Sweden's OOXML vote declared invalid
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It is doubtful there is enough time for Sweden to revote before the deadline of Sept. 2.
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That idea gained support as Ukraine&#39;s parliament declared last week&#39;s presidential election invalid, in a non-binding vote.
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They are asking the European Union Council to reject this proposal. They claim that software patent directive would be harmful to the European economy.
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The Supreme Court declared the results of Ukraine's disputed presidential runoff election invalid today and ruled that the runoff should be repeated on Dec.
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Wag the dog Microsoft is facing growing criticism of its bid to have Office Open XML (OOXML) accepted as an international standard ahead of a crucial vote by the ISO scheduled for February.â¦
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A. Austria is not correct. B. Netherlands is not correct. C. Canada is correct. D. Philippines is not correct.
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Swedish truckmaker Scania AB on Friday formally rejected a 10.3 billion euro ($13.3 billion) hostile takeover bid by German rival MAN AG, saying talks had broken off between the companies.
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TechWeb - But Ecma's approval wasn't unanimous -- IBM voted against the specification, saying OpenDocument, which is the default format in OpenOffice, is a &quot;vastly superior&quot; format, and another standard was unnecessary.
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A technical committee in India has initially rejected the Open XML standard ahead of an ISO vote on making it an international standard.
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Sunday, September 2 is the deadline for ISO member countries to vote on Microsoft's Office OpenXML -- the result will determine if it's approved as an international standard. Name calling, finger pointing and muckraking have sparked a debate over current standards-approval procedures and how they're affected by corporate influence. All this excitement over office docs?
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(InfoWorld) - With ISO's Sept. 2 voting deadline looming, the recently retired secretary general of ECMA International defended Microsoft's Office Open XML document format against fierce technical criticism. "Give me any standard, and I bet you I can find an error," said Jan Van Den Beld, who retired in April after 16 years running Geneva-based ECMA, in a telephone interview on Monday with Computerworld. ECMA is shepherding Open XML, the default format used by Office 2007 documents, through ISO's traditionally difficult approval process. The international standards group has set a Sept. 2 deadline for the 20 nations that are members of the ISO Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC-1) to vote on whether to approve Open XML. Van Den Beld, who oversaw ECMA's approval of 229 technical standards, many of which were later approved by ISO, also predicts that Open XML will be approved next spring after a follow-up ISO meeting. "Ultimately, I think it will get through," he said. Friends and foes line up That's no sure thing, however. The document format faces strong opposition from grassroots advocates who want to see free productivity software such as that of OpenOffice.org gain a foothold, as well as from vendors such as IBM. Opponents argue that Open XML is redundant in light of the technically similar Open Document Format for Office Applications (known as ODF) which is native to OpenOffice.org and was approved as a standard more than a year ago by ISO. They also argue the Open XML proposal is too long (6,500-plus pages) to evaluate during this abbreviated fast-track process, that it's riddled with inconsistencies and technical errors, and that it covertly continues to effectively grant Microsoft control of the standard. So far, organizations representing Brazil and China (original news report in Mandarin, with translation available) have said publicly that they plan to vote against Open XML. India is close to finalizing the same position. On the other side, Germany, the United States, and according to Van Den Beld, Switzerland are all moving to vote in favor of Open XML. Dueling standards wouldn't be a first A Netherlands native who served as an executive with Philips Electronics before joining ECMA in the mid-1980s, Van Den Beld said that if Open XML is approved, it would not be the first time that two technically similar formats have become standards. As an example, he pointed to the multiple DVD recording formats -- including DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, and DVD+RW -- that were all approved first by ECMA and then ISO. "People believe a standards body has complete control over this. That is completely exaggerated," Van Den Beld said. "You cannot take a position such as 'Sony, I like you better than Toshiba.' As soon as you do that, you are no longer neutral." Multiple, similar standards, while "not a good result, are, because of patent wars, often an inevitable result," he said. Merging Open XML and ODF is also not the solution, Van Den Beld said. "The structure of Open XML is so different from ODF, I don't see how we can bring them together into one standard," he said. Regarding objections to the Open XML application because of its length, Van Den Beld said that when Sun Microsystems submitted the Java programming language to ECMA in 1999, the application -- which was eventually withdrawn -- was more than 8,000 pages long. While acknowledging that an Open XML standard may not arm Microsoft rivals and partners with all of the information to successfully build ancillary or even competing products, Van Den Beld says that is not the point. "A standard is not a product description. It tells you what to do, not how to do it," he said. ECMA and the standards ecosystem Created in 1961, ECMA International, which was known as the European Computer Manufacturers Association until 1994, was the first to certify hundreds of technical standards, including the aforementioned DVD formats as well as standards for local-area networks. He called ECMA's relationship with the more prestigious ISO a "perfect symbiosis," with ECMA helping ISO filter out unworthy standards applications and quickly ratifying the ones that were most urgently needed. "ISO is necessarily rather cumbersome because, let's face it, there are many, many players worldwide," he said. "At ECMA, our philosophy is, 'Let's write down all of the technical details of the darn thing and then give it to ISO.'" Far from being rivals, ECMA "is very good friends" with other lesser standards bodies such as OASIS, which gave ODF its first approval, and World-Wide Web Consortium, Van Den Beld claimed. Informal talks about the possibility of merging the groups have even occurred, he said. As for accusations that ECMA -- and he -- are too cozy with Microsoft, Van Den Beld said he has never consulted with or worked at Microsoft. And he pointed out that ECMA has occasionally antagonized Microsoft -- most famously in 1996, when it led the successful charge to force Microsoft to make the application programming interface to Windows 3.1 a public standard. ECMA has already agreed to help ISO address the official "comments," or objections, to Open XML, Van Den Beld said. He acknowledged that while there are many objections, he believes, based on past experience, that if all parties "work like mad in the next four months," a sufficiently refined Open XML specification can be created by ISO's ballot resolution meeting in February, during which JTC-1 members can change the votes they cast in September. A final result would likely be known within one or two months after that, he said.
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Blog: Microsoft tried to get its new OOXML file format standard ratified by India and Brazil.  It failed.  Now what?
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(InfoWorld) - Denmark's government agencies will be required to handle two competing document format standards, the Open Document Format (ODF) and Microsoft's Open XML, during a one-year test period that will begin next year. Denmark is requiring both standards for the test period since neither are "fully mature," said Rachid El Mousti, senior adviser for the IT strategy division of Denmark's National IT and Telecom Agency. A third party will evaluate the results of the tests in the first half of 2009, after which the Danish Parliament will conduct a further assessment, the Ministry of Science and Innovation said. The government is also requiring that new products bought by the agencies be able to accommodate at least one of the standards. It is also studying how its agencies exchange documents, including their use of converters to change document formats. Denmark could decide to use one standard, both, or neither of them, depending on market developments, El Mousti said. Government backing for document formats is seen as significant because it could help promote wider use of the standards in the market. If governments mandate the use of ODF, it could help office suites such as OpenOffice.org, which use the standard, to compete more effectively with Microsoft's dominant Office suite. El Mousti said Denmark has felt pressure from supporters of both ODF and Open XML, which was created by Microsoft and is used in Office 2007. Denmark has maintained an open dialog with all vendors, he said. "In order for us to succeed not just with open standards ... we of course need to have the vendors with us," El Mousti said. A Microsoft executive softly chided Denmark's move to mandate standards. "While I still believe that mandated standards are not an optimal solution for interoperability, this is an important step" in recognizing Open XML as a standard, wrote Jason Matusow, Microsoft's director for corporate standards, in a blog posting last week. Denmark does not widely use ODF. Most of its agencies use Microsoft software, and most documents that need to be published are turned into PDFs (portable document format). Microsoft has been strongly encouraging governments and organizations to use Open XML, which was approved as a standard by Ecma, a European standards body, in December. Microsoft argues that Open XML has more features than ODF, but some critics say the specification is overly complex. On Monday, the state ofÂ Massachusetts put Open XML on a list of standardsÂ that could be used for documents in the future, along with ODF. Â
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Ukraine&#39;s Parliament on Saturday declared the country&#39;s disputed presidential election invalid in a symbolic vote after a week of growing street protests and allegations of vote fraud.
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Nineteen nations, including some that have already adopted the OpenDocument Format standard, have submitted comments and objections to the International Organization for Standardization regarding Microsoft's Open XML.
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Worried about 'personal agendas' Electronic voting machines vendor Election Systems &amp; Software Inc. has finally given in to demands by California's Secretary of State office that it submit the source code used in one of its products. But it made it abundantly clear it is unhappy about the requirement.â¦
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No fast-tracking for you, sonny Google has proved unable to restrain itself from gloating over the ISO (International Organisation for Standardisation) decision not to approve Microsoft's request that the OOXML specification be fast-tracked for approval.â¦