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Story: ISO calls for end to OOXML 'personal attacks'

Posted by: rkhalloran (Tuesday 15 April 2008, 8:45 PM)

Microsoft should not dictate standards to ISO

Your comment that MICROSOFT CAN DICTATE STANDARDS TO THEIR PRODUCTS is completely true.

What has happened, though, to all appearances, is that in order to get a "meets-international-standards" checkoff for said products to compete against ODF-based competitors, they have pressured national standards bodies to fast-track OOXML into an ISO standard. The political gaming has been documented in numerous articles, and the EU is now investigating the procedure to see if/how this approval process was subverted.

Other companies, interested in competing on common ground (ODF) based on their products' merit, have convinced ISO said cross-vendor, cross-platform format is a valid standard to hold them to. Microsoft has wrapped XML tags around their existing product's format and railroaded their de-facto standard through ISO by highly questionable tactics, so that 20 years from now we'll still be paying MS in order to read our own files. Which is more competitive, and more cooperative?

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