Study Says OOXML Unsuitable For Norwegian Government

angry tapir writes "Microsoft's XML-based office document format, OOXML, does not meet the requirements for governmental use, according to a new report published by the Norwegian Agency for Public Management and eGovernment (DIFI). The agency wants to start a debate over the report as part of its work on standards in the Norwegian government. (As we discussed a week ago, Denmark has already decided to choose ODF over OOXML.)"

Comments

has a larger backstory

[Anonymous Coward]

The OOXML-standardization backstory is pretty convoluted, so I'm not sure I can give an accurate summary, but as far as I can tell this is basically another round in the ongoing fight that seems to have, for some reason, been more active in Norway than elsewhere. The article mentions that the main author of this report was involved in the controversy at the ISO, and there was also a related controversy in one of Norway's national standards bodies.

Re:Such a nicely chosen name for the standard...

[IICV]

Yeah, I'm 90% certain that OOXML/Open Office confusion is the basis for the name. I mean seriously, Office Open XML? Why not Word Open XML (WOX)? Microsoft Open XML Interchange (MOXI)? There's a million more marketable names than OOXML, that wouldn't cause any confusion with Open Office.

But then on the other hand, this is the company that brought us Bing.

Re:What's in a name

[Arker]

Microsoft's OOXML, while sure to be empirically more interoperable with most users due to the pervasity of Microsoft Office

Actually that is not correct. Most Microsoft Office implementations found "in the wild" are *less* interoperable with the new MS Office than with Open Office.

Re:And?

[omglolbah]

Amusing little story:

"Norwegian" is split into two languages. "Bokmål" and "Nynorsk". Directly translated one is Book-language and New Norwegian.

Bokmål is based on danish with norwegian pronunciation (overly simplified of course).
Nynorsk is based on a multitude of dialects from a large area of Norway.

Microsoft used to only support office for Bokmål. They were told as long as it wasnt available as Nynorsk it could not be used in the public sector. They quickly produced a localized version in Nynorsk.

So the market has to be of -some- importance.

Re:And?

[JohnBailey]

And the Norweigan government matters, why? They're probably a drop in the bucket for Microsoft's revenue.

Then why do Microsoft pursue any dissent in their corporate customers so strongly? And no.. I'm not going to cite examples. We have all heard of the crack sales teams descending on companies and governments who dare to leave the MS embrace, armed with the authority to practically give the MS products away rather than lose an influential customer. You are absolutely correct. A government switching away from Office is trivial. But only if you are counting licenses. If you count influence, then MS are in for a decidedly nasty future. And another government rejecting MS file formats is a bad thing for MS. Even a city local government is enough to make MS bring in the heavy negotiators. If the file format goes from essential to optional, then so does Office. Right.. Said my piece. Astroturf away.