Yesterday I attended an interesting event in Brussels. This conference was about ICT standards and their role in Europe’s E-Government policies and practices. The conference had a very light attendance but I guess the size of the room also gave that impression. Overall we had a pretty good update on …
The story of OOXML and in general the story of proprietary formats and protocols being used and promoted to control the market and the access of citizens to digital re sources is a long but fascinating one. The three (yes, three) last episodes of the OOXML story are a good …
That’s official and it comes from Alex Brown, the convener of the OOXML ballot at the ISO/IEC’s JTC-1: Tracks of OOXML have been found somewhere around the ITTF. The story we now have is that the ITTF received a draft of OOXML on the 29th of March but refused to …
We are on the 14 th of May and OOXML is an ISO standard. Slight problem: there is no known specification or definitive draft of that ISO standard. To be sure, we know what the first version of Ecma 376 looks like, and we know it pretty well, although it’s …
The fact is, nobody outside the Ecma and probably ISO knows how OOXML looks like now. It is particularly cumbersome, not so much because that could amount to one more irregularity against the JTC1’s SC 34, but also because it creates yet one more precedent in the long story of …
Ah, I see you were expecting me to comment on the olympic catastrophy induced by the race for the flame around the world. No. Today I am going to tell you about a protest that has taken place in Norway at the occasion of the ISO SC34 meeting, where odd …
I shall not complain that much about what happened with OOXML. In fact, the act of standardizing OOXML has not really brought any significant advantages to OOXML. ODF is an ISO standard and so is OOXML. That’s what I call a draw, and Microsoft has been battling hard for a …
It is now certain that OOXML has been approved by the national standards organizations. France finally abstained after an interesting last minute intervention by Microsoft. Odd things happened and the final announcement by the Afnor today would have been a farce if it had not been official. It is always …
Today is Document Freedom Day: Roughly 200 teams from more than 60 countries worldwide are organising local activities to raise awareness for Document Freedom and Open Standards. To support the initiatives surrounding the first day to celebrate document liberation, DFD starter packs containing a DFD flag, t-shirts and leaflets have …