09.04.07
It’s Final and Official: ODF is the Only ISO Standard (Updated)
So there you have it. Bribery, corruption, and deception do not always pay off.
It is a good day for ODF. Many thanks to Pam, Rob, Bob, Andy, Pieter, and many thousands of others who actively fought against the approval of proprietary formats as a standard, i.e. making a monopoly legitimate.
Meanwhile, Groklaw has this mind-boggling piece.
If you read French, here is AFNOR’s very intriguing suggestion, that OOXML and ODF merge.
Update: watch the comments. We were urged to clarify that ODF remains the only ISO standard of this kind for the time being. The only thing here which is final is the decision made at this stage. This needed clarification because of disinformation (caused by a horrible press release from Microsoft).
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.
anonymous said,
September 4, 2007 at 9:03 pm
The battle isn’t still over.
Sorry Roy, but you are failing a lot with this over-optimistic news title. Please change the news title, you are completely misinformating.
Now a small part of the battle is over, but a new slow battle starts again.
—
Comments that accompanied the votes will be discussed at a ballot resolution meeting (BRM) to be organized by the relevant subcommittee of ISO/IEC JTC 1 (SC 34, Document description and processing languages) in February 2008 in Geneva, Switzerland.
The objective of the meeting will be to review and seek consensus on possible modifications to the document in light of the comments received along with the votes. If the proposed modifications are such that national bodies then wish to withdraw their negative votes, and the above acceptance criteria are then met, the standard may proceed to publication.
Otherwise, the proposal will have failed and this fast-track procedure will be terminated. This would not preclude subsequent re-submission under the normal ISO/IEC standards development rules.
—-
Read that in a better way, avoid your excesive optimism and be realistic. The battle will be slower but still very difficult. Remember this site is still important for the cause and it can occour that the OOXML nightmare can become a reality in the ISO standards.
anonymous said,
September 4, 2007 at 9:04 pm
Forgot to put the URL where I extracted the text, sorry.
http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1070
vexorian said,
September 4, 2007 at 10:32 pm
It is official, but it is not final, there is still the February vote to go, I hope that the ODF front does not call victory yet and keeps working on mentioning why we don’t need another standard format for this.
Roy Schestowitz said,
September 4, 2007 at 10:41 pm
Of course, but the issue is that Microsoft deceives the press and ignore the outcome that has just been announced. I posted an update about this just a couple of minutes ago.
Roy Schestowitz said,
September 5, 2007 at 1:54 am
anonymous, I was going to append “,for Now” to the headline before I hit [Publish], but decided to keep it simple. But you’re right. This sort of optimism can be detrimental. It wasn’t my intention to do this.