Say NO to the Microsoft Office format as an ISO standard

[Ed]

Sign the petition:
http://www.noooxml.org/petition

I ask the national members of ISO to vote "NO" in the ballot of ISO DIS 29500 (Open OfficeXML or OOXML format) for the following reasons:

1. There is already a standard ISO26300 named Open Document Format (ODF): a dual standard adds costs, uncertainty and confusion to industry, government and citizens;
2. There is no provable implementation of the OOXML specification: Microsoft Office 2007 produces a special version of OOXML, not a file format which complies with the OOXML specification;
3. There is missing information from the specification document, for example how to do a autoSpaceLikeWord95 or useWord97LineBreakRules;
4. More the 10% of the examples mentioned in the proposed standard do not validate XML conformity;
5. There is no garantee that anybody can write a software that fully or partially implements the OOXML specification without being liable to patent damages or patent license fees by Microsoft;
6. This standard proposal conflicts with other ISO standards, such as ISO 8601 (Representation of dates and times), ISO 639 (Codes for the Representation of Names and Languages) or ISO/IEC 10118-3 (cryptographic hash);
7. There is a bug in the spreadsheet file format which forbids to enter any date before the year 1900: such bugs affects the OOXML specification as well as software versions such as Microsoft Excel 2000, XP, 2003 or 2007.
8. This standard proposal has not been created by bringing together the experience and expertise of all interested parties (such as the producers, sellers, buyers, users and regulators), but by Microsoft alone.

[tChr]

signed

[Dokujisan]

Not that it will make much difference, but signed anyway.

[ZyanKLee]

I signed too, and wrote email to the german standards-group DIN

[Psychcf]

I hate you microsoft. signed.

[Daedalus]

oh dear, another online petition.
whatever.
signed...

[7echno7im]

Saying no to progress? Do you guys even know what you are signing? Is it just because it is MS? The open office xml format is a highly customizable easy to follow format that is based on where the market is going already, XML. Plus it's open and royalty free, something that MS bashers always complain about. How can you bash them when Sun, IBM, and OpenOffice all collaborated and decided not to include MS for the OpenDocument format when Microsoft has 94% of the office productivity share. Seems like they should have consulted with the one who has the highest stakes and sets the standard, as they are about to again.

[SavageX]

Saying no to progress? Do you guys even know what you are signing? Is it just because it is MS? The open office xml format is a highly customizable easy to follow format that is based on where the market is going already, XML. Plus it's open and royalty free, something that MS bashers always complain about. How can you bash them when Sun, IBM, and OpenOffice all collaborated and decided not to include MS for the OpenDocument format when Microsoft has 94% of the office productivity share. Seems like they should have consulted with the one who has the highest stakes and sets the standard, as they are about to again.

Just because it's XML (which by itself doesn't say anything - you can stuff really anything into it and it's still a mess) it doesn't mean it's not 100% tailored to MS products.

Open XML is basically the same old shit, just bottled in XML. Hooray.

Microsoft always was into content lock-in. It's their turn to show they can play nicely with other players.

[tChr]

Saying no to progress? Do you guys even know what you are signing? Is it just because it is MS? The open office xml format is a highly customizable easy to follow format that is based on where the market is going already, XML. Plus it's open and royalty free, something that MS bashers always complain about. How can you bash them when Sun, IBM, and OpenOffice all collaborated and decided not to include MS for the OpenDocument format when Microsoft has 94% of the office productivity share. Seems like they should have consulted with the one who has the highest stakes and sets the standard, as they are about to again.

MS was not at all interested in joining the ODF effort, easily proven by the fact that they still dont support it. Not the last time i checked at least. Besides, MS got its market share by totally neglecting users need and doming everything possible to make it impossible for non-MS applications to communicate properly with MS ones, and this is yet another try to do the very same.

Never trus a company that actually patents and closes their own "internal" network protocol.

[7echno7im]

I guess ithis is just where we differ. Are you referring to the TCP stack that they rewrote from gound up? Spending millions of dollars to make something their own that will benefiit all? I think MS has the right to close anythiing they develop internally, because they are first and foremost a software comany. One of the first. Their product is code, eseentially. Just like McDonalds has a patent and closes their formula for a "Big Mac" so can a software company, which is even easier to rip off than say the "Big Mac" . Every company has it's proprietary products, and put a patent on it, closing it to the world until that patent runs out. MS is even taking steps and working with open source projects now, colaborating with Novell/Redhat, and much much more. Do you think McDonalds would work with Burger King to make a better burger for the world? I think not. I think MS has a bad rep because they are the biggest and baddest, but I thik they have done well witht he hand they were dealt. If it weren't for MS standardizing OS's and Office Productivity software it woudl be a mess. 20 OS' 30 office apps, 100 to 1000 file types just for a plain old text document.