On Fri, 2008-03-21 at 12:48 +0800, Anand Vaidya wrote:
> On Friday 21 March 2008 11:39:57 John Thng wrote:
> > Rather than making the bad decision in the first place, we should try to
> > stop it from happening, since bad decision is important to the voting
> > process since Singapore is a "P" member. No point to turn back and
> > change vote, even if we don't let the person can get away so easily.
>
> I don't see that kind of activism here. How many residents here have written
> to ST? MPs? How many have brought up the issue atleast within *your*
> companies, circle-of-influence?
>
> I tried discussing about OOXML with some people, outside the Linux crowd, no
> one seems to think it is a big problem ("Anyway, I use MS office, so what is
> the big deal? We have a SA to cover us" or "why not have ODF and OOXML as ISO
> std" is the other answer I get! Even from those we expect to be enlightened
> in these matters)
>
> I am not trying to blame you, I hope you don't feel slighted, so here is my
> advance apology (if you do)
>
Yes, people don't see wrong with it here. They are somehow ignorant of
the issues of ooxml. And also believe in .doc or so. People are not
enlightened as what you have said. But at the very least we need people
who are on top of technical committee that are submitting the votes to
be enlightened. Do the *non-technical* committee that submit the reply
educated enough to say no?
I can say there's not enough social pressure here. It's hard to work
alone. To generate enough social pressure, we need to have an alliance
of organisation, and cooperation just like what microsoft and microsoft
partners, to fully oppose it.
> >
> > We should set an example here, to uphold the ISO process, where it
> > affects countries internationally. No is a no, and committee members
> > should not vote according to commercial benefits, but rather uphold the
> > ISO standards, which is based mainly on quality, rather than quantity.
> > Letting a poor quality standards to become ISO standards, will be a
> > mistake.
> >
> > Since the technical committee has vote no, there should be some "hidden"
> > and "secret" reasons why it becomes yes in the end. Hopefully the news
>
> Sadly, no one, as far as I know, even bothered to write in to IDA or ITSC
> demanding an answer. Will it happen this time ?
>
> Regards
> Anand
>
I believe writing individually is useless and powerless, *unless* we
have groups of organisation representing the community writing to IDA or
ITSC to press for answer.
> > that Singapore Technical Committee's reconsideration vote no after BRM
> > spread widely worldwide, and if this becomes yes in the end, answers
> > should be given promptly to why they made the decision instead. I
> > believe they should at least answer to the technical committee, else
> > technical committee is useless ... if they decide to go with a yes.
> >
By the way, really hope ooxml would fail this time. Ms Office should
bundle odf natively as default format, so people can adopt it. I see
countless people helplessly saving in the non-iso buggy ms-ooxml cos
they are not "educated" on this matter.
One of the main reason people can't accept odf is Ms Office does not
include support for odf natively, if not I'll be sending documents here
and there happily. If ooxml failed this round, I believe to prevent
further damage, it will try to brush up and include odf support
natively(just like IE "supporting" standards mode by default partly cos
of EU probe), if not it will lose markets in governments. If ooxml win
this round, it will continue to win over markets in governments, and I
don't think it would make efforts to support odf well natively.
In UK, there's a study done by BECTA to recommend schools not to upgrade
to office 2007 and vista yet, but in Singapore too bad there's no paper
to discourage schools from upgrading to Office 2007 cos lack of good ODF
support. Sadly in many Tertiary Institutions here, many just migrate to
Office 2007 ...
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