African Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) may be spoiling for war with the global software giant, Microsoft Corporation, over its bid to have its DIS 29500 'Office Open Extensible Markup Language (OOXML)' endorsed by the International Standard Organisation (ISO).
African Civil Society Organisations are of the opinion that it is not in the best interest of the continent for any country to endorse OOXML, in line with the United States, Spain, South Africa and Kenya who have already voted 'No' to the OOXML.For instance, South Africa voted 13 against 4 and Czech went for ?NO? on the OOXML among others.Noteworthy is that on Sunday, September 2, 2007, ISO is expected to vote on Ecma 376, "OOXML." Various countries have been allowed to arrive at a consensus at their convenience before this date. Nigeria is expected to hold a one-day stakeholders consultative forum at the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) office, next week Wednesday, August 29, 2007 at its Lekki office.The CSOs squabble borders on the fact that OOXML has many flaws disqualifying it from being globally applicable and acceptable, especially by ISO.XML is a programmable code initiative by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which permits information and services to be encoded with meaningful structure and semantics, which computers and humans could understand.Also software experts have described XML as a great formula for information exchange, and easily extendable to include user-specified and industry-specified tags.Commenting on the development, the Executive Director of Paradigm Initiative Nigeria, Mr. Gbenga Sesan, said that even the United States (U.S.) delegate at the ISO international standards body has concluded plans to vote against the approval of Microsoft?s Office Open XML file format as a standard next month.The U.S. decision was arrived at after the proposal failed to get enough support from members of the group?s board.Information and Communication Technology (ICT) consultant, and chairperson of the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA), Ms Nnenna Nwakanma, told HANA that Nigeria like any other African country stands to gain by properly investigating the issue on the ground, stressing that Microsoft lobbyists have not been able to convince stakeholders how the OOXML document formats would benefit the public except for those who have Office 2007, which is a proprietary software ."Only those using Office 2007 can benefit from it. If you use any Office apart from 2007, you first have to upgrade. I cannot understand why norms cannot be used unless certain proprietary changes had to be made," she said.On the implication of voting 'No' to OOXML being proposed by Microsoft to Africa, especially in relation to e-School initiative, she said, already some African countries are warming up to embrace Open Document Formats (ODF), as an alternative file format.She cited an instance with South Africa, saying it has taken a firm decision to migrate to ODF.The challenge, according to her that Africa has now is to build own tropicalised technology."In Africa we have to build up our own tropicalized technology. Open Source offers the best option for this. Anyhow, if the most advanced IT nations in the world and in Africa says NO to OOXML, Africa as a whole should listen," she advised.CSOs insisted that the DIS 29500 'Office Open XML' (OOXML) does not meet the criteria defined by ISO and others for an International Standard, adding that OOXML is an immature documentation of one vendor's proprietary document format, which depends on software patents held by this vendor.
African Civil Society Organisations are of the opinion that it is not in the best interest of the continent for any country to endorse OOXML, in line with the United States, Spain, South Africa and Kenya who have already voted 'No' to the OOXML.For instance, South Africa voted 13 against 4 and Czech went for ?NO? on the OOXML among others.Noteworthy is that on Sunday, September 2, 2007, ISO is expected to vote on Ecma 376, "OOXML." Various countries have been allowed to arrive at a consensus at their convenience before this date. Nigeria is expected to hold a one-day stakeholders consultative forum at the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) office, next week Wednesday, August 29, 2007 at its Lekki office.The CSOs squabble borders on the fact that OOXML has many flaws disqualifying it from being globally applicable and acceptable, especially by ISO.XML is a programmable code initiative by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which permits information and services to be encoded with meaningful structure and semantics, which computers and humans could understand.Also software experts have described XML as a great formula for information exchange, and easily extendable to include user-specified and industry-specified tags.Commenting on the development, the Executive Director of Paradigm Initiative Nigeria, Mr. Gbenga Sesan, said that even the United States (U.S.) delegate at the ISO international standards body has concluded plans to vote against the approval of Microsoft?s Office Open XML file format as a standard next month.The U.S. decision was arrived at after the proposal failed to get enough support from members of the group?s board.Information and Communication Technology (ICT) consultant, and chairperson of the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Foundation for Africa (FOSSFA), Ms Nnenna Nwakanma, told HANA that Nigeria like any other African country stands to gain by properly investigating the issue on the ground, stressing that Microsoft lobbyists have not been able to convince stakeholders how the OOXML document formats would benefit the public except for those who have Office 2007, which is a proprietary software ."Only those using Office 2007 can benefit from it. If you use any Office apart from 2007, you first have to upgrade. I cannot understand why norms cannot be used unless certain proprietary changes had to be made," she said.On the implication of voting 'No' to OOXML being proposed by Microsoft to Africa, especially in relation to e-School initiative, she said, already some African countries are warming up to embrace Open Document Formats (ODF), as an alternative file format.She cited an instance with South Africa, saying it has taken a firm decision to migrate to ODF.The challenge, according to her that Africa has now is to build own tropicalised technology."In Africa we have to build up our own tropicalized technology. Open Source offers the best option for this. Anyhow, if the most advanced IT nations in the world and in Africa says NO to OOXML, Africa as a whole should listen," she advised.CSOs insisted that the DIS 29500 'Office Open XML' (OOXML) does not meet the criteria defined by ISO and others for an International Standard, adding that OOXML is an immature documentation of one vendor's proprietary document format, which depends on software patents held by this vendor.
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