What I don't get is why this decision really matters to me as a programmer.
Granted the ideals being abused in the process need to be brought to light. And the blatant rigging of a system to push the product of a single corporation that only that corporation can profit from - and potentially destroy competing products/standards - needs to be examined in detail. Otherwise ISO is dead for lack of faith/trust. But, as a programmer, I'm going to look at the standards I can work with. Now there are two - ODF and OOXML. Between the two, I'm going to go with the one that is easier or quickest to implement as fully as possible. That isn't OOXML. So, what I see happening is that even if OOXML is approved (there's still some doubts on this - see links below), it will likely become a meaningless standard that no one will use. In other words "Ok Microsoft - you can play with your new toy. But the rest of us are going to keep playing with the toy we know works." The ISO process was turned into a political one - rather than a technical one. Therefore the only use for this new "standard" is for political reasons - not technical reasons. MS will try to claim that they have an International standard that can be used where a government is decreeing that only "standards based" products can be used. However, they don't have a product that can implement the standard as written, and likely never will. Soooo they might get past that acceptance phase of the political process. But very quickly they will fail the implementation phase and they will have only lost trust with the decision makers. So, the original question still stands. As a developer - why do I care about this so called "standard"??? (I do realize this is ignoring all the politics involved, and the troubles for programmers that such politics will entail...) some related links: http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080331144223128 http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20080331114700984 http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080401133818372 My thoughts. Shawn Gustin Johnson wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > RIP ISO. It was good knowing you. > > http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/microsofts-great-besmirching > > Robert Lewko wrote: > | Yeah, and to do it they had to make a farce out of the ISO committee!!! > | > | On Tue, Apr 1, 2008 at 3:00 PM, Neil Bower <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > |> http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/04/01/tech-openxml.html?ref=rss > |> > |> _______________________________________________ > |> clug-talk mailing list > |> [email protected] > |> http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca > |> Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) > |> **Please remove these lines when replying > |> > | > | _______________________________________________ > | clug-talk mailing list > | [email protected] > | http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca > | Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) > | **Please remove these lines when replying > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org > > iD8DBQFH8q5+wRXgH3rKGfMRAj8SAJ4+BkwGWyCx4mI2cQ3/ZIAf3O9qJQCcCY2U > 43rs4lCJPGtypA0F7iMt1VE= > =4E3v > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > > _______________________________________________ > clug-talk mailing list > [email protected] > http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca > Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) > **Please remove these lines when replying _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [email protected] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca Mailing List Guidelines (http://clug.ca/ml_guidelines.php) **Please remove these lines when replying
