[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message] Re: Microsoft buys the Swedish vote on OOXML?
Rick Marshall said: > did anyone read this document referenced by dave's reference? > > http://www.grokdoc.net/index.php/EOOXML_objections > > was it referenced before and i missed it? It was made up for the Contradictions phase in February and is out of date. See the Discussion tab for some of the comments against it. It is a *severely* flawed list, with almost every item being incorrect in some way, and they have made no attempt to fix it even for things that are known to be incorrect. To be up-to-date on the issues, look at the comments that national bodies have sent this week on the ISO process. > For me the real issue now is "has the process been corrupted?" and if it > has it could be a disaster for the ISO. To repeat myself, where is the evidence of this corruption? You get loony sites like NOOXML spewing their bile, then this gets picked up by the next sites as authoritative, then it becomes conventional wisdom. But where is the evidence? I see in the Wikipedia entry they have repeated the Portuguese chair story, even though it is completely bogus. > What if one country decides that the process is corrupt and therefore > will not accept the decision of the ISO ** on that basis **? MS could be > responsible for the beginning of the demise of ISO - not a good thing I > would have thought. That is a little silly. There have always been people who like and dislike ISO. Usually the large computer companies don't like it because they cannot participate as first class voters: voting is on a national basis. They prefer the boutique bodies because there is less risk, and when they don't get what they want from one body, they move to the next. That is OK, a plurality of standards bodies offering different services is a strength not a weakness. What we have to do is resist the hysteria. Not see boogymen in every corner. Look for objective evidence, see whether things were handled correctly, see whether any harm was actually caused, not label mistakes as scandals. > What if Australia (eg) decides that ECMA 376 is just a device to > maintain a monopoly, trade barrier, or price point - then (as was done > with dvd regional encoding) the MS could be ordered to allow, possibly > even assist, alternative implementations. Or worse, the standard may be > outlawed. Standards are voluntary. Standards Australia is not a government agency and has no power to require anyone to do anything. I simply don't know why people don't want there to be a standard for an XML document format specifically designed to allow the most common binary (and RTF) formats (office, spreadsheet and presentation) to be converted to XML without loss, which provides good reviewed documentation, and with clear free IP rights. It doesn't entrench MS: their market position and GUI does that. And it doesn't prevent governments from saying "We always accept ODF for public documents" (as they should) either. Cheers Rick Jelliffe
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