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Questions by Dr. G. Nagarjuna, Chairman FSF India, submitted to the Working Committee, Board of Indian Standards on Wordprocessing & answers from Microsoft's Vijay Kapur, followed by a response from Dr. Nagarjuna are used for this article in Grok law. Groklaw's PJ urge any of you interested in OOXML to read the other exchanges most carefully.
Microsoft's plans of having its OOXML document format accepted as a national standard were thwarted by the South African Bureau of Standards in a conclusive vote against the move in a meeting yesterday.
There is an unexpected reaction from major government IT agencies in six countries condemning the ISO/IEC refusal to act on the four appeals against OOXML, which they say "reflects poorly" on ISO/IEC. They have signed and sent an open letter to ISO, which I'll show you in full. The countries represented are South Africa, Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Cuba.
KDE KDE 4.6.5 updates bring many bugfixes and translation updates on top of the latest edition in the 4.6 series and are recommended updates for everyone running 4.6.4 or earlier versions. As the release only contains bugfixes and translation updates, it will be a safe and pleasant update for everyone. KDE’s software is already translated into more than 55 languages, with more to come.
South Africa-based mobile provider Vodacom has begun selling an Ubuntu Linux based netbook. The Linkbook, which was developed by a South African company of the same name, is equipped with 16GB of flash storage, HSDPA, WiFi, two USB ports, and an 8.9-inch display.
Following recent reports of a South African bank eyeing out Linux, Novell South Africa today issued a statement in which it said it had reached an agreement with First National Bank of South Africa to standardise the bank's 12 000 desktops in its 680 retail branches on Novell's Linux product.
Andy Updegrove has the news that South Africa has filed an official appeal, protesting the approval of OOXML, and their action means that OOXML is now in limbo until the appeal ends:SABS, the National Body member of ISO/IEC JTC1 for South Africa, has filed a formal appeal with both ISO and IEC, challenging the Fast Track adoption of OOXML.