Open XML v. IBM
This is not the newest news in town, but...
Microsoft issued a letter/statement in February talking about Open XML and how it had recently become an international standard, like ODF, PDF, HTML, and other recognized formats. The letter (which can be found here) talks a great deal about interoperability and Open XML, then seems to (to me at least) come out of left field to lambast IBM for not playing nice.
I think this is one of those things that is over my head, but it made interesting reading.
For a little more expert insight, check out Ars Technica's take on the letter.
For more info on IBM's vote from when it happened, check out this blurb on C-Net's Open Source blog. I did notice the IBM employee blog referred to in the C-Net article is nowhere to be found (dead link and domain gives a 404 error) so I wonder if IBM decided their decision made them look bad...?
Microsoft issued a letter/statement in February talking about Open XML and how it had recently become an international standard, like ODF, PDF, HTML, and other recognized formats. The letter (which can be found here) talks a great deal about interoperability and Open XML, then seems to (to me at least) come out of left field to lambast IBM for not playing nice.
I think this is one of those things that is over my head, but it made interesting reading.
For a little more expert insight, check out Ars Technica's take on the letter.
For more info on IBM's vote from when it happened, check out this blurb on C-Net's Open Source blog. I did notice the IBM employee blog referred to in the C-Net article is nowhere to be found (dead link and domain gives a 404 error) so I wonder if IBM decided their decision made them look bad...?
Labels: Open Source
posted by Dy at 3:29 PM
2 Comments:
The link is working. You really should read what it says before you write a response on this issue. Check also: http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2007/02/billions_of_doc.html and the OpenDocument Alliance and the OpenDocument Foundation sites for more information about this issue.
OOXML is being pushed by Microsoft through the ISO standardization process despite the numerous flaws that have been raised and the fact that there is already an international-standard XML-based standard for office documents. Why are they pushing OOXML so hard?
Because governments like Massachusetts have stated that they want an open, XML-based format that they will be able use to preserve access to their documents. There are some versions of Word, for example, that produced documents that Word 2003 has problems opening and displaying. People have lost access to important documents because of the use of a single-vendor not-quite standardized file format.
ODF is designed to be useful for any office suite and to enable long-term access to users' own data.
With the OOXML format, there are still lots of unanswered questions. I conclude that the safe choices are either stay with the older Microsoft formats for the next few years or convert to ODF. Any other choice places your data at risk.
I apologize if I got it wrong. All I can say is that *I* was unable to get the link to work when I was doing a little research on the subject.
Again, most of it was over my head, so I appreciate your explanation, which makes a lot more sense and confirms my decision NOT to upgrade my MS Office just yet. :-)
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