by ciprian.jichici@genisoft.eu
28. March 2008 00:10
A few days ago I participated in a meeting of the CT210 standardization committee that deals in Romania, among other issues, with the Office Open XML standardization process at ISO. As usual, the debate was heated and the final outcome was identical with the one we had last year: a large majority of the members voted for the second time a YES to the standardization of OOXML at ISO.
I don't want to enter into the debate of whether OOXML is fit or not for ISO standardization because it's clear (at least for me) that there is no real argument to support the idea that it isn't. What bothers me is that some of the fervent supporters of ODF (hence de facto enemies of OOXML) are pushing things too far. It has come to my attention that some of these zealots are spreading all sorts of lies over some Romanian forums and blogs. I usually refrain from responding to zealots because there's no point in doing it since you can't have a discussion based on arguments with this kind of people. Nevertheless, there is one thing that I want to clear, because it involves the reputation of Genisoft, the company I lead.
At the time of the previous meeting of the Romanian committee (autumn 2007), Genisoft was not a member of the committee, but we did get involved into the discussions around the issue. The reason for doing that was because we felt that OOXML is an important subject for us, as well as for our customers. Even more important than that, we felt that it is very important to support a process through which something as important as the specs for Office documents gets out of the hands of Microsoft and into the hands of a much more predictable organization as ISO. Consequently, we applied for membership shortly after the 2007 meeting of the committee (more exactly on the 15th of November 2007). Obviously, the date of our official request can be confirmed by the secretary of the committee.
So, I respectfully ask all the zealots in Romania spreading lies on forums and blogs about how Genisoft joined the committee in March 2007, one week before the meeting I mentioned at the beginning of my post, just to vote a YES as instructed by Microsoft: STOP!
Or at least have the decency of dropping me an email and ask me when did Genisoft apply for membership, before going public with this kind of information.