On 2/23/07, Parthan <parth.technofreak@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Subject: [ilugd] When is a standard not a standard (sub-titled
Microsoft and BIS)?
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 18:55:50 +0530
From: Gora Mohanty <gora@xxxxxxxxx>
I had the (mis-)fortune of attending a seminar on Information
Technology Standardization [sic] organised for the Bureau of
Indian Standards (BIS), by MAIT. The ostensible reason for the
meeting was to identify requirements of the IT industry in order
"to formulate effective, meaningful and implementable standards".
The background for this is an effort by Microsoft to push through
a 6000-page document on Office Open XML (OOXML), presumably as a
counter-standard to Open Document Format (ODF). Details on this are
available on Venky's blog at http://www.osindia.blogspot.com/