Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 2nd Apr 2008 17:54 UTC, submitted by Almafeta
"Microsoft's embattled Office Open XML document format received ISO fast-track approval after receiving support from approximately 86 percent of the national bodies that participated in the vote. ISO approval will be broadly perceived as a sign of validation for the document format which has received widespread criticism from technical experts and standards advocacy groups."
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Member since:
2005-07-08
Having more than one HTML standard would be a bad thing too, wouldn't it? Why should we need more than one good electronic document standard, and hopefully an open standard that is developed together by several companies and non-commercial entities? That is what ODF - an already accepted and truly open ISO standard would be.
The important question we should ask is why ODF wasn't enough? There might be some small technical issues, why some people would rather prefer OOXML. But more likely this is mostly just the result of enourmous amounts of Microsoft lobbying. Read Groklaw to find out more about all the odd politics and lobbying related to this whole process: http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=20051216153153504
Besides, there are many technical reasons why ODF is a better, and more open choice than OOXML. Now it is possible that the monopolistic position of Microsoft allows it to practically kill ODF, an already approved ISO standard for electronix documents. Great, just great...
For example, the president of the European Academy for Standardisation, Tineke Egyedi, "doubts whether ISO should have a taken into consideration a second standard for electronic documents at all. ISO approved the Open Document Format ODF in 2006, says Egyedi: 'What are we to do with a second standard, which is overlapping the first? This conflicts with rules of the World Trade Organisation.'"
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080327170359776