Bergkamp10 writes "As Microsoft's Office Open XML document format rests in ISO limbo, South Africa, Korea and Netherlands are now actively pursuing the alternative Open Document Format (ODF) instead (which was approved by the ISO as an open standard last year), said the ODF alliance.
South Africa is the first African country to adopt ODF as a government standard, and the Netherlands will start adding ODF support next April. In Korea, the government's Agency for Technology and Standards approved ODF as a national standard several months ago.
The ODF Alliance now claims 500 members, and by their count 13 nations have announced laws or rules that favor the use ODF over Microsoft's Office formats, such as Office Open XML.
Those nations include Russia, Malaysia, Japan, France, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Germany and Norway. Not so suprising is the fact that the French have been the most aggressive in their rejection of Microsoft's standard; nearly half a million French government employees are being switched to OpenOffice.
There has been no similar move in the US, though in a speech at Google last week Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama called for data to be stored in "universally accessible formats."" Link to Original Source
This discussion was created for logged-in users only, but now has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
France leading charge against OOXML 0 Comments More Login /
Get More Comments