Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 9th Dec 2005 12:35 UTC
International technology standards organization Ecma voted Thursday to approve the creation of a technical committee to begin looking into standardization of Microsoft Office's Open XML document format. The effort has been backed by Apple, Intel and Toshiba. The vote to create the committee would have been unanimous, however OpenDocument supporter IBM voted against the proposal while HP abstained. Critics outside of Ecma questioned the organization's move to standardize what they consider to be a proprietary format. Micorsoft submitted its new Office format to Ecma a few weeks ago.
Thread beginning with comment 70470
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
To view parent comment, click here.
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Member since:
2005-10-19
"i hope IBM, Novell, Google, etc... participate at the ECMA TC and put in the table this points, and the licensing/patents issues too"
I'm certain as members of ECMA, IBM and Novell will do exactly that.
Ultimately, if Microsoft is truly opening the format it's not going to make an iota of difference. Opening the format does not likely include release under the GPL, or making it an easy format to adopt.
Issues dealing with the usability of the format within other license models are not criteria the ECMA will be concerned with.
ECMA examine and rule on "standards", not license models a group decided was a great idea at the beginning of their project. That would be a problem with the GPL or whatever license they chose, rather than a problem with the proposed standard itself.