Lodahl's blog: Further analysis

21 June 2007

Further analysis

What is all this about ?
Is this a good or a bad development ?

I don't know. Tomorrow I'll try to contact some of the involved politicians to get further information.

The good things are:

  1. The Parliament actually listened to us, when we said that EOOXML is not open.
  2. Nobody has asked questions about openness in ODF. We now have two years to improve the format.
The bad things are:
  1. Microsoft now has two years to convince the Parliament. The FUD will continue and of cause Microsoft will try to get multiple implementations of EOOXML. Microsoft will obviously pay business partners to do so.
  2. The MP's shows that they are not ready to make a decision, after almost half a year with discussion and documents. They can see the reports, that shows all the benefits of open standards and that the only pro EOOXML is Microsoft related of payed by Microsoft directly.
By the way...
There will be an election for Parliament in February 2009 at the latest. This could give us hope, because there probably will be a political shift (from right to left). Another government is realistic. So we hope that the current opposition will remember what they promised today.

The election on Ecma 376 for ISO adoption is very important. I think that the result of this will end up having huge impact on the final result.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Take a look at this Denmark originated English language article:

Copenhagen Post article

It really shows the public confusion about the issues surrounding ODF and OOXML.

Anonymous said...

Og se nu bare hvad der sker i Norge: http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article57856.ece

følg også med på www.mynotesblog.com

arne

Anonymous said...

MS have already bribed Novell, Xandros and Linspire to support OOXML. NeoOffice also has some kind of support.

WordPerfect will also implement it they say, don't know if it'll be available on non-windows platforms - or if they have had any pressure/encouragement from Redmond.

Another good thing is that ODF will be the safest choice in the two years - since OOXML risks getting thrown down the drain after the review period. That might help ODF adoption.

Agreed that ISO-decision is now more important than ever. Dansk Standard will receive an answer for their hearing on it from SSLUG early next week.