Stories about: International Standards Organization

When Microsoft announced on Thursday that it was changing its business practices to be more open -- specifically to release documentation on its APIs and protocols -- many people reacted with disbelief. The European Commission, which has battled Microsoft for a decade over anticompetitiveness, said in very blunt terms that it didn't believe Microsoft was sincere. After all, Microsoft has made the "open" promise before but never delivered.

In a splashy announcement last week, Microsoft touted new efforts to improve the interoperability of its key software products with open source projects and products from other vendors.

The standards body that is pushing Microsoft's Office Open XML document format for approval as an ISO standard published a 2,300-page document on Monday addressing complaints and suggestions about the format made by International Standards Organization members after it failed to win enough votes in an initial round of balloting.

The OpenDocument Format (ODF) remains "more of an anti-Microsoft political statement than an objective technology selection" by users, according to a report released Monday by analysts at Burton Group, who recommend that companies adopt Microsoft's Office Open XML document format whether or not it is approved as an ISO standard next month.

The GNOME Foundation, recently slammed by critics who accused it of supporting Microsoft's Open Office XML document format (OOXML), has issued a statement to clarify its position on the matter.

A specification meant to bring together storage device management under one umbrella instead continues to be criticized for its innate inability to enable interoperable functionality.

Countries normally passive in the arcane world of international high-tech standards are suddenly jockeying to have their say in the fate of Microsoft Corp.'s Office Open XML document format, swelling membership in a key but normally obscure technical committee.

A technical committee in India unanimously rejected Microsoft's Office Open XML file format as a standard, ahead of a vote on Sept. 2 by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) on whether to approve Open XML as an international standard.

In a resounding victory for Microsoft Corp., bills seeking to mandate the use of open document formats by government agencies have been defeated in five states, and only a much-watered-down version of such legislation was signed into law in a sixth state.

The International Standards Organization (ISO) agreed Saturday to put Open XML, the document format created and championed by Microsoft, on a fast-track approval process that could see Open XML ratified as an international standard by August.

Microsoft will soon submit a new photo format to an international standards organization that it says offers higher quality images with better compression, the company said on Thursday.