Walk Alone

Quite a few of my friends work in TCS. I might know some code-coolie in Infosys and Wipro too, given the way these companies vacuum up students during on-campus placement drives. I pity them. These companies have just sold their souls to the devil.

Maybe they view it as a case of level-headed pragmatism winning against naive idealism.

But some hard questions need to be asked.

• Do they know what a standard is?
• Were they not aware that ODF got there first with unanimous approval?
• Are they aware that against all definitions of a standard, OOXML can’t be completely implemented by an ISV because of references to Microsoft’s proprietary file formats?
• Were they sleeping while Microsoft subverted the ISO process? Or maybe they are hand in glove with Microsoft? Preferred partners, channel partners and all that sales stuff.

Here are twenty reasons - listed out succinctly because we all know how busy these companies are churning out software - why you should say NO to OOXML.

Tsk. Tsk. My dream employers’ list just grew shorter by three.