Comment on Linux.com

Russell Ossendryver on January 26, 2008
Commentary: ISO should kick OOXML off the standards bus
http://www.linux.com/feature/125630

This commentary is discussing whether OOXML is qualified for ISO in the first place.

I will add a discussion about the Fast Track Path. Normally it takes several years to get a new standard through an ISO approval. ISO has this special Fast Track method in case a standard has already been qualified in another similar organization. Of cause this is to avoid double work.

But was the Microsoft format qualified at the time of submission ?

NO !

No, because the Fast Track Route was invented for standards that is already made ready before submission to ISO and with more that 3.500 objections in the process, the format wasn't qualified. Obvious faults needed to be fixed (e.g. several errors in the date-time specification) in the ISO process.

OpenOffice.org Community Innovation Award Program

On 7 December 2007, Sun Microsystems Inc. announced a new million-dollar fund to foster innovation in six of the open-source projects it sponsors and contributes to http://www.sun.com/software/opensource/awards/index.jsp . We are pleased to report that OpenOffice.org was included. The contest, which we have titled the OpenOffice.org Community Innovation Program, commences tomorrow, 30 January, and we invite OpenOffice.org Community members to participate.

What do you have to do to enter?
To win a prize?
Our rules, which will be posted later on today and linked to the OpenOffice.org homepage (www.openoffice.org), explain these and many other details, and you must read them carefully.

What are we looking for? In general terms, we are looking for superlative work that is useful to the Community; work that is challenging, that is non-trivial, and that furthers the Community as much as the software. You can enter alone or in a team; and if you are eligible, you could win a lot of money. But we explain all this in the rules, the link to which you will be able to find on the OpenOffice.org homepage.

Note: The Program ends 23 June 2008 and begins 30 January 2008.

OpenOffice.org

The goal of the OpenOffice.org Community Innovation Award Program is to foster community development and innovation. All projects must be able to be subsequently worked on by the community and all work must be abide by OpenOffice.org's license scheme. There are six categories for this program: Technical, Community, Tools, OpenDocument Format (ODF), Documentation and Special. The OpenOffice.org Community Council is the final judge of the program and coordination of the judging will be done by a committee made up of some of its members. The Community Awards Program Committee includes: Louis Suárez-Potts (Sun), Pavel Janík (independent), John McCreesh (independent) and Stefan Taxhet (Sun). For program details: http://development.openoffice.org/community_innovation_program.html

Top five open source applications

The Danish on-line newspaper Verison2 has an artivle today about the best open source applications. I guess it's from an end users perspective.
The article http://www.version2.dk/artikel/6015 is not based on a survey or anything, but it's seen from the journalists perspective. The list is:

1. Mozilla Firefox
2. OpenOffice.org
3. InfraRecorder
4. PDFCreator
5. Scribus

The article claims that 1.692 articles on Version2 is the prove, that OpenOffice.org is very capable. All articles is written with OpenOffice.org Writer.

The only problems is the messy user interface and the poor spell checker. According to the article.

I have asked Version2 if we can get our hands on these 1.692 documents. That would absolutely be a great contribution to a better spell checker.

Monthly newsletter in Danish

The monthly newsletter has been on the street for some more than a year now. The amount of receivers is increasing month by month. This issue is send to 975 people.

You can read the February edition as pdf here: http://doc.oooforum.dk/Nyhed/2008Februar.pdf

Commentary: ISO should kick OOXML off the standards bus

By Russell Ossendryver on January 26, 2008 (2:00:00 PM)

http://www.linux.com/feature/125630