Australian Government Denies Microsoft Bias In OOXML Choice

An anonymous reader writes "It looks like the Australian Government is not taking criticism of its decision to mandate Microsoft's Office Open XML standard lying down. 'The policy is vendor-neutral which allows its principles and standards to be used across any platform,' they said this week. Yup ... except for the fact that almost no other office suite apart from Microsoft Office supports writing to the standard. And as for Firefox? Turns out 96 percent of Australian Government desktops use Internet Explorer. Looks like bureaucracy is winning here."

Re:I want to believe

[dwarfsoft]

96% of desktops use IE6 and thats because most users are blocked from installing their own apps. Upgrades to IE are rare due to this breaking old web code that they rely on. This is less malice or conspiracy and more stagnancy than anything else.

Re:Regarding IE

[MightyMartian]

The real cost will be felt in fifty years, decades after Microsoft has abandoned Word 97-2003 formats, or maybe there's no Microsoft at all, and someone has to reverse engineer what really is a fucking terrible document standard.

You know...

[rsilvergun]

I'm tired of Bureaucracy being blamed for good 'ole fashion political corruption. Did it ever occur to any one that the Bureaucrats just do what they're told, and it's the elected officials ramming this through? It's like when New Orleans was destroyed in floods. Everybody blamed the guy that ran FEMA, and nobody pointed out the he was just an organizer for the flood response, and he had not authority to order the Nation Guard in to shore up the levies. Also, nobody asked why the National Guard wasn't shoring up the levies early on (hint: they were all deployed in Iraq, still are too).

Mark my words, this anti-Bureaucrat nonsense is the start of a class war to pit private employees against public so the rich can drop all our wages without us noticing. You'll be too busy wondering why the public sector employees have it so good to ask why you've got it so bad...

Re:Sure its biased

[Samantha Wright]

Mate, it's not biased because of one platform versus another, it's biased because OOXML isn't a widely-supported (or well-supported) standard, and they're picking it on the false premise that it is. Office 2010 supports ODF natively, and 2007 and 2003 support it with a plugin—those are the same suites that support OOXML (2003 needs a plugin). The fact that they chose to go with the Microsoft-only format tips the hand.

No other office suite?

[Chas]

Uhm. News flash, even MS Office doesn't fully support said "standard"!

AND IT'S THEIR FUCKING "STANDARD"!

black is white

[bzipitidoo]

OOXML is vendor neutral. Nixon is not a crook. Gorbachev has been removed from his position due to illness. Clinton did not have sexual relations with that woman. Diebold voting machines were validated. AIG is a financially sound company. No oil is leaking from BP's well. Kim Jong Il's birth was heralded by the appearance of a double rainbow over the mountain and a new star in the heavens.

Awfully common. I've seen the Big Lie used so often that we've gotten wise to it. I wonder how such whoppers can still work at all. Mostly it just makes the teller look brutishly stupid. The more obvious it is, the stupider they look. So, Australian Govt, are you too stupid to feel embarrassed about this? Are your flunkies and subjects all supposed to pretend to be too stupid to notice, so that you don't punish them?

Re:Why should they change?

[Anonymous Coward]

Very old FUD. Come back later. http://lwn.net/Articles/410387/

And yes it took time because there are different partener involved in the definition and they try to do it right (exactly the opposite of Microsoft OOXML qhich does have formula but with plenty of error found during the ISO process).