The "Fast Tracking" of OOXML is over. Now it's time to clean up.

In the last issue's editorial, I predicted that the confidential OOXML Ballot Resolution Meeting would fail to achieve its objectives. I was both right and wrong: there was only time to discuss and, as needed, revise a small percentage of the c. 900 substantive comments registered last year — but as of this point in time, it appears that OOXML may ...

The history of humanity demonstrates an ongoing evolution in the balancing of the rights of the individual with those of society. Only in modern times have many of the civil rights we hold to be most dear become recognized and protected by law. With many of these rights now being exercised virtually through the use of information and communications technology (...

In advance of the Ballot Resolution Meeting in Geneva charged with resolving open issues with OOXML, pundits speculated how Convenor Alex Brown would grapple with the seemingly impossible task. Alex gave some indications of his strategy at his blog, and also offered this: "This will be no love-in." He was right.

In this chapter, the architects of the decision to adopt ODF — and not Microsoft's OOXML — begin to plan the visionary "Enterprise Technical Reference Model" that would eventually contain that decision.

It is a truism of American life that you only get one chance to Have it All. Steve Jobs' first chance at dominating a computer platform died at the hands of Bill Gates in the early 1980s, in large part because Gates was willing to license his technology to clone makers while Jobs was not. Now comes Apple's wildly popular ...