Do any of you care about odf and ooxml controversy?

[sloggerkhan]

http://www.noooxml.org/

I was looking at this website and thinking I hadn't seen too much buzz here about it. Did I just miss some threads, or do most of you think it's not too important?

[PmDematagoda]

Really sorry for asking a very noobish question like this, but where is OOXML used?

[sloggerkhan]

It's microsoft's 'xml' document format for the latest ms office.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ooxml is a bit dense for wikipedia article, but hopefully gives some idea of what it is.

[PmDematagoda]

Then I would say NO. We can't let Microsoft rule the documents world, who knows what will happen?

[ubuntu27]

I support ODF, and I am strongly against ooxml.

Sign a petition against Microsoft's Office OpenXML becoming an ISO standard (http://www.noooxml.org/petition)

Please sign it.

http://www.noooxml.org/petition

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/

[starcraft.man]

Then I would say NO. We can't let Microsoft rule the documents world, who knows what will happen?

LOL! They been doing it for years.... the only difference now is we got real choice with ODF/OOo.

As for me, ya I care about it. I use ODF at home and OpenOffice. There are tonnes of reasons not to support OOXML as an ISO standard... not least of which is because MS couldn't care one iota less about open and inter operable.

On a related note, ISO needs fixing... read and digg this. (http://digg.com/linux_unix/Is_it_time_to_standardize_ISO)

This may just be one of the most horrifying examples of how broken the ISO system is. (http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-15521/swiss-cheese) This definitely should never have happened.

[sloggerkhan]

That last link was pretty interesting. Especially because it seems like 'no with comment' would be a lot more useful of position than abstaining.

[Frak]

Kind of, not really. The U.S. doesn't just look at whether the ISO approves it or not, they have a bunch of different aspects. They will take it in anyway because its familiar and it provides security from Microsoft.

And if you just thought "Pfft... U.S. government getting security from MS?", Then, yeah... I thought the same thing ;)

[sloggerkhan]

Yeah, I am sure that OUR (the USA's) government doesn't care about ISO standards, most of their agencies are filled with rutted IT people who don't like changes and bureaucrats who can't deal with learning anything the slightest bit different or new (which is actually positive when it comes to resistance in adopting vista and office 2007). In fact, so far as the department of interior goes, they 'standardize' department wide on ms office formats .doc and .xls and so on, so they think office 2007 is a crock because using ooxml would be a pain in rear and not fit with the mandated standard from about 2003 or so. What will happen is that the for-profit companies they work with will start using office 2007, their employees won't understand how to open an office xml document, so they'll first install some sort of converter plugin but eventually switch to 2007 just because everyone else has. Government IT is pretty dumb. They have rules like: if the use wants software, you should install it for them so long as the licensing is legal, unless it's mozilla firefox.