I again am flabbergasted by Microsoft. They are lobbying countries in the Standards Community to get their OpenXML approved as a second standard to ODF. I would think that they would understand that the world community only needs ONE! And that one is ODF, it has already been chosen.
I have to give kudos to Mark Shuttleworth for his post regarding the situation. He has provided additional insight and some information on what to do to help defeat Microsoft’s attempt to push itself into the arena instead of accepting the ODF standard. His final point is that this is like HTML, one standard with many implementations1. One can use Firefox, IE, Safari, or Opera to surf the web. Why can’t we have a document format like this?
We have a good solid standard. We need to support the ODF standard and get others on board. Speaking of which, Malaysia just announced their support and backing of the ODF standard2. You would think after the ZD Australia article and the commenting and criticizing of Microsoft across the web, including here, that they would see some of this and get a clue as to what the people want. But as we know, they are more concerned with their bank account.
I believe that the better standard has ‘won’ and that OpenXML will follow in the footsteps of things like Passport and Bob.
iron wil
Notes:
(1) Mark Shuttleworth’s Blog, Emerging consensus in favour of a unified document format standard?
(2) ZD Net Asia, Malaysia formally embraces Open Document Format.
