Bonum Certa Men Certa

More Wins for ODF, Another Potential Loss for ISO's Reputation

Protest against OOXML



The European Commission will report about its findings and possibly fine Microsoft when that investigation is complete. ISO's reputation will suffer another blow.

In the mean time, seeing the acceptance of ODF is encouraging and those who adopt ODF are doing a commendable thing. According to the OSI's Web site, a new addition comes from Yale Law School, demonstrating ODF adoption among academics and scholars where it's very important (more so than in the industry).

Open Document Formats have finally become the default document format for presentations. Having been at all three editions, I am personally impressed that the ISP has come this far. In the first edition, we had proprietary document formats; during the second edition, there was a 50-50 thing going on but the default still remained proprietary. The third edition has proved to be 100% ODF.


The following new press release commends ODF as well.

Also integrated into the MarkMail archives are group messages from OpenOffice.org, a community in excess of 1 million volunteer and sponsored contributors who develop, translate, support and promote the leading open-source office productivity suite. Its file format, the OpenDocument Format, an ISO standard, has fundamentally revolutionized the ecology of electronic documents and is now being used or considered for use by dozens of national and regional governments and enterprises around the world.


India's potential plan to bypass ISO recommendations was noted in recent days [1, 2] and ANSI seems to have opened up for feedback. This could invite and even spur some complaints about ISO, whose name was shattered by Microsoft's OOXML. From ANSI's Web site:

There are just two weeks left before the submissions deadline for the American National Standards Institute (ANSI)’s Standards That Make a Difference poll. A great opportunity to raise awareness of the standards that have the biggest impact on today’s ever-changing global marketplace, the survey allows organizations and interested stakeholders to highlight the specifications that they value the most.


It's not only India and ANSI that are open to public feedback at the moment. A constructive discussion is taking place in Jomar's blog (Brazil). There's intention to obviate reliance on ISO.

So, these are the first ideas that I would like to share with you, and I would really appreciate it if you would send me your thoughts by posting comments. I sincerely believe that with a small contribution by each of us, we’ll be able to design a new process for standards development that will allow anyone to participate without needing to be a representative of Company Y, or to have a certain degree, and so on. At the end of the day, standards developers or not, we’re all standards users.


Curiously enough, also worth noting is this blog post about Microsoft technology and ODF.

So an interesting challenging was brought up. Why not have an ODF Viewer in microsoft technology. This means VB and ActiveX. This will be as tactical as having a ODF plugin for Microsoft office.

[...]

I guess the language doesn't matter and some might even think that this is doable using python with win32 or even in Visual C++ or C#. However the challenge is on.


This seems like a bad idea for so many reasons.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Alex Oliva, the Potential 'Successor' of RMS, Has a New Web Site
More freedom for Alex Oliva
Azure is Turning 17 This Year, Still Losing Money and Staff
Hallmark of pyramid schemes, deriving "value" out of things that do not really exist?
 
Links 16/02/2025: Oligarchs "Collect Your Data and Control Your World", Global Temperatures Shoot Up
Links for the day
Promoting Microsoft Windows With LLM Slop
What is the policy at BetaNews regarding LLM slop?
Links 16/02/2025: "Microsoft Is Laying Off Employees" and Internal Dissent Brewing at Facebook Over Regime Complicity
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 15, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, February 15, 2025
Links 15/02/2025: Harms to Health, Public Domain, and More
Links for the day
Gemini Links 15/02/2025: On Autistic People, AuraGem Over HTTPS
Links for the day
The Cyber Show (C|S) Speaks of the "Rise of the Nerd Reich."
This 'Valentine Episode' is quite good
Strong Momentum for the Free Software Foundation (FSF) as Winter Approaches Its End in Boston or in the Northern Hemisphere
FSF's founder, Richard Stallman, gives another talk in Italy in 9 days from now
The 'Drunken Plagiarists' Are Harming Journalism About GNU/Linux
They lessen the incentive to do real journalism abut GNU/Linux
Female Nazis and racist Swiss women
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Richard Stallman on RISC-V and Free Hardware
Invidious is under attack by Google
Links 15/02/2025: Erasing of American Science and Tesla SLAPPing Critics
Links for the day
IDG 'Reviews' of GNU/Linux Now Contain LLM Slop
It's typically ads or commercials... or sometimes spin disguised as news
Gemini Links 15/02/2025: Spectacles and "Before Sunset", Moving Domains Out of the US
Links for the day
Microsoft Has Only $17,482 Million Left, "Cash on Hand" Sank 40 Billion Dollars in 2 Years
Microsoft runs low on money in the bank
YouTube Layoffs Mean That YouTube is Still Losing a Lot of Money (Net Income or Profit Almost Definitely Negative)
In more recent years Google defunded many vloggers
In Gopher and Gemini Protocol People Abandon Services Based in the United States
There's no resistance whatsoever
Python and Microsoft: Pandas Should Have Known OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Microsoft Excel Are Different and Competing Things
now we're meant to think that in order to open ODF files we need some functions with "Excel" in their name
Not Only Windows, Surface, and "Hey Hi" PCs; Microsoft's Hardware Ventures Are a Dumpster Fire; HoloLens Mixed Reality Hardware Now Axed Altogether and Staff is Miserable
Microsoft is in a terrible state
Certificate Authority (CA) Let's Encrypt Now Down to TEN (0.3% of the Whole) in Geminispace
The number of capsules that use Let's Encrypt is, according to Lupa, about to fall to single-digit figures
Links 15/02/2025: University Price Hikes and Copyright Action Against Slop Companies
Links for the day
Slopwatch: All Those New 'Articles' Are Fake and Crafted by Chatbots (LLM Slop)
Google News is promoting these as "Linux" news; they're not even made by humans
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 14, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, February 14, 2025
Gemini Links 14/02/2025: Mysterious Friend and "Eight by Eight"
Links for the day
They Will Never Leave Linus Torvalds Alone, Rust is Just Another Way to Cause Instability and Infighting in Linux
We already identified the Rust "community" as troublemakers more than 5 years ago and we wrote about the evidence
Apple: Social Justice or Social Nationalism?
Remember to buy Apple, folks
Links 14/02/2025: Mass Layoffs at Sophos, Chatbots Failing Very Badly, "DOGE as a National Cyberattack"
Links for the day
Moving Away From Certificate Authorities (CAs) Like Let's Encrypt Means Taking Away From the US Government the Power to 'Censor' Sites by Revoking Certificates
Gemini capsule is cheap to run and easy (easier than a Web site) to maintain. More people disillusioned and frustrated with social control media flock to it.
BetaNews' Managing Editor Wayne William Took Charge of GNU/Linux Articles and His Articles Are Real (He Actually Wrote Them)
We are frankly relieved to see that Wayne William recognised the problem and did something about it
Links 14/02/2025: Publicity Rights Violated (ByteDance), Bribes to Trump Passed via Social Control Media 'Settlements' Again
Links for the day
Gemini Links 14/02/2025: Constitution, Cosmic DE, and More
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Anti-Linux Articles Published by Bots, Dominating Google News
So a lot of the Web is Microsoft chatbot-generated anti-Linux FUD
Links 14/02/2025: Measles Outbreak in Texas, Zelensky Warns Russia Will Attack a NATO Country
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, February 13, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, February 13, 2025