[open-government] More than eightly formats for open government data

Mon Sep 10 11:23:08 UTC 2012

On Sun, Sep 09, 2012 at 08:24:35PM +0200, Jose M. Alonso wrote:
> > talking about formats, can anyone please liberate the data from excel to some less closed format.
> 
> and can we stop calling xlsx a closed format, please?

please read my statement again, i called for a less closed format, which is a
relative thing. but i admit using the wording "more interoperable" would have
been better, the word "open" is tainted too much anyway.

i am unaware of any successful plugfests where diverse set of industry
offerings have shown that OOXML offerings are indeed interoperable.

openness is not an absolute as you suggest. a good guideline to measure
the relative openness of a standards has been developed by Ken Krechmer:
http://www.csrstds.com/openstds.html

according to this scale OOXML is not very open.

> Not that I'm a big fan of how OOXML [1] was standardized but it's an ECMA and ISO standard, i.e. open enough.

that only means it has been rubberstamped, i wouldn't call open when some
wealthy individual/corporation buys himself a standard.

stefan marsiske
Open Standards Alliance
Vice-President - Infrastucture.

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