Open Document Formats and open access

I gave a presentation last week on behalf of The African Commons Project to a subcommittee of the SABS which was convened to consider Microsoft’s application to have its new Office Open XML document format certified by ISO as an international standard. There is a standard already in place and it is called the Open Document Format and is used on applications like OpenOffice and NeoOffice.

I was able to convert my presentation into a video and added my narration to take you through what I said on the day. Unfortunately I completely forgot to record my actual presentation.

The subcommittee ultimately recommended that South Africa oppose ISO’s certification of Office Open XML and as this article in ITWeb indicates, it is now up to the main technical committee to consider the subcommittee’s recommendation and vote accordingly in due course.

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office open xml, ooxml, oxml, opendocument format, odf, african commons project, iso, sabs, standards, document, neooffice, microsoft