Får vi kanske ett öppet dokumentformat?

Smart EC – Because of the way ongoing works I need fairly short headlines, which is a pity, because for this piece I wanted to use The European Commission Makes Extremely Smart Moves Concerning Open XML-Based Office Document Formats and Browbeats Vendors Deftly; As a Result the Open Office XML Format Will Probably Become an ISO Standard.

This story started for me back in March when an OpenOffice team and a Microsoft team were invited to present to the European Commission on the relative merits of their XML-based office document formats. You can read about the arguments here and what the EC’s response was here and if you care about these things and haven’t already, you probably should.

Tim Bray, teknisk direktör på SUN, rapporterar att den Europeiska Kommissionen tycks ha kommit in på rätt spår när det gäller standardisering av dokumentformat. Som framgår av hans blogg så har en del kommunikation mellan Kommissionen, SUN och Microsoft pågått och Tim verkar hysa förhoppningar om att ett standardiseringsinitiativ byggt på Open Office XMLformat skule få stöd från Kommissionen. Kul för Tim har också rätt när han som kommentar till ett brev från Kommissionen säger:

“The letter also contained the following paragraph which I think ought to be posted on the office walls wherever IT strategists gather:

Transparency and accessibility requirements dictate that public information and government transactions avoid depending on technologies that imply or impose a specific product or platform on businesses or citizens.”

Smart EC – Because of the way ongoing works I need fairly short headlines, which is a pity, because for this piece I wanted to use The European Commission Makes...