strange symphonies

SIRIM call for Public Comments on ODF

I should have actually I acted earlier, but I don’t know what took me so long. As many or none of you may know SIRIM is requesting for public comments, and they are still accepting them. So if you’d like to send a comment in, please go ahead! We need all the help we can get. Ditesh, Ow, Wong Kok-cheng. Yoon Kit has posted some ideas that you can possibly comment on.

Similar here is mine.

This document refers to SIRIM’s advertisement in The New Straits Times dated 1st September 2006 requesting for public comments on the adoption of the Open Document Format (ODF) (ISO 26300) as a Malaysian Standard.

I am Ezwan Aizat Bin Abdullah Faiz, and I am student at Monash University Malaysia studying Bachelors of Computer Science and one of the local leads for the Free and Open Source Software community in Malaysia. As a student, I dream that upon graduation that I will be able to build my own software company.

I congratulate SIRIM on the proposal to make ODF as a Malaysian Standard, as I believe it not only helps to achieve my dreams, but it is best in the national interests of our country. As ODF is an internationally recognized open standard, the Malaysian adoption of ODF provides many possibilities for a student.

With ODF, I have been given ability to implement the standard in any software I build, without paying license costs which could be detrimental to my initiatives. Similarly with the increasing number of applications adopting the ODF standard, I will be safely assured that we can interact with one another seamlessly. Presently no other document format provides this capability, and by ensuring that ODF becomes a Malaysian Standard, there can be an increased collaboration between people, businesses, and the government.

By deciding to use an unencumbered open standard many governments are seeking to employ ODF as standard to ensure that the documents they produce are accessible to all members of the public thus fulfilling their duties owed to the them. With the increasing support of many individuals, organizations, companies, and governments it provides assurance that ODF not only meets the demands of the house wife, but enterprise level users.

The ODF Alliance, is a group of organizations coming together to promote the benefits of ODF. There may exist a presumption that many of members are technology related companies, but there exists members from other sectors, such as governments, colleges, universities, user groups, libraries, and more, all with the interest in ODF.

I hope that Malaysia will similarly adopt ODF as a Malaysian Standard in the best interests of our country.

Regards,
Ezwan Aizat Bin Abdullah Faiz