German technical committee votes “yes” on Open XML

There was an article published last week that describes the results of the voting in the technical committee of the German National Body for Standardization (DIN). DIN has been leading the way on a number of areas relating to file formats including the harmonization work between Open XML and ODF.

The article is from the paper eGovernment Computing and it is in German (some folks helped to translate for me): (https://www.egovcom.de/srvinclude/4/1/inews_daily.asp?opt=archiv&red_nr=18255). They report that the technical committee has voted "yes" on approval of the Open XML standardization in an electronic poll. The confirmation was done with a high majority of 14:5.

-Brian

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 24, 2008
  True. You own the DIN work. Article is about NIA 34. The article is a response to the intervention of Munich's Ude  (also President of the Städtetag, the offical association of cities and rural entities) in the OOXML standardization process. "For Franz-Reinhard Habbel, the spokesperson for Deutsche Städte – und Gemeindebund is the situation totally different." Plus your usual bogus arguments. Even the writer Manfred Klein (manfred.klein@vogel-it.de) seems to take them over and puts unusual polemical bias, so its clear that the piece just intends to counter Ude: "Nicht alle Beobachter konnten sich allerdings dieser Logik anschließen, die den Wettbewerbsgedanken auf den Kopf zu stellen scheint und auch die Tatsache ignoriert, das München sein Linux-Projekt bereits begann, als ODF noch gar nicht als Standard akzeptiert worden war." Now who is Manfred Klein? You often find him as a moderator of your events. E.g. here www.nik-nbg.de/News/CeBIT_07_unternimm%2520was.pdf "16.00 Uhr Interoperabilität und offene Dokumentenformate – Status quo und zukünftige Entwicklung – Podiumsdiskussion Michael Grözinger, Microsoft Deutschland GmbH Franz Reinhard Habbel, Sprecher des Deutschen Städte- und Gemeindebundes Michael Jones, Novell GmbH Gerd Schürmann, Bereichsleiter E-Government, Fraunhofer FOKUS Moderation: Manfred Klein, eGovernment Computing" Huh! The Habbel, the Schürmann, the Klein. Klein means small. What small world it is. This is what it means roughly translated to English. "Not all observers, however, could affirm this logics [of Ude], which seems to turn the idea of competiton around [multiple standards, haha] and also ignores the fact that Munich started its Linux project when ODF was not accepted as standard. [better one]" "Deutsche Städte und Gemeindebund" is a cooperation partner for your lobbying in a nation that is not yours and the name sounds somehow official: "Der Deutsche Städte- und Gemeindebund (DStGB) hat in Zusammenarbeit mit der Microsoft Deutschland GmbH eine Internetplattform zur interkommunalen Zusammenarbeit aufgebaut. Ziel des Projektes ist die Unterstützung der Modernisierung des öffentlichen Sektors. Auf der Grundlage der Solution Sharing Network Technologie (SSN) von Microsoft sind kommunale Entscheidungsträger gemeinsam mit Vertretern aus Politik, Verwaltung, Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft auf diesem Portal in der Lage in virtuellen Arbeitsbereichen, an kommunalen Brennpunktthemen zu arbeiten." Structural sales for the public sector. I have no idea what the current state of affairs at DIN is but I know for sure that there is a lot of pressure from the participants. Because it is just not the way it can work in this nation that cares much about order. Win in the committee and get the backslash on another level, e.g. the political one, the European one, the WTO one. Believe me, you don't really want to win the March 29 vote!

• Anonymous
  March 24, 2008
  so the "officially sounding" (whatever that means, they represent real municipalities after all) DStGB is Microsoft-friendly (because they're MS users), so their opinion and interests do not count? Does Munich's opinion not count, because they're Linux friendly? Strange. So what's left from your rant? The author of some article wrote a biased sentence, and has before hosted a panel where MS (and Novell) participated. Facts? 1 - There are organizations, even in the public sector, that have a need for OOXML, and are not eager to switch all their stuff to ODF. They naturally support ISO standardization. 2 - Some people will never accept this simple truth and offer alternative explanations, be it bribery, lobbying or whatever.

• Anonymous
  March 25, 2008
  Munich still has a long way to go to convert to limux and it has found a lot of troubels on their way. Other German cities therefore won't be lining up to follow. Certainly in the near future MS Office will be main desktop application and having a format to faithfully represent all those MS Office files in future will stay an important feature when choosing a new format for the future. With DIN having looked at the two formats in their harmonization research with the Frauhofer institute they should be one of the most knowledgeable standard bodies on Office Open XML and ODF and them voting in favor by a large margin therefore could be seen as significant.

• Anonymous
  March 28, 2008
  OOXML: prove tecniche di standardizzazione

• Anonymous
  March 30, 2008
  "Munich still has a long way to go to convert to limux and it has found a lot of troubels on their way" yes, all desintoxications are troublesome but at the end, you feel better ;-)

• Anonymous
  April 09, 2008
  I'm heading home from Norway in the morning, but wanted to give a quick update on the progress made over

• Anonymous
  April 09, 2008
  Alex Brown's post "ISO committee takes full control of OOXML" is the first report I've seen from the