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ODF Approved by ISO/IEC Members
The vote passed with broad participation and no negative votes (there were a few abstentions). As a result, ODF is now ISO/IEC 26300. While there are still some procedural steps internal to ISO/IEC that are required before the official text of the standard will be finalized and issued, these steps are formalities rather than gating factors. 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. Given the ongoing unhappiness in Europe with Microsoft over what the EU regards as unacceptable bundling and other practices, this may be particularly significant, especially when taken with the desire of many European and other purchasers to use open source products whenever possible. Offerings such as OpenOffice and KOffice therefore should receive a boost in appeal and usage, as well as for-sale versions, such as Sun's StarOffice and IBM's Internet-based offering. |
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Comments (3)
I expect Microsoft to fight hard to avoid supporting ODF, however. The cost of legacy MS Office document conversion is one of the ways they hold data for ransom. They need file formats to remain mysterious for customers so customers will be more afraid of changing to anything else.
Isn't there some requirement in most European governments' procurement policies that software implementing international standards must be considered above those which do not?
"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software," he said. "Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."
I just love it when an evil, greed motivated plan falls apart and crumbles.
:)
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for once the IT industry has a document format that isn't product specific.
to me this is the news of the year so far.
now time to start standardizing the companies.