xml

Anyone expecting a technical and legal partnership between Microsoft and Ubuntu distributor Canonical to follow existing Microsoft-Linux deals will be disappointed--at least for now.

Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth in a blog posting on Saturday said a deal that resembles the pacts that Microsoft has signed with Linux distributors Novell, Xandros, and Linspire is not on the table.

He said Canonical has declined to talk to Microsoft about any agreement that provides legal protection to Ubuntu users related to "unspecified patents."

"Allegations of 'infringement of unspecified patents' carry no weight whatsoever. We don't think they have any … Read more

Microsoft views its string of deals with Linux vendors--the latest being Linspire, announced this week--as part of a broader companywide push to improve interoperability.

That's the word from Tom Robertson, Microsoft's general manager of interoperability and standards, and Jean Paoli, its general manager of interoperability and XML architecture (and a co-creator of the original XML standard). On Friday, the pair published an open letter, again calling on the industry to give the Office Open XML document format a fair shake as a standard.

Technology and legal pacts with open-source companies serve dual purposes, they said in an interview … Read more

New York appears to be the latest state concerned with the long-term accessibility of its digital documents.

RoAnn Destito, chair of the Governmental Operations committee in the New York State Assembly, introduced a bill on Wednesday to study "production and preservation" of the state's electronic documents.

The study's director would investigate how access to "electronic data can be created, maintained, exchanged and preserved by the state in a manner that encourages appropriate government control, access, choice, interoperability and vendor neutrality."

The bill also recommends that New York confer with other states' electronic document strategies. … Read more

Bills introduced over the past year to promote open digital document formats in U.S. state governments have foundered, according to a review of state-level standards activity.

Computerworld on Sunday published an article that found that bills in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, and Oregon around open formats did not pass. The bills called for the use of standards and open document formats in desktop software.

A number of European governments have adopted Open Document Format (ODF) as the standard for electronic documents from productivity applications. Microsoft's rival Open XML format has been certified as an Ecma standards and is now … Read more

Microsoft said that it has voted in favor of making OpenDocument Format, or ODF, a recognized standard at the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

The company said it also anticipates that its Open XML File Formats will be submitted and approved by ANSI as well.

ANSI often votes on whether International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards should be added to the American Standards List, Tom Robertson, Microsoft's general manager of interoperability and standards, said in a statement. ODF gained ISO certification about a year ago.

Microsoft, which had one of many votes, chose to vote in favor of ODF … Read more

IBM voted against the certification of Microsoft Office document formats as an international standard at a general assembly of Ecma International on Thursday.

Microsoft submitted the document formats, called Office Open XML, to Ecma last year for standardization. On Thursday, the standards organization voted on whether to certify the specifications as Ecma standards and whether to submit them to ISO for consideration as ISO standards.

The vote was expected to pass. However, IBM representatives vote against the submission, said Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president of standards and open source.

"It is an example of a real open standard … Read more