George FilesThe truth, one post at a time

India and OOXML

October 16, 2007 by roshan.george in Internet, Tech

I never bothered to check the ballot results, I was just happy that OOXML wasn't fast tracked. There are innumerable problems with the standard and greater men than I have opposed it. Anyway, I'm just glad to see that the Bureau of Indian Standards (formerly the ISI) categorically rejected OOXML and said they wouldn't support it unless the proprietary bits (like "linespacinglikeWord95") were removed from the specification. India is a P-member, so we have no choice but to vote, and when we vote we'll likely vote against OOXML being accepted as an ISO specification. Fascinating.

Hurrah for standards and freedom.

7 comments

MarcOctober 16, 2007

Rather old news, isn't this?

roshan.georgeOctober 16, 2007

Very old. I just never knew that BIS voted against. That's very sensible, somehow I never expected any Indian Government Agency to be sensible.

MarcOctober 17, 2007

Tell me about it. Microsoft probably forgot to give them the 10 rupees they wanted to vote for them.

roshan.georgeOctober 17, 2007

Ha ha, actually this time they checked it carefully and have real objections and stuff. The ISI is pretty cool.

MarcOctober 18, 2007

Ask them to check the water packets carrying all the fake ISI seals then.

roshan.georgeOctober 18, 2007

Somehow I think that is not their job. Sort of like it's not the lawmaker's job to run around enforcing it.

MarcOctober 19, 2007

They're the enforcing body also.