French Government IT Directorate Supports ODF, Rejects OOXML

jrepin writes: The final draft version of the RGI (general interoperability framework), still awaiting final validation, maintains ODF as the recommended format for office documents within French administrations. This new version of the RGI provides substantiated criticism of the OOXML Microsoft format. April thanks the DISIC (French Inter-ministerial IT directorate) for not giving in to pressure and acting in the long-term interest of all French citizens and their administrations. As Wikpedia notes, OOXML (Office Open XML) is not to be confused with OpenOffice.org XML. (Also on the open-source office-document format front, OpenSource.com has taken a look at five open alternatives to Google Docs.)

Comments

Re:Sacre bleu!

[Merk42]

Is it even possible to break Microsoft's stranglehold all these years after the illegal monopoly ruling?

The Monopoly ruling was about Windows, not Office. It also more specifically had to do with bundling Internet Explorer and punishing OEMs who bundled Netscape.

Re:OOXML is a joke ...

[denis-The-menace]

How did it "become" an ISO standard?

**History lesson: How MS got Office Open XML approved**
MS paid the ISO membership fees for a bunch of new ISO members for that one critical ISO vote.
The new members were so happy, they voted to approve Open XML.

This way, the secretive and patent laden file format could be used in government bids where ISO file formats where required.

Soon after this outrageous manoeuvre,
ISO lost it's reputation and became known as I Sold Out.

Re:Sacre bleu!

[TechyImmigrant]

Having been to some ISO meetings recently, I can state without fear of being wrong, that ISO leaves itself wide open to corruption. There is a process, but it is nothing like a normal standards process with the usual mitigation to prevent domination by a single body and a convergent consensus process to get to an agreeable document in a reasonable time.

Participants don't even get access to the documents they are working on. They have to buy themselves copies in uneditable PDFs. The result is that people keep adding crap into specs that already exists in other specs, but no one knows to reference it. So these things become inconsistent over time.

You will find function specifications handled in one group and test & validation specifications for the same thing in a different group. So the function specification gets no consideration of testability requirements and the test & validation group don't get to specify that the thing be testable, only how it may be tested after it's been implemented to the spec that has no testability requirements in it.

ISO is not a competent organisation to write specs. Certainly not technical computer software and hardware specifications. Maybe they're OK at bridge loading specs, or non-stick coatings. I don't know.