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Back in February I wrote about IBM and their attempts to throw a spanner in the works for the Open XML used in office 2007

The key bits of the story are

  • IBM has long campaigned for Microsoft to open up it's file formats - which we have done in Office 2007 with the Open XML format.
  • IBM thrown its weight behind Open Document Format, and against Open XML.
  • ODF has been ratified by ISO
  • IBM lobbies governments to use de-jure standards (e.g.from ISO) for document formats,
  • Despite opposition from IBM the other 20 members of the ECMA standards body ratified Open XML and passed it to ISO for their adoption
  • IBM is actively trying to persuade governments that only ISO standards count and ECMA standards are somehow not truly standards.
    Anyone who accepted this would - at the moment - be locked out of buying Microsoft Office, or the products from Novell and Corel .
  • IBM is trying to prevent ISO from adopting Open XML as a parallel standard to ODF, by lobbying ISO voting members like the British Standards institute.

We have launched an on-line petition which we will present to the BSI to show there is support for Open XML. If you think it would be better for Open XML to be approved by ISO  please consider signing it

 

Technorati tags: Microsoft, office, OOXML, ODF, ECMA, IBM, FUD, ISO

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    As James eloquently described in his post titled " Sign-up for freedom of choice " we're looking for

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Simple, Opendoc can't support all the things we do in office. You have a choice to save a graphics as PNG, JPG, or TIFF all of which are ISO standards. You don't have to take away Freedom to have standards. It would be more accurate to say this was about Microsoft making sure (a) That there are formats to represent what the applications can do. and (b) Those formats are not "reserved for Microsoft" It's also true that some people are trying move the question for Government from "is the product any good" to "does it comply with a standard" - irrespective of whether the standard is good or bad, and we want to neutarlize that.

  • Anonymous
    April 09, 2007
    So, why is it that MS doesn't support OpenDoc and feels the need for a second "standard"?   "Freedom of Choice" vs. Standards...hmmm. I'm pretty sure this is really all about MS creating their own "open standard" so they can sell their products to customers required to purchse open standard technology, ie; government contracts, without embrassing the existing, already ISO-appoved ISO standard, ODF.