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. …
Governments should not restrict themselves to working with one standard, and should urge legislators to refrain from any kind of mandatory regulation and discriminatory interventions in the market. The global ICT 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 could still do it? In his usual lobby schizophrenia Mr. Lueders likes to speak for 'the industry', get his emotional 'we' into a public policy debate and oracles about 'eSkill's. Here he speaks unprecedented for the 'global ICT 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? Will he get away with it?
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 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.
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 was hired for the comptia lobby after leaving as an ecma international general secretary? What an upgrade for the person to which the ISO jtc1 rewrite was dedicated. Will standards people also let his collegue Mr. Lueders rewrite the essentials of international standardisation? Or could the Dutch nihilist provide some technical assistance? Fast-track Lueders interpretations to the ISO directives?
