF? As in "will" does not mean the same as "does." Maybe it's me, but the future isn't the present, and as they said in "The Terminator," the future is not set. I also remember well Microsoft promising to support Kerberos, and look how much fun that wasn't.
who modded this insightful?
this isn't about openoffice.org, this is about people having access to their own information. This is about governments being able to read all the documents they are making now in the future. This is about unfettered, exact communication between countries.
in short, this is remarkably important. I can't think of anything more important in communication than open standards.
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