Denmark Backs Up the OOXML Outrage

June 2nd, 2008 by Justin Ryan

Your rating: None

The official appeals over OOXML's adoption as an international standard have been coming in left and right over the last week or so, leading up to last Thursday's deadline for appealing the adoption. Now, those appeals are being backed up by a letter of protest from Denmark, delivered directly to the ISO Vice President.

According to the ever-vigilant watchdogs at Groklaw, Denmark's Open Source Leverandørforeningen — the Association for Open Source Vendors — takes issue with the manner in which the OOXML approval was handled by Dansk Standard, and has lodged a formal protest with the ISO. In a letter sent to the head of Dansk Standard, who just happens to be ISO Vice President, OSL alleges a lack of consensus within Dansk Standard and a violation of it's own rules, as well as a violation of the ISO's directives — a charge common to all of the appeals and protests so far. They go on to assert that the fast-track process under which OOXML was considered was not only mismanaged, but rendered void by the ISO's failure to publish a final version of the standard by the end of March.

So far, South Africa and Brazil have lodged formal appeals with the ISO, while several other countries are battling it out against their national standards bodies via their national governments. Jacob Holmblad — the Dansk Standard Director/ISO Vice President — told Computerworld that he will be in Geneva next week, and expects to see the issue addressed while he is there. Something tells us, however, that it will be a long, long time before we finally see the OOXML debacle truly addressed.

__________________________
Justin Ryan is News Editor for LinuxJournal.com.
Submit a tip: EmailIRC


Special Magazine Offer -- Free Gift with Subscription
Receive a free digital copy of Linux Journal's System Administration Special Edition as well as instant online access to current and past issues. CLICK HERE for offer

Linux Journal: delivering readers the advice and inspiration they need to get the most out of their Linux systems since 1994.

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
Grammar Police's picture

Grammar police

On June 7th, 2008 Grammar Police (not verified) says:

Please, please, please...
"...and a violation of it's own rules..."
That error is *so* primary and annoying!
As a person who uses the English language to make a living, the author has no right to make that kind of mistake!

Justin Ryan's picture

re

On June 8th, 2008 Justin Ryan says:

Hyperbole aside, I appreciate you pointing out the error; at 110 words per minute, I have a tendency to interchange the two.

Allow me to return the favor with a bit of sage advice I received very early on: "When pointing out the flaws of others, be sure not to leave your own exposed." To wit: "Leave one regular space — never a thin — on both sides of an ellipsis." Id est "Please, please, please ... " and " ... and a violation of it's own rules ... "

__________________________

Justin Ryan is News Editor for LinuxJournal.com.
Submit a tip: EmailIRC

Post new comment

Please note that comments may not appear immediately, so there is no need to repost your comment.
The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <pre> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd> <i> <b>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

Newsletter

Each week Linux Journal editors will tell you what's hot in the world of Linux. You will receive late breaking news, technical tips and tricks, and links to in-depth stories featured on www.linuxjournal.com.
Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Tech Tip Videos

From the Magazine

July 2009, #183

News Flash: Linux Kernel 3.0 to include an on-the-go Expresso machine interface! Ok, maybe not, but Linux is definitely going mobile, from phones to e-readers. Find out more inside about Android, the Kindle 2, the Western Digital MyBook II, The Bug, and Indamixx (a portable recording studio). And if you've gone mobile and you been wanting more Emacs in your life then check out Conkeror.


To compliment the mobile we've got the stationary: parsing command line options with getopt, checking your Ruby code with metric_fu, and building a secure Squid proxy. How is this stationary you ask? What can we say? It's not. We just wanted to see if anybody actually read this part of the page :) .


All this and more, and all you have to do is get your hot sweaty hands on the latest copy of Linux Journal.





Read this issue