OOXML On Hold

Due to protests from South Africa, Brazil, India and Venezuela, ISO put on hold the OOXML standardization process two days ago.

The OOXML format is not fit for anything, let alone an international standard. It is full of bugs(sample), non compatible with itself(!?, forget ISO/IEC compliance) and more. It is carefully designed to enable only MS to build applications that can handle the said format. It is a move to monopolize the market and is against public interests.

Microsoft heavily influenced the standardization process with all the means one could imagine. It even lodged complaints against BIS committee members that they are acting against national interests.(Apparently, to Bill Gates, national interests means Microsoft's interests.)

Here is an open letter protesting that, by Prof Deepak B Phatak, IIT Bombay, India. He is one of the BIS committee members. A Tamil translation of the same(in part) can be found here.