Bonum Certa Men Certa

OOXML and ODF: Where Do We Go from Here with a Broken ISO?

As you stroll around various forums you'll find that one thing is beginning to become very clear. ISO is broken and in order to repair the ISO, serious changes need to be made. The ISO is broken for two reasons:

  1. It seems to be biased in favour of a certain large company, as we showed many times in the past


  2. Its process is too open for benevolent intervention and therefore to manipulation as well


OpenISO was born some months ago in response to Microsoft's manipulation in Switzerland. The OpenISO is not quite ready yet (the site lacks sufficient substance). However, we received some information from a reputable source which tells us that the ISO needs be overhauled. It's matter of fixing a broken (existing) system or starting from scratch, which still seems like wishful thinking.

"The system assumes that all participants are gentlemen."Ecma, by the way, is in a worse state 1, 2]. We ought to prepare ourselves for more pseudo standards coming from Ecma. Microsoft has them stacked up like cannon balls, for that whole 'politically correct/suitable' game. Increasingly, governments adopt stronger pro-open standards policies.

Novell loves moneyAccording to an unnamed source, the ISO's rules are "based on the assumption that participants are acting in good faith. They are also biased towards making participation easy, in order to allow everyone affected by standards to have a voice in their creation." How about cases where a company x (let us call it "Novell") receives money from another company, y (for convenience, let us call it "Micro-Soft") to support a standard which does not truly serve anyone? You get the picture.

Rob Weir made some similar observations some months ago. The system assumes that all participants are gentlemen. As someone who studies Microsoft's behavior (far beyond standards in terms of scope), I am through being a gentleman in this game simply because thugs beat gentlemen as long as the broader (and broken) system prevails. It even boils down to economics and politics, which I try to avoid. These cannot be separated though.

What we are left with are at (least) three ways of fighting for standards and fair competition:

  1. Identify and make it the public's common knowledge that Microsoft is gaming the system
  2. Promote open standards by word of mouth and by setting a good example
  3. Produce tools that facilitate and support truly open formats and standards


With regard to point (3), progress is being made. Yesterday I spotted the following neat tool which is Web-based.

The GooTrad (Beta) web application of the Traducindote project, is a OpenOffice Writer documents translator (OpenDocument format), which uses Google Translate.


Additionally, version 3.3 of Docvert was released some days ago.

Docvert takes word processor files (typically .doc) and converts them to OpenDocument and clean HTML.

[...]

It's released under the GPL v3 so although it's open source there's no legal problems developing proprietary software ontop of it. The XML produced is easier to understand and more structured than the OOXML or .DOC formats.


Ensuring that OpenDocument prevails and spreads is ensuring the the market is fair, competitive, and in a healthy state that benefits the consumer. Anything else is likely to be greed-driven. Just ask Microsoft and it will admit this.

OOXML is a monopoly

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
 
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Plagiarism, Fake Articles, and FUD About Linux
not a day goes by without Google News feeding FUD from slopfarms
Gemini Links 01/10/2025: Chat Control and End of Life
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: Long Covid Risk Reiterated, "Bitcoin Queen" Caught
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: EA $55 Billion Deal is Debt and Slop "Raises Vishing Risks"
Links for the day
Bluewashing at Red Hat Means Redundancies
The man who sold Red Hat to IBM meanwhile became a Microsoft Mono booster
After Killing OpenSource.com, IBM ('Red Hat') and OSI Told Us OpenSource.net Would Replace It (But That Didn't Happen)
Now it's time to move on, perhaps tarnishing the "Open Source" label some more (for whatever sponsor wants this)
Linux is Not a Community Project, It's a Wall Street Product
The core goal should be freedom
Bad Actors Abusing the Free Software Community, Vandalising It Using Rogue Politics and Old Tactics
Oil giants have long attempted to do this; now, the digital equivalent of Big Oil does this in technology
Social Control Media Isn't the Future, The Federation or Fediverse Isn't Growing, People's Accounts Vanish for Good
users' accounts will get deleted, not just become inactive
IBM is Failing, This Helps Show Wall Street is Entirely Detached From Actual Commercial Performance
IBM is unable to grow, it's just constantly shrinking
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clerical Aspects of Publishing and Development
In Free software, the management aspects are considerably reduced
Slopwatch: Fake Articles and Google News Promoting "Linux" Spam or Bot-Generated Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
These slopfarms help misplace blame
Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in September, This Time Many in Liverpool Affected
Be ready for more waves of layoffs ahead of the so-called "results" in late October