01.29.11
Posted in Microsoft, Novell, Office Suites, Open XML, OpenDocument, OpenOffice at 11:59 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: The ‘umbrella’ of LibreOffice, The Document Foundation, explains that Novell’s deal with Microsoft does not apply to it
THIS Web site, Techrights, was one of the sites which broke the news about LibreOffice (to ensure no misunderstandings we were contacted weeks in advance). There has been criticism of this project, however, notably because of OOXML exporting [1, 2]. In order to clarify this situation, The Document Foundation has just released a LibreOffice FAQ relating only to OOXML doubts. Among the parts:
Ah! So Novell is bringing in odd software bits from Microsoft to betray Free Software!
That’s not really a question, but there are some things that are quite clear to the Document Foundation:
* Novell and the Document Foundation are not the same entities, nor does Novell own the Document Foundation. Novell is one contributor, among several others, to the Document Foundation.
* The patches related to the Microsoft Office formats support coming from Novell are the indirect result of the a specific agreement between Novell and Microsoft. We use the word “indirect” here, as the agreement covers the software known as “OpenOffice Novell Edition”, and that’s not the same as LibreOffice.
* To the best of the knowledge of the Document Foundation, there is no specific agreement between Novell and Microsoft about LibreOffice. (But then again, we are not Novell nor do we represent the company in any way).
“Excuse me,” wrote Groklaw in response to this, “but this is a little too smooth, because if LibreOffice includes those OpenOffice patches, and apparently it does, what in the world would require a specific contract regarding LibreOffice? If the patches are patent-encumbered, for example, would LibreOffice get a pass from the courts because the patch was designed for OpenOffice? Obviously not. If there is any chance of that, then why not make the patches optional by default, and the wiki says you can ship LibreOffice without those patches? That way those of us in countries with wacky patent laws can avoid difficulties.”
Techrights has covered this subject since 2007 and Groklaw woke up to it only a few weeks ago. Separately, Groklaw wrote: “If you do technical work for Microsoft to help it be more interoperable, then, are you helping or hurting FOSS in this context? Something to think about.” █
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01.21.11
Posted in Australia, Novell, Open XML, OpenDocument, OpenOffice at 9:07 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft’s OOXML is proving to be more of a farce now that people in Australia respond to absurd suggestions; Novell influence in LibreOffice is poisonous (promotes OOXML); some businesses may choose hosted spreadsheets that can render the formats debate less relevant
SOME days ago we wrote about Australia making a fatal mistake (post available in Spanish too) by assuming that Microsoft’s proprietary formats will help ensure compatibility. The stupidity surrounding this assertion has been noted just about everywhere by now. Rob Weir from IBM wrote:
Australia has rejected the ISO version of OOXML and gone with the Ecma version that ISO rejected. Is everything upside down there?
Later he added:
@homembit It is a slap in the face for the OOXML efforts in SC34. With PDF they specified the ISO version, for example.
Microsoft’s 'fox' Alex Brown already spins it in Twitter and in his blog. How appalling. And other OOXML drones like Jesper Lund Stocholm are there as well, as expected. But anyway, the subject has been covered extensively by now (if not here then elsewhere) and we are a lot more concerned about Novell’s influence inside LibreOffice. It continues to cause problems, based on this LWN report which has just been made publicly available. It says:
Just before the end of the year, Larry Gusaas called on the LibreOffice community to refuse to support the writing of OOXML files. Standard OpenOffice.org is able to read such files, but will not write them; that is, according to Larry, how things should be. But LibreOffice is based on the Go-oo project, which is the version of OpenOffice.org which has actually been shipped by most Linux distributions. This version does have the ability to write OOXML files; thus, LibreOffice does as well.
Quite a few people supported Larry’s desire for read-only OOXML support in LibreOffice; one could easily peruse the thread and come to the conclusion that the LibreOffice community is overwhelming opposed to the idea of writing in that format. Even so, a number of LibreOffice developers have made it clear (repeatedly) that they have no intention of removing the ability to write OOXML files. There is, thus, no need to worry that we might have to go on using Go-oo after all.
We wrote about this before [1, 2]. Just a day or so ago it was a Novell employee who announced the latest release/build of LibreOffice, so there is room for concern. Novell was paid by Microsoft to support OOXML and LibreOffice should stay true to its promise of avoiding OOXML.
As one last bit of news, consider as food for thought the fact that more companies choose collaboration with SaaS, including wikis for example. Google Apps is one example of it, but there are more. The IDG article “Why some companies are ditching their spreadsheets” sheds some more light about what may become a trend, especially now that spreadsheets become ever more massive and sometimes require compute clusters to work with.
Cohen’s frustration with spreadsheets is not unique. As decision-making becomes more collaborative and workforces grow more distributed and global, the days of compiling a spreadsheet, mailing or e-mailing it to colleagues, then manually inputting updates and re-sending it seem antiquated.
A transition to the back end (server) for large operations on massive databases may lead to further distancing from Microsoft Office/OOXML. Maybe it is time to rethink the relevance of interchange formats that mostly apply to desktop computing. █
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01.04.11
Posted in Asia, Open XML, OpenDocument, OpenOffice, Standard at 12:01 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Novell staff is said to be pushing for OOXML write support in LibreOffice just when ODF becomes a standard in more and more large nations
Techrights is a supporter of LibreOffice because it is willing to believe that — as promised to us personally — the project is not steered by Novell employees. Last night in IRC one of or readers raised some concerns about what goes on at LibreOffice and its umbrella organisation. There is active discussion about it in Twitter and in Groklaw. If there are blog posts or articles about it, then we have not come across them yet. The short story is that OOXML write support becomes a controversial subject for all sorts of reasons, some more justifiable than others (and some are fictional). Charles from LibreOffice has kindly responded to us about 3 times already, denying all of the allegations (more on that in Twitter).
For those who are not familiar with this debate, start here in an IRC log from last night. This came at the same time as the news about India going with ODF, which is a fantastic development. To quote a Red Hat employee:
Here is some good news to kick off the new year. As a follow-up to the Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance, the Department of Information Technology has published the “Interoperability Framework for E-Governance in India (IFEG).”
The draft of the IFEG lists out the standards approved for e-governance in India. The last date for comments on this draft is 27th Jan 2011.
The current concern is that Novell, which was paid handsomely by Microsoft, may continue pushing for OOXML. We wrote about this last month and this question returns not just due to discussion in Groklaw but also because IBM’s Rob Weir writes that the “Document Foundation debates OOXML support in LibreOffice. With freedom it is hard to be only half pure. http://bit.ly/hjPqMU”. The FFII says: “A user is concerned about #LibreOffice #OOXML write support http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.documentfoundation.discuss/3058″
As Weir added: “Half-pure is starting with the goal of being independent of a Oracle, but then doing what Microsoft is paying Novell to do.”
“Half-pure is starting with the goal of being independent of a Oracle, but then doing what Microsoft is paying Novell to do.”
–Rob Weir, IBMAs a result of this, Weir comes under another pressure offence from Microsoft, over ODF. He is having a long powwow (about 30 tweets back and forth) with Microsoft employees and also boosters like Jesper Lund Stocholm, starting with messages like this one which says: “if OSS doesn’t add support for OOXML, .NET, XPS, SilverLight , etc., then they’re “detroying your ability to choose”?”
It’s like Microsoft speaking using a peripheral person, Jesper. They spin OOXML as “choice” again. We’ll probably post a little more on this subject at a later date. A lot of it is in Twitter and in our IRC logs. Maybe it’s just a manufactured controversy, it’s still hard to tell without a lot of research and personal queries. There is more in Groklaw comments and interestingly enough, a longtime supporter of Groklaw, Brian Proffitt, opines that Groklaw should open up to more people:
The problem is that in the short term, Groklaw’s mission (stopping SCO from hurting Linux) has basically succeeded. Yes, there are pending appeals from SCO, but Jones is concerned that any efforts to continue the fight against SCO will only serve to help companies like Novell. Other suits are out there, but right now the community interest for those seems to be waning. And, I suspect, Jones’ own interest might be waning: she has been at this since 2003, while facing several personal attacks along the way. The potential for burnout has to be very real.
When one person, any person, gets so wrapped up in something and then has to deal with the lack of that issue in their lives–even if they have won–it has a profound effect.
My most constructive suggestion would be for Groklaw to become a more community-run site. Instead of being a strictly one-person show, perhaps a shift to a more collaboratively run organization is possible. There is precedent: Linus Torvalds is still leading the Linux kernel development, but over the years he has delegated a lot of responsibilities to the various kernel maintainers. Surely there are those in the Groklaw community who could step up and fill similar roles for Groklaw.
I believe this approach would enable Groklaw to dedicate more time to covering all of the different legal issues surrounding FLOSS these days. In effect, it would become a meta-blog, like Huffington Post, or Engadget, or what have you, with a focus on FLOSS legal battles.
Change isn’t easy, but it can be an opportunity to do something bigger than you had ever planned.
The whole post is very thought-provoking and it has attracted Microsoft mobbyists too (libel and crazy theories in the comments). █
Addendum: As this post comes into publication time Charles posts this rebuttal in his blog. He also told me: “I think it might be #Oracle trying run some brainfuck here. Oracle more #FOSS than #LibreOffice? Who does benefit from this?”
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12.21.10
Posted in Microsoft, Novell, OIN, OpenDocument, OpenOffice, Patents at 5:02 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: OIN apparently kicks the threat of Novell to the curb; Microsoft boosters still hostile towards OIN, which provides signs that OIN is somewhat effective
EARLIER on we wrote about LibreOffice joining the OIN, which is positive news. As a good news site put it, “[p]atents owned by Open Invention Network are available royalty-free to whichever company, institution or individual that agrees not to assert its patents against free software.” Groklaw explained that OIN’s defence from Novell-owned patents was about to expire because of CPTN. Simon Phipps, whose employer recently joined the OIN, writes:
Smart move here – by joining now, they gain access to all those patents belonging to Novell that will leave the pool and belong (among others) to Microsoft and Oracle when the acquisition by AttachMate closes. Given Novell’s software portfolio, there’s a chance some of those are highly relevant. Now OIN needs to update its software list to include LibreOffice.
As one can imagine, LWN is characteristically heckled* by Microsoft Florian, who still promotes the pro-Microsoft side and bashes the OIN. █
____
* This mobbyist also reproduces the comments in other forums for increased impact, so there’s a lot of silent copying-and-pasting involved.
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12.20.10
Posted in Microsoft, OIN, OpenDocument, OpenOffice, Oracle, Patents at 3:50 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“What we’re seeing though now can be loosely described as patent terrorism, where people are using their patent horde as a threat [...] It’s almost like a cold war stand over tactic; where I have these patents and if you breach these patents, I’m going to come after you and sue you.”
–James Eagleton, systems product manager for Sun Microsystems
Summary: The Open Invention Network (OIN) gets the Document Foundation as a licensee; other patent news of interest
THE Document Foundation (TDF) and LibreOffice were covered here a couple of times before and this whole initiative does pretty well so far. Oracle is already in the OIN and following advice from Groklaw — although probably not related to it — TDF is joining too and makes this announcement:
The Document Foundation has joined the Open Invention Network (OIN), to further extend the free software ecosystems. By becoming a licensee, The Document Foundation – developer of LibreOffice, a free office suite for personal and corporate productivity – has joined the growing list of organizations that recognize the importance of participating in the Open Invention Network, in order to protect the free software ecosystem from the risks associated to software patents.“The Document Foundation is a major free software project, and LibreOffice a key office suite for creating, managing and sharing documents. By becoming a licensee of the Open Invention Network, we fight software patents – which stifle innovation and encourage predatory business practices – and at the same time we improve the protection of our software projects,” said Charles Schulz, Member of TDF Steering Committee.
Coincidentally, a lot of the TDF is European, which may help reduce the patent threat to it. Vis-à-vis Europe and patents, the “EU patent” [1, 2, 3, 4] had Italy dodge the rest of the pack (they are smart for avoiding such European problems which get falsely marketed) and then excluded as a result. Whilst European lawyers are excited, developers of software — no matter whether free/libre or proprietary — should be concerned. Even an aggressive/abrasive pro-software patents lawyer Gene Quinn seems to have had some Eureka moments given what he posted recently. A patent lawyer who focuses on games is contesting Groklaw’s position while streaming gaming content becomes a patent:
OnLive may not be offering a wide range of games at the moment, but the technology behind the service has proven impressive. The company now has another powerful weapon in its arsenal, as a patent on cloud-based gaming and the streaming of content has been granted to Steve Perlman, OnLive’s CEO.
Patents are a tax which is benefiting trolls and lawyers the most; can they be eliminated also for the sake of software Freedom? It’s Microsoft’s last resort now that it accepts more Office counterfeiting and sues companies using patents. █
“Search engines be da**ed, it’s the OS that generates money – if the world switches to linux, it will switch to OpenOffice too.”
–Motley Fool (heavily Microsoft influenced)
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11.28.10
Posted in Europe, Microsoft, Office Suites, OpenDocument, OpenOffice at 12:42 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Image by Foto Giovanni
Summary: One culprit in the selling of Italy’s future to Microsoft gets named; this problem is not only Italian
“STOP” on zona-m.net is an interesting blog which reports from Italy, particularly about topics related to OpenOffice.org (and now LibreOffice). A few days ago it did some excellent reporting about Nichi Vendola and Microsoft [1, 2] and it is probably worth laying out in isolation as follows:
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Nichi Vendola is president both of south-eastern italian region Puglia and of the Italian left party Sinistra Ecologia Libertà (SEL or “Left, Ecology, Freedom” in English).
Free Software is software that can save lots of public money. Even moms like Free Software like Linux, partly because it can be used without problems even by some disabled children. Besides, Free Software is such a good idea that European Parliament representatives of all colors like it !.
On its own website, SEL says “we believe that for a modern party speaking of copyleft, Free Software and Net Neutrality is as necessary as speaking of jobs, environment, economy and civil rights”. Among the more than 100 political candidates supporting Free Software at the latest regional elections in Italy there were several SEL representatives. The Florence section of SEL even presented a motion to promote Free Software in Florence http://www.sinistraeliberta.eu/articoli/sel-per-il-software-libero-al-comune-di-firenze] in January 2010.
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The day after signing a Berlusconi-like deal with Microsoft, Nichi Vendola, president of the Puglia Region, published an explanation on the website of its party. These are my comments to the main parts of that article.
Vendola: “Who is the enemy for Puglia and for Italy? Is it Microsoft, or any other software giant?”
Stop: The first enemy is lack of competence and interest in ICT by Public Administrators. Is this the case with Vendola? Maybe not, but frankly this explanation isn’t enough to be sure, even if there are some good parts in it.
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Today, after the initial surprise caused by knowing that Left party leader and president of the italian region of Puglia, Nichi Vendola, has just signed a Berlusconi-like deal with Microsoft offering an explanation that, alas, doesn’t really explain much, we started to know something about the content of the deal (because the bigger, problem in this whole business, much more of the presence of Microsoft, is lack of transparency).
The Region of Puglia published a press release titled, more or less, “Protocol of understanding between the Region of Puglia and Microsoft. Vendola says: (this is for) technological neutrality (a summary of the press release was also published by Italian newspaper Corriere del Mezzogiorno.
Microsoft clearly relies on corruptible people who would rather serve Microsoft and not serve the public. It is worth naming these people to put pressure on them. Nichi Vendola appears to be one such person and as this fine new article puts it, the problem affects more than just Italy (the author previously showed how it’s done in the UK with the “Everything Microsoft” CIO, Richard Steel [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]):
The reason Microsoft’s EU numbers don’t add up is that the EC has spent only half the total amount it had alloted under its €49m contract for desktop software.
When on signing the contract in 2008 the EC estimated its cost per user per year would be €125, it fell well short of the total contract value. It sounds like a super deal when you say it’s a third cheaper than it is.
It better had sound like a super deal as well if the EC wants to justify spending millions on Microsoft software while still fighting the software giant in court over its monopoly abuses.
Discount on software which takes away one’s freedom can be worse than no discount at all because its purpose is to ensure lock-in at all costs.
As another blogger put it the other day (in relation to KINect):
It looks like Microsoft is admitting that it needs to look like a bully even if it really isn’t at times; why?
Well, that’s just Microsoft, a control freak. Italy was smart enough to shoot down the “EU Patent” and to move to Free software more quickly than some neighbouring countries. Hopefully the likes of Nichi Vendola will be seen for what they are — an impediment to Italian autonomy and freedom. More stories about Italy are appended below. █
Related posts:
Update: Glyn Moody wrote a rebuttal to poor damage control from Vendola:
What on earth is he talking about? After having made an unjustified choice to sign a deal with Microsoft (one whose terms haven’t even been revealed, as far I can tell), he tries to simply avoid the central question “Why?” by saying in true Tony Blair fashion that it is time to move on, and that it’s not about competitors, but about the iPad and fibre optic cables, the price of apps and Net neutrality. He then changes subject yet again by bringing in the topic of Italy’s digital divide.
Now, closing the digital divide is certainly a hugely important undertaking, but if anything can do that it is *free* software, which can be distributed to everyone in Puglia – to every school, and to every business. Microsoft’s offerings are precisely the last thing that will close that digital divide.
Indeed, the divide is there largely *because* of Microsoft. By virtue of its monopolistic hold on the desktop market it has been able to impose artificially high prices on a sector whose marginal costs of production are zero. This implies that that natural price of software is also zero – as is exactly the case for free software. Anything higher than zero makes the digital divide deeper – which means that Microsoft’s inflated prices have helped excavate not so much a digital divide as a digital chasm.
So Signor Vendola’s bizarre “explanation” of his move – which, of course is a non-explanation, and the Italian equivalent of saying: “ooh, look, a squirrel” – is in fact a superb reason why he should in fact be supporting open source, just as his party professes to do on its Web site.
[...]
The message is clear: Italian free software activists must (a) continue to pile on the pressure until he cancels this deal with Microsoft, and (b) non guardare lo scoiattolo.
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11.12.10
Posted in Deception, IBM, Microsoft, Office Suites, Open XML, OpenDocument, OpenOffice, Patents, RAND, Red Hat, Standard at 6:25 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: As OpenOffice.org gets more independent and increasingly liberated (as LibreOffice), Microsoft is working to spread more pseudo-standards like OOXML
The Document Foundation has some announcement to make and Charles Schulz writes:
The Document Foundation has started the rewrite of OpenOffice Yes We Can!
Microsoft would love to eliminate OpenOffice.org or LibreOffice (even though it runs on Windows) and one way to harm OpenOffice.org is to use proprietary and patented ‘standards’ like OOXML. Software patents are the main thing which Microsoft has got left as rescuer of falling cash cows.
Occasionally we find Microsoft setting up Web sites that serve its agenda and sometimes Microsoft uses front groups like ACT to set up such Web sites (we gave examples before). It is part of the company’s reality distortion field, selling people the false impression that in Europe, for instance, there is demand for software patents. This is a textbook example of AstroTurfing. Now, we do not know if TalkStandards (TalkStandards.com) is indirectly Microsoft’s creation (Microsoft put writers there), but it has many pro-software patents writers posting over there so it’s like a stacked panel. They are RAND lobbyists, which we most recently wrote about in [1, 2, 3], in addition to many prior occasions.
Even Rob Weir from IBM is now giving his opinion about TalkStandards.com:
For a couple of years I’ve been trying to find a good way to share and discuss news, articles, blog posts, etc., about open standards. I’m not very pleased with the results.
[...]
Now, I suppose I could just give up and go over to TalkStandards.com and be instructed on open standards by the European counsel for the Business Software Alliance and read commentary by other members of the Microsoft claque. But if you know me, you know that won’t happen.
Red Hat’s Jan Wildeboer warns that “MSFT [is] explaining Open Standards in Washington DC. Should be fun to hear how they define Open Standards” (the page he links to is this one).
Watch the part which says “Steve Mutkoski, Microsoft”. For those who do not know, this man co-authored the Microsoft Open Specification Promise ("MOSP") which is utterly useless, e.g. for OOXML. Earlier this year we wrote that he was harming software freedom yet again because, based on LWN, “Steve Mutkoski of Microsoft [...] asserted that patented standards are entirely compatible with most open source licenses” (oh, this humour of mobbyists is the same, but they actually say it like they mean it).
In conclusion, Microsoft is still working to normalise software patents inside protocols and/or “standards”. Projects like Mono help this agenda. █
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11.10.10
Posted in Europe, Microsoft, Office Suites, Open XML, OpenDocument, OpenOffice at 2:13 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Finland’s story of migrations to OpenOffice.org is told in a comprehensive formal document; Romania goes the other way and ISO continues to show why it is severely flawed
Tampere University has just released this 234-page thesis whose PDF version has been downloaded nearly 700 times and whose abstract reads as follows:
This study investigates the largest transition in Finland to an open source office suite and to an open standard for office documents. The IT environment of the open source OpenOffice.org migration involves more than 10 000 workstations in the Finnish Ministry of Justice and its administrative sector.
Methodologically, the research is a longitudinal innovation adoption study covering the 7-year time span from 2003 to 2010. The study applies and tests the organizational innovation adoption process model originally developed by Everett Rogers. In addition to the theory-testing approach, the study includes artifact-building and artifact-evaluation activities of design research. The research view of the study introduces a participatory researcher’s implementation perspective where the researcher as a staff member of the organization has been in charge of the adoption of the innovation in the organization.
The findings of the study provide contributions both to IS research and practice. The events of the study give reason to suggest that the characteristics of the open source software with low-cost licenses call for improvements in the organizational innovation adoption stage model. The findings suggest that the predefined order of stages in the innovation process and sharp distinctions between stages should not be expected in organizational innovation adoption. As a new model and method, the study provides a complementary framework for the instrumentation and documentation of the open source innovation process in the organizational context. The study confirms several results from previous research and practice, especially the importance of top management support, systematic open source skill building and the presence of innovation champions in the adoption of open source solutions.
For IS practice, the study shows that the transition to an open source office suite is feasible in a large-scale context and that substantial benefits can be achieved as the result of the transition. For the user organizations of open source software, lower cost has been the most commonly cited benefit and one of the main reasons for adopting open source. Other often cited considerations include strategic goals like the facilitation of more sovereign IT governance and the reduction of vendor dependence through open source solutions and open standards. The study addresses several practically important issues involved in the adoption of open source, e.g., the analysis of software functionality and interoperability, cost evaluations, installation and configuration issues, local language support issues, additional tools to support the migration, user training and support, technical support, and software usage measurements. The evaluation of costs in the study indicates that the migration to the open source office suite platform will benefit the target organization of the study with impressive cost savings when compared to the deployment of a comparative proprietary office suite platform. The study applies numerous best practice approaches which together with the rich insight provided by the research should benefit other organizations considering open source office suite adoptions both from the perspectives of management and implementation.
As summarised by Arjen Kamphuis:
Phd thesis on succesful migration to #openoffice by Finnish gov.
For some background about Finland also consider reading:
One would expect Finland to be ahead when it comes to Free software, at the very least because it’s the country Linux came from. In Romania, which some people have just told us is known for higher corruption rates, Microsoft manages to reign, still. One Romanian reader messaged us yesterday to say that: “While EU is abandoning proprietary software, Romanian civil servants learn to use MS Office http://tinyurl.com/33j8xwk (Google Translate)”
For more information about the situation in Romania see:
A few of the links above (especially the last two) speak about how Microsoft seemingly corrupted the vote on OOXML in Romania. In turn it forces a lot of the population to buy Microsoft Office or be called “pirate”.
Finland’s migration to OpenOffice.org is not unique. There are other countries that do the same thing, Malaysia for example. The important thing is that parts of the Finnish government will be able to exchange information with the public in ODF format. OOXML (and other Microsoft Office formats) is proprietary, so no government should ever use/require it, thereby imposing the purchase of a particular set of products from one single company with dubious history.
Speaking of OOXML, it turned ISO into a launching stock and it seems to be happening again. Andy Updegrove writes:
After sixteen years of working in parallel to the traditional standards infrastructure, the World Wide Web Consortium has taken an interesting decision: to begin submitting selected W3C Recommendations to that same system for endorsement. In doing so, it joins the small handful of consortia (seven, to be exact) that have applied for this option out of the hundreds of consortia currently active in the information and communications (ICT) to apply for that option.
If this process sounds vaguely familiar, that’s likely because this is the same process that OASIS used to gain global endorsement of its OpenDocument Format (ODF). Microsoft took a similar, but procedurally distinct, route with OOXML, its competing document format, when it offered it to ECMA, which enjoys a special “Fast Track” relationship with JTC1. What won’t sound familiar is the conditions that the W3C has successfully included in its application to make submissions, on which more below.
It was only last week that W3C was involved in a separate controversy because of Microsoft. Glyn Moody links to this article about W3C becoming an official submitter to ISO and adds: “not sure this is good: wouldn’t it be better to ignore ISO after OOXML?” █
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