South Africa was the first, but not the last. Now Brazil has sent a letter protesting the adoption of OOXML as an ISO standard also, and Andy Updegrove says he has heard there will be more...

4 links about OOXML, before next weeks' big vote at the ISO Ballot Resolution Meeting, on how it now fails it's own criteria for importance, how restricted the BRM will be, about worries over Micrsoft's patent promise, and a pic of the printed spec.

Life is never easy for an open source evangelist. The OOXML drama came to a close on 2nd April 2008 and we were on to our next issue -- software patents. The Draft Patent Manual might end up bringing software patents through the back door. this would be surprising because the Indian parliament explicitly rejected software patents in the Patent Amendment Act 2005.

Academics say developers should be cautious following confusion over which parts of the OOXML specification are covered by Microsoft's "covenant not to sue".

Large companies are spending more on patents than on research and development. The number of patent lawsuits is exploding. Software patents are extra toxic to free software because there cannot be per copy royalties. And they certainly are making the end user have less choices as demonstrated by blocking of several products because of patent suits around the world.

Or both? ALEX Brown is pretending that all is fine and dandy with OOXML (he even shows a picture of a smiling face), despite all the OOXML corruption which had people protest out in the streets.

The New Zealand Open Source Society (NZOSS) has grave concerns about the draft Office Open XML (OOXML) standard currently being 'fast tracked' through the ISO.

I have a question for Microsoft. Why didn't they tell us about this i4i patent litigation during the OOXML ISO process? Didn't we need to know?

The ODFalliance.org now has a new OOXML Resource Section. Bellow you will find the complete text from “OOXML Implementations: A Community of One”. If anything, the ODF Alliance analysis is too charitable. OOXML is NOT CLOSE TO a community of one. Documents produced by Microsoft Office 2007 are not OOXML (Ecma 376), DIS 29500, or even DIS 29500 as amended at the BRM.