Open Source has the future!
Today several news sources reported that Sweden revoked their support for ooxml. This is good news. Not only because ooxml is a Bad Thing, but even more important: there is justice!
In the days before the vote twenty (20!) new companies bought a voting right from the Swedish Standards Institute. That way the vote was very positive for Microsoft. This was caused because all 20 were affiliated with Microsoft.
Yesterday I said to my co-workers: “how can we ever win these types of battles when Microsoft just buys their way in everything?” Today I was proven wrong, the Institute has revoked their support. It is a small step, but it proves Open Source has the future and it makes me proud. Every battle is a battle.
Guess I’ve to agree with JS. In germany it was even more clear that they will vote with yes even before the whole thing started… So, the result may that they just need to put a few more $ into it to buy the ISO :-(
Well I feel a little better, we had a MS push in New Zealand to vote yes, but several days ago we voted NO.
Kia Kaha Open Source!!!
@Jonas: Well, they did revoke their support – they just aren’t putting forward any opposition either. And I tend to agree with one slashdotter’s reading of the situation: they wanted to save face because of the buying votes scandal, and used the technicality to do so.
Well, if buying the vote failed in Sweden (not exactly failed, as Jonas noted) they have lots of other countries to buy. For example in Poland, when KT171 (commitee handling OOXML standarization) decided to vote ‘no’, the issue was moved to another commitee (KT182) that voted ‘yes’ – and this decision stays.
I have no doubts that OOXML will become ISO standard despite any technical problems and protests.
Actually, they didn’t revoke their support. Sweden will abstain from voting out of a mere technicality. Apparently someone tried to vote twice, and the Institute judged that there is no time to do a re-vote before the deadline. I would have preferred a no-vote but this is the second-best-thing at least.
In more positive news, Norway’s standardisation institute decided that they think ooxml as a format is not open enough to be a standard.