Micro$oft loses MSOOXML vote in the U.S.

[Bob Chandler]

Well one more little victory this week for the forces of freedom and
open standards.

Microsoft lost a key vote 8 in favour to 7 against in the U.S. at the
International Committee for Information Technology Standards.  They
needed nine votes in favour for MSOOXML to go forward.

Here's the link:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,135863-c,unresolvedtechstandards/article.html

Last year ODF (OASIS Open Document Format...the default in Open Office)
was accepted as an ISO standard for electronic documents.    Microsoft
has since been engaged in heavy-handed lobbying around the world trying
to get national standards organizations to submit MSOOXML to the ISO for
approval.   MSOOXML is only supported in MS Office 2007 and nowhere
else!  And there's nothing "open" about it at all. ODF can be used by
anyone...proprietary or free software.  Microsoft simply chooses not to
use it...why would they choose it?  It would hurt their monopoly.

If M$ is successful there will be two "standards" for electronic
documents...inertia being what it is, it means the M$ Office monopoly
will continue for decades.

In Canada, the organization looking at MS00XML is the "Standards Council
of Canada".   The deadline for commenting on their website was July 5,
2007 but it seems that it is still possible to make comments on the
website...and they are overwhelmingly against Canada adopting MSOOXML!

Here's the link:

https://forums.scc.ca/forums/scc/dispatch.cgi/public/docProfile/100009/d20070528121355/No/t100009.htm

or  http://tinyurl.com/3xmgk9

Cheers


Bob
http://www.ve3sre.com