Microsoft’s bid to extend its dominance in digital documents to the new field of open-format documents was unexpectedly rebuffed today when a global technical panel refused to designate its Office Open XML as an international standard. The underlying code of an open document format is public, allowing developers to improve upon it and create new products that use it without having to pay royalties.
http://nytimes.com/2007/09/04/technology/04cnd-soft.htmlAlso see:
Microsoft’s bid for ‘open’ document format is unexpectedly rebuffed
A global panel of software experts Tuesday unexpectedly rebuffed Microsoft’s bid to get its open document format, Office Open XML, recognized as an international standard, complicating the software maker’s effort to extend its dominance to the burgeoning field of “open” documents. Following five months of electronic balloting, Microsoft failed to meet the two voting criteria to win a designation as an approved standard from the International Organization for Standardization, known as the ISO, based in Geneva, and the International Electrotechnical Commission.
http://iht.com/articles/2007/09/04/technology/msft.php
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,136711-c,unresolvedtechstandards/article.html
http://uk.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUKN0443877620070905