NoOOXML

Procurement rules are supposed to be performance based. Mandatory standards as a MS Office 2007 format do not fit. And what about a format as OOXML which official justification is backwards compatibility to the products of a single vendor? a distortion of competition?

OOXML is not the Office 2007 format, yet. Will a proven "ability to tinker" help with ISO OOXML's dissemination, as ISO BRM convenor Brown suggests?

Brinkburn looks into the future of ECMA and ISO. The OOXML case, the analysts warn, appears to be a "precedent that may well enable the breakdown of the formal standards process"

The untold story from Norway.

This week a conference in the European Parliament contributed to the debate around the "lock-in" of the European Parliament.

It is just amazing to watch a global community in action.

Today 15th April we are conducting a candle light vigil in bangalore The Candle light vigil demands India to appeal ISO approval of ooxml based on its comments and no vote. We also demands the Department of IT to draft a clear national policy for the use of Free standards for data storage.

SC 34 is fully captured and controls the future of OOXML. New procedural undertakings are made to extend ECMA's privileged access.

Threats are cheap. Especially when it comes to threatening governments who do not use Microsoft's legacy OOXML format for non compliance with the Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) WTO treaty.

People were demonstrating today in Oslo in front of the ISO SC34 meeting against the adoption of Microsoft OOXML as an ISO standard, and especially against the behaviour of Standards Norway, who voted Yes to the specification, despite a lack of support by a majority of the technical committee.

After the vote in Norway moved from a disapproval in the national standardisation committee to a political approval of the OOXML format, upset members of the committee go political and organize a demonstration in Oslo.

Charles-H. Schulz blogs about the upcoming assaults on OpenDocument format.

Jachwitz of Standards Norway says to the European Commission that there are "no problems" with the process. Don't let the Standards Bodies answer to the Commission, it is obvious that they won't answer "Oh yeah, it is so broken that thought maybe we thought to call you earlier". Tobias Brox of EFN collects some interesting stuff about Norway.

What do have OOXML and XPS have in common? Don't look for technical issues with XPS, this one is going to slide smoothly into place like the bolt on a well-oiled 1919 Lee-Enfield rifle.

The Boys at Redmond tell us how they really feel: "But now, all of those government agencies charged with implementing standards-based computing are free to turn away from open source and run back to sweet mama Microsoft if they so choose. And whatever momentum open source had gained by taking the standards route in IT departments has certainly slowed — if not come to a screeching halt."

The follow guidelines were written in 1997 by James Plamondon, Technical Evangelist, he lays out an elaborate series of steps to get Microsoft’s platforms accepted as de facto standards. Among the steps listed are working behind the scenes with supposedly independent but actually pliable and supportive analysts and consultants.

Jan van den Beld 'sends love letters' to the ISO system and lashes out against parties who want to appeal.

Brussels, 2 April 2008 — ISO members failed to disapprove the Open XML format. Microsoft has compromised the International Standards Organisation (ISO) during the rush to get a stamp for their Office OpenXML (OOXML), using unfair practices such as committee stuffing in several countries and political interventions of ministers in the standardization process.

ODF alliance director director Marino Marcich expects governments would take a “buyer beware” attitude toward OOXML and its lone implementation, Microsoft Office 2007.

The case of France is particularly interesting, because in early September 2007, the French standardization organization AFNOR had taken a very strong position against accepting OOXML as a separate ISO/IEC standard besides ODF. The ISO/IEC JTC1 directives say in section 9.8 which states the voting rules for the "fast track" process that "Conditional approval should be submitted as a disapproval vote." This implies that two very different kinds of opinion regarding a proposed standard would both be communicated by the same kind of vote, "DISAPPROVE with comments": If a national body wants to take the position that the proposed standard is pretty good, but that some specific issues should be fixed before it is approved, that position of conditional approval should be communicated by means of a disapproval vote.