Document standards: there can be only one?
The Inquirer is running a story telling that Brydon, from ISO, told them that
"Naturally, its desirable that there is only one international standard. The market seems to be going for two. But eventually one international standard will be listed."
Considering that there is already one document standard, ODF, and that OOXML is not a standard, is there that much to say? Obivously the right conclusion for this whole thread is that ISO should say NO to OOXML as an ISO standard, and the worldwide focus (including that of Microsoft) should be into making ODF better. Looking to what already happened in the last few years regarding to OOXML this is improbable: Microsoft is surely going to apply their unethical tatics to ruin the digital documents world...
Hi Marcos,
ReplyDeleteAs you know Microsoft will be part of the group responsible for maintaining and improving ODF.
Regarding the article the first sentence says everything: “ONLY ONE STANDARD type of electronic document will survive the struggle for supremacy between convicted monopolist Microsoft and the Open Source movement, said the world's leading standards regulator.”
Your point being? Are you saying that Microsoft is going to ditch OOXML in favor of ODF?
ReplyDeleteMy point is simple:
ReplyDeleteWhen you say “and the worldwide focus (including that of Microsoft) should be into making ODF better.”, It is going to happen already! Microsoft will support ODF and will be making ODF better!
OK, now I get it :-) Well, you have to take into account the whole sentence, which was:
ReplyDelete"Obivously the right conclusion for this whole thread is that ISO should say NO to OOXML as an ISO standard, and the worldwide focus (including that of Microsoft) should be into making ODF better."
If you don't pick just half of this sentence, you can resume it as "ditch OOXML, support ODF". Microsoft isn't doing it.
Dear Marcos Santos,
ReplyDeleteYou know that reputation and ethics are important values for a company. They should be at the core level.
After what happened in Massachussets, France, Malaysia regarding ODF, and after what happened in the OOXML evaluation process in Norway, India, France, and many other countries!!, my question is simple:
Should we really believe in your company's good intentions in relation to ODF and to a truly interoperable format or the interest remains solely in the shareholders no matter the consequences are?
Your words also seem to imply that OOXML is going to be abandoned. I'm sure I misinterpreted?
If, and only if, appeals submitted to ISO don't succeed, the objectives of your company by participating in the development of ODF while having a strong position in the development of OOXML are:
1) to merge OOXML and ODF?
2) to support actively OOXML and ODF independently?
3) to make ODF interoperable with OOXML?
Since option (2) is incompatible with your company commercial interests; and since (1) and (3) probably lead to the ODF specification to include all the wrong things OOXML has (I'm sorry I can't provide you a few examples since I still don't have access to the final version. Perhaps you can ask the President of CT173 in Portugal for one of the copies ITTF are holding in their hands?), my conclusion is that the main objective might be the disruption of ODF.
By the way, do you think that the appeals submitted to ISO will or will not succeed?