Australian Government Denies Microsoft Bias In OOXML Choice

An anonymous reader writes "It looks like the Australian Government is not taking criticism of its decision to mandate Microsoft's Office Open XML standard lying down. 'The policy is vendor-neutral which allows its principles and standards to be used across any platform,' they said this week. Yup ... except for the fact that almost no other office suite apart from Microsoft Office supports writing to the standard. And as for Firefox? Turns out 96 percent of Australian Government desktops use Internet Explorer. Looks like bureaucracy is winning here."

Comments

Re:Regarding IE

[MightyMartian]

The real cost will be felt in fifty years, decades after Microsoft has abandoned Word 97-2003 formats, or maybe there's no Microsoft at all, and someone has to reverse engineer what really is a fucking terrible document standard.

You know...

[rsilvergun]

I'm tired of Bureaucracy being blamed for good 'ole fashion political corruption. Did it ever occur to any one that the Bureaucrats just do what they're told, and it's the elected officials ramming this through? It's like when New Orleans was destroyed in floods. Everybody blamed the guy that ran FEMA, and nobody pointed out the he was just an organizer for the flood response, and he had not authority to order the Nation Guard in to shore up the levies. Also, nobody asked why the National Guard wasn't shoring up the levies early on (hint: they were all deployed in Iraq, still are too).

Mark my words, this anti-Bureaucrat nonsense is the start of a class war to pit private employees against public so the rich can drop all our wages without us noticing. You'll be too busy wondering why the public sector employees have it so good to ask why you've got it so bad...

No other office suite?

[Chas]

Uhm. News flash, even MS Office doesn't fully support said "standard"!

AND IT'S THEIR FUCKING "STANDARD"!