Brazil Says “NO” Again to OOXML
In his blog, Avi Alkalay, an Open Standards, Open Source and Linux advisor at IBM Brazil, reports on the official Brazilian vote, which was decided by consensus of the entire technical team, and quite firmly says that OOXML does not deserve to be an international ISO standard.
The first vote in August 2007 was also NO, for the same reasons, says Alkalay. "OOXML is an awful specification" he explains. The criticisms levied at the time by the Brazilian committee, according to Alkalay were that OOXML was “incomplete” due to its failure to map to legacy standards, “too long” (6000+ pages), “fully tied to a single product” and more importantly that OOXML did not have the “standards-grade look and feel required for a universal and (virtually) eternal document format”. According to Alkalay the outcome at the time was only to be expected because Brazil followed the prescribed process: technical analysis OOXML specification, comment, wait for responses, analyze and see if problems were fixed. A vote of NO would then be automatic if any issues remained unresolved, and Brazil discovered numerous unresolved issues. “If every country followed this simple process, OOXML would receive a NO from 100% of them.” says Alkalay before going on to plead for a technical consensus rather than a vote. “It is not a matter of will, but a technical issue that can only be reached by rational analysis and deliberation.” Alkalay also states that Brazil would vote NO again and again, even if all of OOXML’s technical issues could be resolved. OOXML would still have legal issues and also serious overlap problems with the OpenDocument Format ISO standard. Alkalay did not attend the meeting at ABNT (Brazilian Technical Standards Organization) because the outcome was obvious in the light of the analysis and deliberation process in Brazil.
Issue 272/2023
Buy this issue as a PDF
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
News
-
KDE Plasma 6 Looks to Bring Basic HDR Support
The KWin piece of KDE Plasma now has HDR support and color management geared for the 6.0 release.
-
Bodhi Linux 7.0 Beta Ready for Testing
The latest iteration of the Bohdi Linux distribution is now available for those who want to experience what's in store and for testing purposes.
-
Changes Coming to Ubuntu PPA Usage
The way you manage Personal Package Archives will be changing with the release of Ubuntu 23.10.
-
AlmaLinux 9.2 Now Available for Download
AlmaLinux has been released and provides a free alternative to upstream Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
-
An Immutable Version of Fedora Is Under Consideration
For anyone who's a fan of using immutable versions of Linux, the Fedora team is currently considering adding a new spin called Fedora Onyx.
-
New Release of Br OS Includes ChatGPT Integration
Br OS 23.04 is now available and is geared specifically toward web content creation.
-
Command-Line Only Peropesis 2.1 Available Now
The latest iteration of Peropesis has been released with plenty of updates and introduces new software development tools.
-
TUXEDO Computers Announces InfinityBook Pro 14
With the new generation of their popular InfinityBook Pro 14, TUXEDO upgrades its ultra-mobile, powerful business laptop with some impressive specs.
-
Linux Kernel 6.3 Release Includes Interesting Features
Although it's not a Long Term Release candidate, Linux 6.3 includes features that will benefit end users.
-
Arch-Based blendOS Features Cool Trick
If you're looking for a Linux distribution that blends Linux, Android, and web apps together, blendOS might be what you're looking for.