OpenDocument Gets Adopted As Standardized Format By ISO

[tab][/tab]Tuesday night earned another glorious feather for the whole opensource movement. OpenDocument is now officially a world-standard document format and has been unanymously voted for by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).

Members of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) ratified the file-format standard with no opposition among the 31 votes. And because only seven members submitted comments for review, the closely watched OpenDocument standard may be published in fast order.
"With adoption of ODF by ISO/IEC now assured, software that implements the standard will now become more attractive to those European and other government purchasers for whom global adoption by ISO/IEC is either desirable, or required," Andrew Updegrove, attorney with law firm Gesmer Updegrove wrote in his blog.

Microsoft as usual is being the eternal ***** by trying to force the standardization of its own Office OpenXML format.

A number of productivity applications, such as OpenOffice 2.0, Sun Microsystems' StarOffice 8 and IBM's Workplace, support the OpenDocument file format. Microsoft, however, is not supporting OpenDocument and instead is seeking ISO standardization for its own Office Open XML file formats.
Although Microsoft sits on the ballot resolution committee that will have a chance to review the ISO/IEC's comments on OpenDocument, competitors such as Sun Microsystems are not worried that Microsoft will affect the publication of the newly ratified standard.

Read the full article at: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

[tab][/tab]Tuesday night earned another glorious feather for the whole opensource movement. OpenDocument is now officially a world-standard document format and has been unanymously voted for by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).Microsoft as usual is being the eternal ***** by trying to force the standardization of its own Office OpenXML format.
Read the full article at: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

Having worked with a few of the ISO/IEC/IEEE technical groups, there is not a chance that Microsoft's XML format is standardizable. It is poorly documented (in that there are features which are not documented at all), poorly understood, and impossible to independently implement. That is not even starting on the patent/licensing issues. It also makes extremely poor use of XML compared to OpenDoc and the features are very Office-Centric. Yet another serious issue is that MS' document format is not built on other standards, such as XHTML, XPointers, etc., making MS' format much more complex than it needs to be.

HURRAY! ODF IS NOW ISO STANDARD!! ANYONE GOT CHAMPAGNE??Yet, Micro$oft will spend so much money just to compete with something that they don't even need to compete in the first place. If you buy their products, your money will end up wasted.xboxrulz

Edited May 3, 2006 by xboxrulz (see edit history)