Microsoft Circles the Wagons To Defeat ODF In the UK 89
Andy Updegrove writes "Three weeks ago, we heard that Francis Maude, a senior UK government minister, was predicting the conversion to open source office suites by UK government agencies. Lost in the translation in many stories was the fact that this was based not on an adopted policy, but on a proposal still open for public comment — and subject to change. It should be no surprise that Microsoft is trying to get the UK to add OOXML, its own format standard, to the UK policy. Why? According to a messaging sent to its UK partners, because it believes that a failure to include OOXML 'will cause problems for citizens and businesses who use office suites which don't support ODF, including many people who do not use a recent version of Microsoft Office or, for example, Pages on iOS and even Google Docs.' Of course, that's because Microsoft pushed OOXML as an alternative to ODF a decade ago. If you don't want the same objection to be valid a decade from now, consider making your views known at the Cabinet Office Standards Hub. The deadline is February 26."
Making Your Views Known (Score:5, Funny)
If you don't want the same objection to be valid a decade from now, consider making your views known at the Cabinet Office Standards Hub. The deadline is February 26.
The documents are on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign outside the door saying "Beware of the Leopard."
Make sure you bring a torch.
Re:'will cause problems...don't support ODF, (Score:4, Funny)
I call bullshit. OpenOffice or LibreOffice can be configured to store files in .doc and .xls and .ppt formats - problem solved! It annoys me there are still people and govts. buying the rubbish arguments spouted by Microsoft and their ilk...
People who say OpenOffice read and writes MS Office files fine can not have used this themselves on an ongoing basis for more than the simplest of files. It regularly messes up the documents, and macros. Not saying OpenOffice is at fault for this, it is just a fact, that shouldn't be falsely presented to potential users.
Just today I had to tell someone to save to PDF before uploading because Open Office's automatic conversion (which we call on the back end) fucks shit up half the time.
We could update to a later version of Open Office, but it'll just fuck things up differently (it'll replace all the bullets in a list with a clock icon, regardless of what font we use).
Re:OOXML not included in old Office either (Score:4, Funny)
Next Microsoft is going to remove .txt support from Office and try and get all plain text files banned because office can't handle it.
ODF is an open (truely open, not OOXML-like "open") file format. Nothing is stopping Office from supporting it if it doesn't already do so.
They can't play the "old versions of Office"-card either, since OOXML is no more backwards compatible than ODF.