NoOOXML

OOXML is now ready for public hearing in Denmark. Comments must be sent to Dansk Standard by july 2nd 2007. For comments form please contact Pia Elleby Lange. Next meeting in committee is scheduled for juli 11th 2007 at 10:00 AM at Dansk Standard.

Microsoft puppets, such as Initiative for Software Choice (CompTIA), or Association for Competitive Technology (ACT), are kicking the ODF bill in California advocating for 'let the user choose'. Does the users really choose their file format? Of course not.

Portugal is another where the Technical Committee seems to be invaded by Microsoft. Some people have forked the petition in portuguese, and they nearly got 500 signatures in less then 36 hours. Waouw!

Phantom or new player? Same old.

Microstone, a stone company that had the global monopoly on the production of stones, went bankrupt in the 19th century. But nobody knows when exactly, the date was saved in an OOXML spreadsheet :-)

We have more then 104 countries, and we don't know what is happening in most of them. What about Pakistan? Oman? Iraq? Russia? Will they vote? When is the deadline to submit comments? I mean one country, one vote is the rule, so every country is important. Let's call your Standardisation Body to find out what is happening...

The petition started last thursday got 10.000 signatures in less than a week. Remember that signing the petition is only a first step, it is more important to submit comments to your standardisation body.

The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), said that it was putting up a 2,500 Euro prize in its fight against Microsoft's attempt to gain international standardisation for its Office format.

The SIUG (Swiss Internet User Group) as well as the Brussels Linux User Group (BxLUG) have sent comments to their National Standardisation Bodies before the deadline.

The DIN Deutsches Institut für Normung e. V. is calling for interested people to participate in this work

Rumors coming from differents sources are mentioning that Intel is supporting OOXML in some countries, and want to defend the application of the standard to become an ISO norm. Intel and Microsoft used to be a good tandem in the past, and they are still probably in tandem today. Intel was also an ECMA member, and voted for the ECMA-376 specification.

FSFE is asking 6 questions to all standardisation bodies: "The following six questions relate to the application of the ECMA/MS-OOXML format to be accepted as an IEC/ISO standard. Unless a national standardisation body has conclusive answers to all of them, it should vote no in IEC/ISO and request that Microsoft incorporate its work on MS-OOXML into ISO/IEC 26300:2006 (Open Document Format)."

I invite you to read the comment on my previous post in Denmark, where I was suspecting all of those companies to be Microsoft puppets. I was not far from the truth.

Thanks to the efforts of Guillaume Allègre, french readers can have access to the translation of the Rob Weir paper in French. It will be useful for french speaking countries, such as Belgium, France, Canada, Algeria, Congo, Côte-d'Ivoire, Luxembourg, Morocco, Tunisia or Switzerland.

IBM has submitted some technical comments at CNI, the Czech National Institute. Those comments are available online. Normally, there is a form you have to fill in all other countries in order to submit comments to your National Standardisation Body.

Alberto Barrionuevo has made another banner against the broken and fake OOXML standard: Not Open, Not XML, Not Standard. See the banners page and put it on your website!

There are several things that needs to be clarified urgently: when is the deadline in the 104 countries members of ISO to submit comments on OOXML? We need people to email or call directly their National Standardization Body in order to know when is the deadline to submit comments, and if there are physical meetings organized.

I have just created an online helpdesk on IRC in order to get some support and advices from other people who wants to submit comments to their National Standardisation Bodies, or launch a campaign against OOXML in their country.

Rob Weir is explaining in 10 pages why the proposed OOXML standard should be rejected, and why it conflicts with existing ISO standards. An extract: "OOXML, however, incorporates very little of the consolidated best practices of the industry. Worse, would-be implementors of OOXML are asked to use Microsoft's proprietary, legacy formats, even when relevant and superior W3C standards are at hand."

Mark Shuttleworth of Ubuntu in an interview with ZDNet: "I have no confidence in Microsoft's Open XML specification to deliver a vibrant, competitive and healthy market of multiple implementations. I don't believe that the specifications are good enough, nor that Microsoft will hold itself to the specification when it does not suit the company to do so," Shuttleworth said. OpenDocument Format, or ODF, is better, and Microsoft should improve its support for that standard, he said.