News (22)

Adobe to send PDF to standards group

Adobe Systems expected on Monday in the US to detail plans to submit its Portable Document Format specifications to the International Organization for Standardization, a body of particular importance to governments and large corporations. Read more »

Norway backflips on OOXML 'yes' vote

Norway's national standards body has lodged a formal protest over the country's vote on Office Open XML (OOXML) at the ISO. Read more »

Microsoft OOXML becomes an ISO standard

Microsoft's bid to make the Open XML (OOXML) file formats international standards has succeeded, barring any last-minute changes. The ISO (International Organization for Standardization) is scheduled to issue the official communique today. Read more »

ODF finally defeats OOXML in document format war?

Microsoft will add native support to Office 2007 for the OpenDocument Format (ODF) instead of OOXML because of compatibility issues — but Microsoft refuses to admit that ODF has won the document format war. Read more »

Final deadline looms in OOXML vote

Lobbying has intensified ahead of Saturday, 29 March, the deadline for Microsoft to convince the world that its Office Open XML (OOXML) specification should be accepted as a formal standard. Read more »

ISO approval 'unlikely for Microsoft Open XML'

The International Organisation for Standardisation is unlikely to adopt Microsoft Office Open XML format, now that it has approved the OpenDocument Format, according to analyst group Gartner. Read more »

Technocrats rubberneck Microsoft's OOXML

Microsoft's Open Office XML specifications will be scrutinised by government technocrats in Geneva this week to determine if improvements Microsoft has made to it overcome technical problems noted by ISO members last September. Read more »

OpenOffice may seek OOXML peace deal

OpenOffice may support Microsoft's Office Open XML standard in future, but the organisation behind the open source productivity suite anticipates that everyone including Microsoft will have "difficulty" in making the format work. Read more »

ISO crunch time for OpenDocument

The OpenDocument Format has been submitted to the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), according to OASIS, the standards body that developed the format. Read more »

Is Microsoft rigging OOXML standards vote?

The Free Software Foundation Europe has accused Microsoft of "stuffing the ballot boxes" in a vote designed to establish Office Open XML as a recognised industry standard. Read more »

Features (3)

Will C# benefit Microsoft, or the industry?

Now that C# has been approved by the ISO, one question looms large: Will Microsoft use its intellectual property rights to make it difficult for developers to comply with the standard? Read more »

Microsoft plays open but patent jaws still have teeth

Despite Microsoft's claim it will not sue developers that build free open source software on Microsoft platforms, a caveat leaves a yawning space for its legal teeth to gnash those that commercialise the software. Read more »

Microsoft's singing in C#

Microsoft and its allies have quietly expanded an effort to gain acceptance for C#, the software giant's competitor to Java and a foundation for its next-generation Internet services. Read more »

Log in


Sign up | Forgot your password?

  • Staff Crying, mooning and leaving

    In this week's roundup we see that continuous whining can get results, Linux users get 64-bit Flash and Moonlight previews, the latest in the Yahoo/Microsoft relationship and Senator Conroy ducks and weave in Senate Question Time. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

  • Brendon Chase Sun eye Web developers with Netbeans 6.5

    Despite the recent employment axe hitting Sun the company has pushed out a new release of its Netbeans open source IDE with an eye to appeal more to Web developers. Read more »

    -- posted by Brendon Chase

  • Renai LeMay BarCamp buzz: Let the hacking continue

    Attending last weekend's BarCamp in Sydney, it was hard to escape the conclusion that a certain "dot-com bust" flavour had seeped into the kool aid previously being drunk by Australia's web 2.0 and early stage start-up sector. Read more »

    -- posted by Renai LeMay

What's on?