noooxml petition

[Anne Østergaard <anne oestergaard nu>]

noooxml petition

Read more about the petition on

http://www.noooxml.org/petition
http://www.noooxml.org/ 


NO to the Microsoft Office format as an ISO standard I ask the national
members of ISO to vote "NO" in the ballot of ISO DIS 29500 (Office
OpenXML or OOXML format) for the following reasons:

     1. There is already a standard ISO26300 named Open Document Format
        (ODF): a dual standard adds costs, uncertainty and confusion to
        industry, government and citizens; 
     2. There is no provable implementation of the OOXML specification:
        Microsoft Office 2007 produces a special version of OOXML, not a
        file format which complies with the OOXML specification; 
     3. There is information missing from the specification document,
        for example how to do a autoSpaceLikeWord95 or
        useWord97LineBreakRules; 
     4. More than 10% of the examples mentioned in the proposed standard
        do not validate as XML; 
     5. There is no guarantee that anybody can write software that fully
        or partially implements the OOXML specification without being
        liable to patent lawsuits or patent license fees by Microsoft; 
     6. This format conflicts with existing ISO standards, such as ISO
        8601 (Representation of dates and times), ISO 639 (Codes for the
        Representation of Names and Languages) or ISO/IEC 10118-3
        (cryptographic hash); 
     7. There is a bug in the spreadsheet file format which forbids any
        date before the year 1900: such bugs affect the OOXML
        specification as well as software applications like Microsoft
        Excel 2000, XP, 2003 and 2007. 
     8. This standard proposal was not created by bringing together the
        experience and expertise of all interested parties (such as the
        producers, sellers, buyers, users and regulators), but by
        Microsoft alone.
First name: 



etc.

I signed this petition some time ago.


Also I was alarmed when I read more about the proces and the voting
procedures of ISO.

If countries have problems but vote yes, their comments could be
disregarded.

If a country has problems they should vote no. This way they can expect
an answer or a clarification to their concerns.


I read about the proces here:

http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/

Where is the transparency and the possibility for everyone to influence
the decision in a fair ISO process?


Kind regards

Anne �tergaard