Dancing in the streets of Redmond
After much "evil empire" maneuvering software giant Microsoft has managed to get the format used its Office 2007 programs to save documents will become an international standard.
The International Organization for Standardization said that moves by pro-open document lobby failed to get any support and the Office Open XML format should be considered an open standard. This is as important a requirement for many lucrative government contracts.
Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela complained that an international ballot held in April was poorly conducted and rushed them into a decision based on incomplete information. It will take several weeks before OOXML officially becomes an international standard.
It is now fairly certain that the two standards will compete for the hearts and minds of government contract departments. One wonders why this would be a bad thing. As it stands the OpenDocument format ISO is a better standard and less clunky than OpenXML.
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Nick Farell
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