We have been citing some output from Digistan recently and Andy Updegrove has just published a good introduction to it. Remember that Digistan does not favour patent-encumbered interoperability that Novell promotes; instead, it's all about open standards.

That pronouncement has been titled The Hague Declaration by the new international group, called the Digital Standards Organization ("Digistan," for short), that crafted it. In this blog entry, I'll talk about what the Declaration is all about, and what it is intended to achieve.

As follow-up to news that we mentioned here yesterday [1, 2], also see the following couple of new articles:

1. Britain complains to EU about Microsoft file system

A British watchdog agency said Tuesday it had complained to European Union regulators that Microsoft Corp.'s new file format [OOXML] for storing documents discouraged competition.

2. Agency says Microsoft hurts student interests

A government agency has told the European Commission that Microsoft Office works poorly with rival software used in schools, hurting the interests of learners, teachers and parents.

Ignore an erroneous report (from IDG) which suggests the EU has declined to deal with this complaint. There is disinformation out there.

It was also IDG that recently measured the capabilities of OpenOffice 3 (beta) using OOXML as a yardstick. This got Neil McAllister added to "The List". He usually publishes good articles, but that last one was abysmal. ⬆