Heise news, the leading German ICT online news service reports about the Major of Munich's discomfort with the Open XML standardization process. The Bavarian City of Munich relies favours the existing standard ODF, ISO 26300:2006.
Heise.de: Muenchner Oberbürgermeister lehnt ISO Standardisierung von OOXML ab
Christian Ude1, the Major of Munich has written to the federal government (which is preparing a recommendation for DIN, the German Standards Institute, which represents Germany at ISO. Ude argues, that competing standards are an impediment to interoperability and communication between different cities and that Munich's LiMux project2, which will lead to 80% Linux desktops in Munich this year, would be negatively affected if OOXML were to be made an ISO standard.
His full letter was published in the Rathaus Umschau.
His crucial demand is:
Wir brauchen den existierenden Standard ODF und fordern das DIN auf, bei der anstehenden Abstimmung klar ‘Nein’ zur Standardisierung einer weiteren Alternative OOXML zu sagen." We need the existing standard ODF and call on DIN, to say clearly "No" in the upcoming vote on the standarization of the additional alternative OOXML.
This means that his opposition to the format is not related to the immature state of the OOXML specification (as amemded by the BRM) but more fundamental: Munich sees no need to parallelize the existing international standard by an alleged document archiving format.
