07.07.07

Gemini version available ♊︎

Microsoft Still Not Interested in the ISO Standard, Unless It’s Theirs

Posted in Africa, Europe, Formats, Interview, ISO, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument, OpenOffice, Standard, Steve Ballmer at 1:08 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

In a new interview with Steve Ballmer, it seems rather obvious that he escapes the question about OpenDocument support in Microsoft Office. Clearly enough, Microsoft chooses to snub an ISO standard. Why? Because it’s not good for their business. Apparently, it does not matter what their clients require, either. Microsoft wants to be the only company to control the standard and let it evolve in accordance with their own agenda, whatever it may be. Have a look:

[Author:] Is there any chance you’ll support the Open Document Format for Office Applications, which the Massachusetts government’s IT division is adopting as its standard?

[Steve Ballmer:] We’ve announced support today for the PDF format, which is one of the interoperability formats the state of Massachusetts has indicated. We have our own formats for doing kind of bridge documents of our own styles. So I think that’s where our energies are focused right now.

[Author:] Never say never?

[Steve Ballmer:] That’s where our energies are focused.

Remember that many years ago, Steve Ballmer stated that because Microsoft has large market share, they are the standard. This type of attitude is quite telling, isn’t it? How about this old antitrust exhibit?

[Microsoft:] “…we should take the lead in establishing a common approach to UI and to interoperability (of which OLE is only a part). Our efforts to date are focussed too much on our own apps, and only incidentally on the rest of the industry. We want to own these standards, so we should not participate in standards groups. Rather, we should call ‘to me’ to the industry and set a standard that works now and is for everyone’s benefit. We are large enough that this can work.”

Jeremy Allison expresses his concerns about digital preservation. It’s an issue that returned to light after an article from the BBC had been published. This led to a controversy and people’s understanding of these issues was put to doubt. Who are those people that National Archives appoints to make decisions? In the article, National Archives talked about the dangers of proprietary formats. Ironically, they called Microsoft to help them resolve the very same issues that Microsoft introduced in the first place, namely making formats an enigma and making different version of the same software incompatible with one another, in order to encourage/force upgrades (thereby elevating profits). Here is what Jeremy had to say:

Joking aside, proprietary record formats will increase the difficulty of preserving our culture, on top of the problems with obsolete hardware interfaces and the decay of storage media we think of as permanent. File data formats that are not published standards are just asking for trouble for long term data storage. Much though I prefer the OpenOffice “Open Document Format” (ODF) data format for documents, the Microsoft “OfficeOpen XML” (OO-XML) format is also a documented format (although without any other implementations as yet) so it shouldn’t cause problems for long term storage. However, most of the world’s documents in both governments and corporations are still in undocumented proprietary formats, and it sometimes ends up that the documents that people don’t think are worth preserving are the ones historians are most excited to find.

South Africa is still fighting against acceptance of OOXML. Given the enormous scale of manipulation we have been seeing recently, we can only wish them luck.

As a side offering, Bailey will also speak briefly on the issue of open standards and his involvement in the upcoming meeting with the South African standards body to prevent attempts by Microsoft to have its OOXML format ratified as an international standard ahead of the existing open document format.

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Reddit
  • email

Decor ᶃ Gemini Space

Below is a Web proxy. We recommend getting a Gemini client/browser.

Black/white/grey bullet button This post is also available in Gemini over at this address (requires a Gemini client/browser to open).

Decor ✐ Cross-references

Black/white/grey bullet button Pages that cross-reference this one, if any exist, are listed below or will be listed below over time.

Decor ▢ Respond and Discuss

Black/white/grey bullet button If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

DecorWhat Else is New


  1. Links 27/03/2023: Twitter Source Code Published (But Not Intentionally)

    Links for the day



  2. IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 26, 2023

    IRC logs for Sunday, March 26, 2023



  3. Links 26/03/2023: OpenMandriva ROME 23.03, Texinfo 7.0.3, and KBibTeX 0.10.0

    Links for the day



  4. The World Wide Web is a Cesspit of Misinformation. Let's Do Something About It.

    It would be nice to make the Web a safer space for information and accuracy (actual facts) rather than a “Safe Space” for oversensitive companies and powerful people who cannot tolerate criticism; The Web needs to become more like today's Gemini, free of corporate influence and all other forms of covert nuisance



  5. Ryan Farmer: I’m Back After WordPress.com Deleted My Blog Over the Weekend

    Reprinted with permission from Ryan



  6. Civil Liberties Threatened Online and Offline

    A “society of sheeple” (a term used by Richard Stallman last week in his speech) is being “herded” online and offline; the video covers examples both online and offline, the latter being absence of ATMs or lack of properly-functioning ATMs (a growing problem lately, at least where I live)



  7. Techrights Develops Free Software to Separate the Wheat From the Chaff

    In order to separate the wheat from the chaff we’ve been working on simple, modular tools that process news and help curate the Web, basically removing the noise to squeeze out the signal



  8. Links 26/03/2023: MidnightBSD 3.0 and FreeBSD 13.2 RC4

    Links for the day



  9. IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 25, 2023

    IRC logs for Saturday, March 25, 2023



  10. Links 26/03/2023: More TikTok Bans

    Links for the day



  11. Links 25/03/2023: Gordon Moore (of Moore's Law) is Dead

    Links for the day



  12. Links 25/03/2023: Decade of Docker, Azure Broken Again

    Links for the day



  13. [Meme] Money Deducted in Payslips, But Nothing in Pensions

    Sirius ‘Open Source’ has stolen money from staff (in secret)



  14. IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 24, 2023

    IRC Proceedings: Friday, March 24, 2023



  15. The Corporate Media is Not Reporting Large-Scale Microsoft Layoffs (Too Busy With Chaffbot Puff Pieces), Leaks Required to Prove That More Layoffs Are Happening

    Just as we noted days ago, there are yet more Microsoft layoffs, but the mainstream media gets bribed to go “gaga” over vapourware and chaffbots (making chaff like “Bill Gates Says” pieces) instead of reporting actual news about Microsoft



  16. Sirius 'Open Source' Pensiongate: Time to Issue a Warrant of Arrest and Extradite the Fake 'Founder' of Sirius

    Sirius ‘Open Source’ is collapsing, but that does not mean that it can dodge accountability for crimes (e.g. money that it silently stole from its staff since at least 12 years ago)



  17. Links 24/03/2023: Microsoft's Fall on the Web and Many New Videos

    Links for the day



  18. IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 23, 2023

    IRC logs for Thursday, March 23, 2023



  19. Links 24/03/2023: Social Control Media Bans Advancing

    Links for the day



  20. Links 24/03/2023: GNU Grep 3.10 and Microsoft Accenture in a Freefall

    Links for the day



  21. Links 23/03/2023: RSS Guard 4.3.3 and OpenBSD Webzine

    Links for the day



  22. Experiencing 15 Years of LibrePlanet Celebration Firsthand as a Volunteer: 2023 - Charting the Course

    Article by Marcia K Wilbur



  23. [Meme] Grabinski the Opportunity

    Reports of European Patents being invalidated (judges do not tolerate fake patents) have become so common that a kangaroo court becomes a matter of urgency for the EPO‘s Benoît Battistelli and António Campinos; will the EU and the EPO’s Administrative Council go along with it, helping to cover up more than a decade of profound corruption?



  24. Union Syndicale Fédérale Cautions the EPO's Administrative Council About Initiating an Illegal Kangaroo Court System for Patents (UPC) While EPO Breaks Laws and Sponsors the Ukraine Invasion

    Union Syndicale Fédérale (USF) is once again speaking out in support of the staff union of Europe's second-largest institution, which lacks oversight and governance because of profound corruption and regulatory capture



  25. Investigation Underway: Sirius 'Open Source' Embezzled/Stole Money, Robbed Its Own Staff

    In light of new developments and some progress in an investigation of Sirius ‘Open Source’ (for fraud!) we take stock of where things stand



  26. [Meme] Sirius 'Open Source' Pensions: Schemes or Scams? Giving a Bad Name to Open Source...

    What Sirius ‘Open Source’ did to its staff is rightly treated as a criminal matter; we know who the perpetrators are



  27. Sirius 'Open Source' Under Investigation for Pension Fraud, Several Pension Providers Examine the Facts

    2 pension providers are looking into Sirius ‘Open Source’, a company that defrauded its own staff; stay tuned as there’s lots more to come. Is this good representation for “Open Source”? From a company that had many high-profile clients in the public sector?



  28. Links 23/03/2023: Sparky 2023.03 Special Editions and SUSE Changes CEO (Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen)

    Links for the day



  29. Links 23/03/2023: Linux 6.2.8 and XWayland 23.1.0

    Links for the day



  30. IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 22, 2023

    IRC logs for Wednesday, March 22, 2023


RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channel: Come and chat with us in real time

Recent Posts