Sun shareholders approve Sun’s merger with Oracle: I hear Jonathan Schwartz did not show up to the meeting; I don’t know why, but it sure is a sad moment. Not because of Oracle (it makes things quite interesting) but because Sun is very likely to go away, and with it …
Folks, The results have arrived yesterday, and it is with some disappointment that I found out that I had not been elected at the Board. I know what it means: I’ll try to understand better what the members of the OASIS consortium feel the issues on the table are the …
Dear Readers As many of you know, Ars Aperta has been active in standardization ever since its inception. Shortly after starting our business in 2006, we realized how critical a standard like OpenDocument Format would become for the ICT world. By creating an effective, xml based format for office documents, …
I wrote a bit more about Ars Aperta’s new certification project. The basic idea is to award certifications to organizations that contribute or lead FOSS projects. Several types of certification exist, but in this article I discuss the specifics of what is probably the first comprehensive FOSS certification to date …
These are very interesting times for ODF and Open Standards. Microsoft’s latest outrage by Gray Knowlton does at least show that if there’s a company who practices the « Do as I say, not as I do », it’s Microsoft. Gray Knowlton is now calling for Rob Weir, chair of the ODF …
Reports start to appear in the press about the ODF support quality enabled by the Service Pack 2 inside Microsoft Office 2007. I could say that I’m not surprised, but I somewhat had also expected the contrary. Unfortunately it seems we have here a poor implementation of ODF. If further …
To keep this post simple and clear, I would like to clarify two things: First, I have not tested the SP2 of Microsoft Office 2007, and hence I cannot relate my own experience of Microsoft’s implementation of ODF. Second, I do believe that given the information we have, and as …
IBM votes for OOXML at the ANSI (the U.S. standards body) and the Microsoft-sponsored mob rejoices. The problem? Despite what it seems, the rules of the particular TC at the ANSI did not allow members to go against a previous ISO vote on the standard. In short, Jesper & Co …
These days are occasions to celebrate, both for the ODF and OpenOffice.org communities. Yesterday was the Document Freedom Day, celebrating the liberation of documents through open standards such as ODF. This global initative attempts to let people know about the importance of true Open Standards and why they matter in …