Showing posts with label computer business review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label computer business review. Show all posts

09 March 2007

Has Microsoft Blinked on Office formats?

Microsoft Corp's director of corporate standards has conceded that 'legitimate concerns' have been raised in response to its attempt to fast-track the approval of its Open XML format by ISO.

The level of criticism targeted at Microsoft's XML-based office productivity file formats is significant, raising the potential that Open XML might not gain ISO approval, but Microsoft's Jason Matusow insisted there is still a long way to go.

This is interesting: it's the first time that I've come across Microsoft expressing any kind of doubts about OOXML, its rival to ODF, romping home to become an ISO standard. I can only assume that there was a presumption on the company's part that for all the free software world's whingeing, the national bodies who have the right to object, wouldn't.

But they did. As Andy Updegrove explains:

14 of 20 responses were clearly negative, two indicated divisions of opinion, three were inconclusive or neutral, and one offered no objections.

This is very different from Microsoft's own summary:

"Of the 19 submissions, some are very supportive of XML and the process, some are neutral, and some had legitimate concerns that were raised."

Clearly, this is stretching the truth to breaking point. I get the impression the company's really getting worried over this one, as it begins to spin totally out of its control.

20 July 2006

Open Source, Meet the Mainstream

Matthew Aslett usefully flags up in his blog the rise and rise of open source in canonical top ten lists of computing - like the one is his own title, Computer Business Review. Yes, it's all arbitrary of course, but is always has been; so the appearance of open sourcey-ness all over the place is symptomatic, if nothing else.

(Parenthetically, I was pleased to see Angela Eager mentioned in his post: I gave Angela one of her first jobs in tech journalism a couple of geological epochs ago. It's good to see that training stood her in good stead.)