[News] France Says "No" to OOXML, Russia Wants ODF, Microsoft on the Ropes

France: "Non, avec des commentaires!"

,----[ Quote ]
| Apparently, the French discussion on OOXML broke into something resembling a
| bar-fight.

John Bailo, Texeme.Construct...

Microsoft reps invited Frenchies to lunch at McDonalds.

Frenchies sprayed bottles of wine at Microsoft.

News at eleven.

|
| [...]
|
| Matters soon got out of hand: the shouting seems to have climaxed with the
| Microsoft representative insulting the management of AFNOR, members of the
| Defense Ministry, the Justice Ministry, the Interior Ministry, and two
| members from the Industrial Ministry exclaiming that they were servants of a
| banana republic!
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Linonut...

Yeah, Microsoft sure is the aggrieved party in this dog fight.

Well done, France. Their parliament is moving to GNU/Linux (they have already
received Linux laptops).

Microsoft accused of ballot stuffing in standards vote

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| The Russian Government has taken a step towards endorsing ODF through an
| e-government program that would mandate use of software that conforms
| to "widely used standards" in all government contracts.
|
| According to the Russian Ministry of Information Technologies and
| Communications "within the project to form an e-government concept in the
| Russian Federation, support of ISO/IEC 26300: 2006 is planned."
|
| The move has been welcomed by the Open Document Format Alliance, which said
| in a statement that Russia is "sending a message worldwide that software
| should be affordable, innovative and accessible, now and for the foreseeable
| future."
`----

Linonut...

Yeah, Microsoft sure is the aggrieved party in this dog fight.

Wonder why they didn't find (as Massachusetts did) that conversion from
Microsoft to ODF would not work.

Probably, they don't care. They don't need perfect conversion. They
can create /new/ documents in the new format, yes no?

More Office Open XML Trouble for Microsoft

,----[ Quote ]
| Meantime, the managing director for the ODF Alliance notes that Microsoft’s
| work may backfire. As he told Computerworld:
|
| Some of the comments that have been received from the countries...
| shine a light on OOXML defects. Governments will think long and hard
| after viewing some of these comments before using the format.
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