War of formats: India shows thumbs-down to Microsoft


      India on Thursday gave Microsoft a thumbs-down in the war of standards for office documents. In a tense meeting at Delhi?s Manak Bhawan, the 21-member technical committee decided that India will vote a ?no? against Microsoft?s Open Office Extensible Mark Up Language (OOXML) standard at the International Standards Organisation (ISO) in Geneva on September 2.
      
            ?We unanimously agree on the disapproval of OOXML with comments. The same will be submitted to ISO,? National Informatics Centre head and BIS technical committee chairperson Nita Verma said after a marathon meeting that lasted over six hours. There was no need for a voting as only Infosys Technologies and CSI supported Microsoft.
      The Open Document Format (ODF) alliance, enjoying widespread support from academia and corporates like Oracle, IBM, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, Google, were in a jubilant mood having succeeded in stalling OOXML from being accepted as a standard in India. Microsoft said it respect?s the government?s decision. ?There were only three options `Yes?, `No? and `Abstain? to be taken and we respect the government?s decision,? Microsoft?s legal affairs head Rakesh Bakshi said. He, however, added that India?s ?No? vote will become a ?Yes? if Microsoft is able to resolve all technical issues with OOXML before the ballot resolution committee of ISO. Continue At Source
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