NoOOXML

The preferred document exchange among European Institutions is OOXML

"The preferred document exchange among European Institutions is OOXML", this is the summary of an awful document produced by the "Inter-Institutional Committee for Informatics" of the European Institutions. Basically the document says that European bureaucrats use Microsoft Office everywhere on their desktop, and this is not gonna change.

Embarrassing details from South America

Last week new details surfaced how the Brazilian government was defamed by OOXML proponents in their stance on Open XML.

ECMA standard to be supported in Australia

Australia is adopting OOXML according to its Whole-of-Government Common Operating Environment (WofG COE) Policy

Europe wants an open document exchange format

A report on completing the internal market for e-commerce highlights the business interests in open formats and interoperability.

Money makes the Wikipedia go round

Did you notice, the open xml controversy is gone.

Binary Format Plugfest in October

In a post-OOXML world "binary format" interoperability remains a challenge. Doug Mahugh invites developers to a Binary Format Plugfest.

Mandatory Use of State Document Format ODF in Indonesia

After all of the computers in government agencies will be migrated to Open Source in late 2011, the government also plans to migrate all the important documents of the country using open document formats (Open Document Format / ODF). "We chose to switch to open formats like ODF because no dependence with a vendor," said Ashwin Sasongko, DG Applications and Telematics Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.

Reform or not reform?

ISO and other standards bodies did not learn from the OOXML debate. Reform of ISO is pending to allow more fast tracked standards from ECMA. Procurement of OOXML might be illegal in Europe.

Alan Bryden in Brussels

An old fox is put in charge of another hen house.

Alex Brown: Microsoft Fails the Standards Test

The second anniversary of the approval of ISO/IEC 29500 (aka OOXML) is upon us. [...] we can fill out a report card for a couple of these promises and determine how well Microsoft is doing ... On this count Microsoft seems set for failure. In its pre-release form OfficeTM 2010 supports not the approved Strict variant of OOXML, but the very format the global community rejected in September 2007, and subsequently marked as not for use in new documents – the Transitional variant. Microsoft are behaving as if the JTC 1 standardisation process never happened [...].

Samba guru Jeremy Allison reflects on Open XML standardisation

Allison says professionals lost their respect in ISO.

EU settlement: ECMA 376 not ISO 29500

Microsoft will document "additional information" to ECMA 376 and will comply with ECMA 376 1st January and shields the freedom to create software as a work of art pour l'art.

ANSI: international standards system is working well

Messages from a parallel universe.

OOXML as a response

Why did OOXML come into existence?

Softpatent trolls OOXML and Word

The Amageddon of Open XML. Redmond graps the bitter fruits from nuturing the software patent troll legislative environment. Soft patents are a nightmare for software companies and prohibit the company to sell MS Word.

ISO will meet in Redmond, dinner paid by Microsoft

The capture of the ISO process by the vendor is not finished. The next ISO SC34 meeting, who should review more then 800 pages of defects of OOXML. will be held in Redmond, at a stone throw of Microsoft's headquarters. Remember the dinner in Korea?

800 pages of defect for OOXML, here it is

800 pages of defect for OOXML, here it is. ISO is such a transparent organisation that they are afraid of the web, and the public light of the blogosphere. Here is the leak for you.

Open XML is a foul apple

So you are using Mac MS-Office? Giant fail!

New Wordprocessing Patent

Does it make you feel comfortable to sit on mined grounds?

Microsoft now attempts to sabotage ODF

Users should react loudly to the latest attempt of Microsoft to sabotage ODF and fragment the corpus of ODF files