10.03.08
Quick Mention: Microsoft’s Attempted Hijack of ODF Now in ‘The Press’
To some people, the authority of a publication is important for indication of credibility (not that it's necessarily justified). It’s therefore worth mentioning that covered in Heise right now is an important new story. It’s about Microsoft seeking to gain greater control of ODF.
After a recent meeting of the SC 34 committee, the ISO/IEC group responsible for OOXML, Groklaw are reporting that they believe Microsoft are trying to take control of the Open Document Format (ODF), the uncontroversial open document format standard.
This has gone on for a long time, but Pamela Jones lined up the evidence very nicely. █
Penny Lane said,
October 5, 2008 at 2:56 pm
I thought ODF development and maint was done in OASIS, in a TC dominated by Sun and IBM?
AlexH said,
October 5, 2008 at 3:17 pm
@Penny: that’s correct.
Roy Schestowitz said,
October 5, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Microsoft was invited to join before it threw toys out its pram and decided to ram Windows/Office down ISO’s throat. Its participation in ODF now is just EEE.
Penny Lane said,
October 5, 2008 at 8:31 pm
You’re confusing things Roy… you’re talking about the invitation to join OASIS, Microsoft have one member in the OASIS TC, hardly domination.
The point of your post is about ISO JTC1/SC34, a TC which IBM now appear to have decided not to participate in, not that it makes any difference because the OASIS TC (which is still IBM and Sun dominated) refuses to hand over maintenence of ODF to ISO. They were refusing to hand over maintenence to ISO prior to the whole OpenXML thing, they have also been doing a terrible job of actually undertaking maintenence.
If you rummage around in the trash cans that you call sources you will eventually find evidence that ODF almost lost its IS26300 status earlier this year due to the failure of the OASIS TC to meet their contractual agreement to maintain the spec.