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.
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Juno Computers Launches Another Linux Laptop
If you're looking for a powerhouse laptop that runs Ubuntu, the Juno Computers Neptune 17 v6 should be on your radar.
-
ZorinOS 17.1 Released, Includes Improved Windows App Support
If you need or desire to run Windows applications on Linux, there's one distribution intent on making that easier for you and its new release further improves that feature.
-
Linux Market Share Surpasses 4% for the First Time
Look out Windows and macOS, Linux is on the rise and has even topped ChromeOS to become the fourth most widely used OS around the globe.
-
KDE’s Plasma 6 Officially Available
KDE’s Plasma 6.0 "Megarelease" has happened, and it's brimming with new features, polish, and performance.
-
Latest Version of Tails Unleashed
Tails 6.0 is based on Debian 12 and includes GNOME 43.
-
KDE Announces New Slimbook V with Plenty of Power and KDE’s Plasma 6
If you're a fan of KDE Plasma, you'll be thrilled to hear they've announced a new Slimbook with an AMD CPU and the latest version of KDE Plasma desktop.
-
Monthly Sponsorship Includes Early Access to elementary OS 8
If you want to get a glimpse of what's in the pipeline for elementary OS 8, just set up a monthly sponsorship to help fund its continued existence.
-
DebConf24 to be Held in South Korea
Busan will be the location of the latest DebConf running July 28 through August 4
-
Fedora Unleashes Atomic Desktops
Fedora has combined its solid distribution with rpm-ostree system to make it possible to deliver a new family of Fedora spins, called Fedora Atomic Desktops.
-
Bootloader Vulnerability Affects Nearly All Linux Distributions
The developers of shim have released a version to fix numerous security flaws, including one that could enable remote control execution of malicious code under certain circumstances.