03.21.08
MSFT OOXML Threatens African Software Community
A government leader in South Africa speaks of the threat to open standards and indigenous open source projects caused by patents and ersatz standards like Not-so-open XML. In the process, she really shows the extent to which big corporate software companies have blinded our state and federal governments to their procurement responsibilities.
Vulindlela - Open the Path - Idlelo - Opening Address
With regard to Open Standards …
The adoption of open standards by governments is a critical factor in building interoperable information systems which are open, accessible, fair and which reinforce democratic culture and good governance practices. In South Africa we have a guiding document produced by my department called the Minimum Interoperability Standards for Information Systems in Government (MIOS). The MIOS prescribes the use of open standards for all areas of information interoperability, including, notably, the use of the Open Document Format (ODF) for exchange of office documents. ODF is an open standard developed by a technical committee within the OASIS consortium. The committee represents multiple vendors and Free Software community groups. OASIS submitted the standard to the International Standards Organisation in 2005 and it was adopted as an ISO standard in 2006. South Africa is amongst a growing number of National Governments who have adopted ODF over the past year.
It is unfortunate that the leading vendor of office software, which enjoys considerable dominance in the market, chose not to participate and support ODF in its products, but rather to develop its own competing document standard which is now also awaiting judgement in the ISO process. If it is successful, it is difficult to see how consumers will benefit from these two overlapping ISO standards. I would like to appeal to vendors to listen to the demands of consumers as well as Free Software developers. Please work together to produce interoperable document standards. The proliferation of multiple standards in this space is confusing and costly.
Remember, this isn’t someone from a competing software company. This is a government minister, contending for the survival of an indigenous software industry, both free / open source and closed source.
It is worth reading the text or watching the video. Once again I urge that ISO national bodies send OOXML (DIS29500) back to Ecma for repair and processing under the normal standards submission process.
