[PLUG] Please sign the petition against Microsoft's Office OpenXML becoming an ISO standard

[Sarang Kulkarni]

Hello,
         The Free Software Foundation is running a petition to oppose
Microsoft's OpenXML from becoming an ISO standard. Serious flaws
exists in Microsoft's OpenXML and it would be highly undesirable if it
becomes an ISO standard. I request everybody to sign this petition to
prevent bad standards from being established! The petition is at:
http://www.noooxml.org/petition

Some reasons for signing the petition:


There is already a standard ISO26300 named Open Document Format (ODF):
a dual standard adds costs, uncertainty and confusion to industry,
government and citizens;

There is no provable implementation of the OOXML specification:
Microsoft Office 2007 produces a special version of OOXML, not a file
format which complies with the OOXML specification;

There is information missing from the specification document, for
example how to do a autoSpaceLikeWord95 or useWord97LineBreakRules;

More than 10% of the examples mentioned in the proposed standard do
not validate as XML;

There is no guarantee that anybody can write software that fully or
partially implements the OOXML specification without being liable to
patent lawsuits or patent license fees by Microsoft;

This format conflicts with existing ISO standards, such as ISO 8601
(Representation of dates and times), ISO 639 (Codes for the
Representation of Names and Languages) or ISO/IEC 10118-3
(cryptographic hash);

There is a bug in the spreadsheet file format which forbids any date
before the year 1900: such bugs affect the OOXML specification as well
as software applications like Microsoft Excel 2000, XP, 2003 and 2007.

This standard proposal was not created by bringing together the
experience and expertise of all interested parties (such as the
producers, sellers, buyers, users and regulators), but by Microsoft
alone.


Again, the petition is at: http://www.noooxml.org/petition

-- Sarang

My DSA-ElGamal public key:
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xA6F4BB6A

What's a good anagram of Banach-Tarski?
Banach-Tarski Banach-Tarski!!