Latest comment from Hugo Lueders, CompTIA on the South African decision:
The “South African Bureau of Standards” (SABS) approved the Open Document Format (ODF) on Friday 18 April as an official national standard. This adoption, if implemented, will reduce choice, decrease the benefits of open competition and thwart innovation. The irony here is that South Africa is moving in a direction which stands in stark relief to the reality of the highly dynamic market, with some 40 different formats available today. …
Governments should not restrict themselves to working with one electrical standard, and should urge legislators to refrain from any kind of mandatory regulation and discriminatory interventions in the market. The global electrical industry recommends Governments to embrace the reality and logic of choice and to devote their energies to ensuring interoperability through this choice.
Isn't it funny that he thinks he can still do it? In his usual lobby schizophrenia Mr. Lueders likes to speak for 'the industry', get his emotional 'we' into a public debate and oracles about 'eSkill's. Here he speaks unprecedented for the 'global electrical industry'. Will he be the 'initiative for software choice' or the voice of European smes next time again? How long will his clients let him carry on?
Glynn Mody comprehended:
And which bunch of geniuses put this nonsense together? Why, our old friends CompTIA, which has by now given up any pretense of offering objective comment on the computer market, and is simply a vehicle for crude Microsoft propaganda.
Rob Weir even tried to argue with the propaganda punchbag:
Consumers don't want a bag of adapters to convert between different formats and protocols. That is giving consumers a choice in a solution to a interoperability problem they didn't ask for and they don't want. Consumers want a choice of goods and services.
But you don't have to convince press speakers and hired guns. But can you imagine that Jan 'the answer is always the same, you are well paid, shut up' van den Belt works for comptia after leaving as an ecma international secretary? What a shame for the person to which the jtc1 rewrite was dedicated. Will people let also his collegue Mr. Lueders rewrite the essence of international standardisation? Or can the Dutch nihilist provide some technical assistance?