Recently, there has been a move made by Microsoft to get their digital document format OpenXML accepted as a standard by the International Standards Organisation (ISO). There have been many descriptions of how this format contains components that are proprietary and can’t be implemented by anybody other than Microsoft. Acceptance as a standard means that a government may, more easily, accept and prescribe it as mandatory for any communications. This, in turn, will mean that anybody who communicates with that government must use Microsoft’s software.

So, this can mean only that: the user’s choice is more limited, innovation is stifled, and the government is left vulnerable to the vagaries of the vendors’ business decisions in the future.

Yesterday Standards NZ decided to vote ‘no’ to the OpenXML standard proposed by Microsoft in competition with the present ODF standard. Congrats for making the right decision in the face of a tirade of PR noise. Let’s hope we avoid the Swedish situation and keep some sanity.

Who knows Microsoft might actually be forced to implement the present standard!