Story: Standards expert defends OOXML fast-track bid

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The Prince of FUD

"If a government enforces [the use of one standard], that would mean the whole country is not allowed to use OOXML. They could get into a very difficult legal situation, as this could be challenged legally, noted van den Beld."

Is he really trying to say that not using Microsoft products can be considered illegal?

It will only be the government that will be told what format to use anyway, not the whole country. This 'standards expert' is just a typical lobbyist.

And I still don't understand this whole OOXML - ISO thing anyway. We already have a standard for electronic business documents. If we have another one neither of them will be the standard anymore. A standard is one common underlying system for something. We can't have two. Am I right, or have myself and Google got the definition wrong?

One example of where this has happened is with imperial and metric measurements. Look at the communication difficulties that regularly causes (even resulting in the loss of a multi-million dollar satellite).

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