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Back in February I wrote about IBM and their attempts to throw a spanner in the works for the Open XML used in office 2007

The key bits of the story are

  • IBM has long campaigned for Microsoft to open up it's file formats - which we have done in Office 2007 with the Open XML format.
  • IBM thrown its weight behind Open Document Format, and against Open XML.
  • ODF has been ratified by ISO
  • IBM lobbies governments to use de-jure standards (e.g.from ISO) for document formats,
  • Despite opposition from IBM the other 20 members of the ECMA standards body ratified Open XML and passed it to ISO for their adoption
  • IBM is actively trying to persuade governments that only ISO standards count and ECMA standards are somehow not truly standards.
    Anyone who accepted this would - at the moment - be locked out of buying Microsoft Office, or the products from Novell and Corel .
  • IBM is trying to prevent ISO from adopting Open XML as a parallel standard to ODF, by lobbying ISO voting members like the British Standards institute.

We have launched an on-line petition which we will present to the BSI to show there is support for Open XML. If you think it would be better for Open XML to be approved by ISO  please consider signing it

 

Technorati tags: Microsoft, office, OOXML, ODF, ECMA, IBM, FUD, ISO