This piece from Internetnews.com reports that
Brad Abrams, group program manager at Microsoft for ASP.NET AJAX … declared that Microsoft is not the cathedral and that open source isn’t really a bazaar when it comes to AJAX, a claim that undermines one of the core underpinnings of the open source movement.
There is a […]
According to this on the amazing Grolaw, quoting this piece on Computer World
The International Standards Organization (ISO) agreed Saturday to put Open XML, the document format created and championed by Microsoft Corp., on a fast-track approval process that could see Open XML ratified as an international standard by August.
At the time of posting, this appears […]
In a strongly-worded press release
The UK’s Open Source trade association has criticised the BBC’s plans to limit access to their on-demand television services to Microsoft Windows. The Open Source Consortium (OSC) believes the plans are anti-competitive and will use public money to lock viewers into the technologies of a repeatedly convicted monopolist.
Here is the back […]
According to this on the amazing Groklaw, the campaign to halt the fast tracking of Microsft’s Open XML has succeeded. We will try to keep up with what happens now; reading between the lines written by some in the know, this is uncharted territory.
If you are not an academic or somehow involved in higher education, the row about Blackboard’s patent on ‘Internet-based education support systems and methods’ may have passed you by - here is an understated reaction to the news shortly after it broke, here (surprisingly) is a more combative piece, here is a typical reaction and […]
Mike Banahan (mikeb@gbdirect.co.uk) writes to UKUUG members:
In response to (amongst other things) this post, Francis Cave, chair of the BSI committee which looks after the Office Open XML proposal amongst other tasks, has had to handle a substantial volume of email messages about the ISO/IEC Fast Track proposal.
He has asked me to ask UKUUG members […]
According to a piece in Desktop Linux
Adobe Systems Inc. on Jan. 29 announced that it has released the full PDF (Portable Document Format) 1.7 specification to AIIM, the Association for Information and Image Management. AIIM, in turn, will start working on making PDF an ISO standard.
There are a couple of dozen posts on this story […]
… from Jack Schofield in The Guardian. Predictably perhaps, he sides with Microsoft in describing the opposition as a front for IBM and others.
The message is summed up in the first paragraph of this piece from “A Fistful of Euros”, which we have not come across before now:
Intellectual property rights in technology. Great, aren’t they? Consider Brio, the middle-class fave range of wooden toys, whose manufacturers have neatly locked out competitors who want to make toys that will […]
According to a piece in Forbes
The European Committee for Interoperable Systems said Microsoft’s XAML markup language - which it said was positioned to replace the current Web page language HTML - was designed “from the ground up to be dependent on Windows.”
“The very same practices the European Commission found to be illegal almost three years […]
PC Pro has this piece on the fast tracking at ISO of the Microsoft-inspired Office XML formats mentioned here on several previous occasions (here and here) .
With thanks to Alain Williams, UKUUG Chairman, this is what you need to know and do before Friday in order to register an objection to the fast tracking:
Summary
The document […]
The two leading consortia dedicated to the advancement of Linux(R) — the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and the Free Standards Group (FSG) — today announced that they have signed an agreement to merge and form The Linux Foundation
says a press release from The Linux Foundation - read the rest here.
According to Goggle, there are […]
Unlike our previous post with a similar heading , this piece from Information Week, and similar stories from other outlets, is serious.
NASA is nervous about its software, and it’s got a right to be. Its James Webb space telescope is scheduled to be launched in 2013 and it is being built by NASA, Canadian […]
Readers who are citizens of the European Union may want to follow up this item on Slashdot:
The Council of the EU has a streaming service so that we can watch its meetings — but the service can only be accessed by Mac or MS Windows users. This is because they employ WMV format for the […]
In February 2003, the program “Open Standards and Open Source Software (OSSOS) for the Dutch government” started, funded by the Dutch government. One of the main tasks was to make the government independent from single software suppliers, among which are Microsoft and SAP. After three years, the effort starts bearing fruit. Ten big municipalities - […]
This is a big story - 126 posts at the time of writing according to Google News - reported fairly dispassionately here.
Microsoft’s own press release is here and that from the hither-to deeply obscure ECMA is here.
Despite the hype, Open XML is not yet achieved the holy grail, becoming an ISO Standard, […]
Somebody in this company has been reading “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There”:
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.’
Of UK interest is a claim in this story of penetration of the UK government market by […]
Read here why
ECMA’s approval will help Microsoft in its effort to claim it is serious about providing interoperability for its enormous user base worldwide.
We will keep an eye open for more on this story, especially on how ISO intends to handle the proposed XML standard and what UK readers can do to try […]
the document format battle is coming to the forefront, with this press release from Novell beginning
Novell today announced that the Novell® edition of the OpenOffice.org office productivity suite will now support the Office Open XML format, increasing interoperability between OpenOffice.org and the next generation of Microsoft Office. Novell is cooperating with Microsoft and others on […]
This is the title of the Early Day Motion which John Pugh MP has tabled in the House of Commons. Media reaction is moving up the food chain.
In case you have not seen it, this message is in circulation within the UK FLOSS community:
Dear FLOSS supporter
John Pugh MP has tabled an Early Day Motion […]