World awaits crucial votes on Microsoft's Open XML
There are two upcoming votes on the fate of Microsoft's Office Open XML, a document format that has brought about bare-knuckle business tactics and fierce philosophical disputes.
Microsoft is in the process of trying to gain standard status at the International Organization for Standardization, or ISO, a European standards body which holds significant weight, particularly with government customers.
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) established a special committee to form the position of the United States in that upcoming ISO vote.
On Monday, the executive board of the ANSI committee, called the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS), issued a statement saying that it has not yet reached a decision on the ISO vote on September 2.
In an indication of how much attention Open XML has gotten, the committee expressed "appreciation for the large number of stakeholder inputs received and acknowledges that full and careful consideration of the comments will take some time," according to the statement.
The statement indicated that the board will have a position ready by September 2. But some commenters have said just the size of the specification, sometimes referred to as OOXML, is making the vote harder.
"What will happen next remains to be seen, but it has become increasingly clear in the United States as well as elsewhere around the world that the sheer length of the OOXML specification and the speed with which it has been pushed through the process by Microsoft may be working against its sponsor," wrote attorney Andrew Updegrove, an advocate of the rival Open Document Format (ODF) standard, Monday in his blog.
The upcoming votes appear to be bringing to a head two seemingly intractable viewpoints: is it better to have a single standard or choice between more than one?
Microsoft executives have often said that ODF and Open XML serve different purposes and anticipate other document standards will come about. Open XML has already been certified as an Ecma International standard.
That's not how many ODF advocates see it, though.
"Competing products is a good thing; competing standards will add costs, uncertainty and confusion to the Commonwealth and its citizens alike," Marino Marcich, managing director of the advocacy group ODF Alliance, wrote in response to Massachusetts' proposal to accept Open XML as a "an open standard."
Meanwhile, Microsoft rivals are accusing the company of bullying its way through a standards process.
"The fundamental question is whether a large company with a lot of money and business partners will essentially be able to stack committees so that they are out of balance and therefore buy an ISO standard. I, for one, do not think this is appropriate. I doubt ISO does either," Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president of open source and standards, wrote earlier this month in his personal blog.
For its part, Microsoft is optimistic in the upcoming ANSI and ISO votes.
"The decision by the INCITS Executive Board to issue a ballot of 'yes' with comments shows positive momentum behind ISO/IEC ratification of Open XML," said Tom Robertson, Microsoft's general manager of interoperability and standards.
For those readers who made it this far into this post, please share your opinions in the talkbacks. Does it make sense to have multiple digital document standards?
Martin LaMonica is a senior writer for CNET's Green Tech blog. He started at CNET News in 2002, covering IT and Web development. Before that, he was executive editor at IT publication InfoWorld. E-mail Martin. 
MSs history of interoperability
MSs history of security
MSs history of discloser
MSs history of publishing COMPLETE information, regarding APIs
etc.
MSs intense and expensive lobbying efforts to make this happen
(rather than allowing decisions to be made on merit) and
MSs intense and expensive lobbying efforts to push it?s format
into government offices, etc. (rather than allowing decisions to
be made on merit)
(this is especially important because once a big money entity is
locked in, so are all of those who want to do business with it?
look at the history of the proprietary DWG file format )
MSs complying (not) with EU rulings regarding APIs, etc. and
subsequent, continuing stonewalling.
On every single one of these issues, MS looks pretty bad.
Add to this MSs history of abusing it?s power, squashing
competition, stiffling innovation and continuing to try to stop
anything from taking hold in the market that MS itself doesn?t
control.
All in all, and it boggles the mind why this is even being
considered.
Without we, the readers, refining the question, we, the readers, are left watching the equivalent of a reality t.v. smackdown - no real difference between the adversaries, no real investment on the spectator's (our) part, and no meaningful outcome beyond the general fud and mudslinging. Similar to the array of recent presidential candidates' appearances framed as debates, n'est-ce pas?
This is not to criticize Mr. LaMonica. The post is appropriate and raises a critical question in the open standards debate - what is a given standard's purpose? The supporting information behind each standard is available elsewhere. What Mr. LaMonica hits upon is the call to action requiring both contenders here - OOXML on one side, ODF on the other - to make substantive vs. marketing assertions regarding the suitability of their respective standards relative to the needs of the audience. Then we can determine whether multiple digital document standards can legitimately coexist.
Choice of standards: 110V/50Hz vs. 220V/50Hz is bad.
Pan AM and TWA
Unix and Linux and Windows
etc.. etc.. etc..
It's about evolution.. from one stale situation to another one.
And as correctly mentioned in one of the posts here - "The News.com post doesn't mention the Purpose of each Format". We must ensure that we understand what is the purpose of each standards.
If the ODF standard was really so good.. how come it doesn't perform even half of the goodies that MS Office does and stores in it's current document format ?
If we have to rely upon IBM and etc etc for innovativeness on the Office products front.. their track record has been towards killing the products rather innovating on them..
For example Lotus.
I always loved it before MS launched Office 97 and IBM bought Lotus. It all changes since then.
IBM and many ODF backers are great companies but they don't have an eye towards what USERS want. MS does have one.
Another story... IBM is the only company which makes most money off the Linux revolution.. and still it doesn't have even a single version of it's own Linux of Open office.
How come as a user, I can trust the standard backed by a company which got no STAKE in success or failure of the standard??
It's ridiculous...
Spreadsheet formulas are full of bugs.
Your assertion that one standard may not fit all is just plain wrong. Often a single standard is all that is required and what is ecconomically most efficient for society.
Approving 2 standards within the same problem domain and letting market decide is like deciding to drive in both sides of the road until people decide which is best.
Removable storage media? Hmmmm - this one goes back a long way to ZIP drives and even 120MB 3.5" floppies, not to mention the plethora of modern storage devices such as SD cards, Memory Stick, XD, CF etc, etc.
USB vs Firewire: One better than the other? One free, one licenced? We use both - although in my opinion it seems USB is becoming more common.
Operating Systems: Others are still hanging in there, but MS Windows has a VERY large market share, irrespective of whether the others are better.
CD/DVD +R/RW vs -R/RW: I'm still confused as to why we had to have two formats
BlueRay vs HDDVD: It's all about ego, pride and MONEY. Hmmmmm - I think I'l wait and see which one eventually dominates.
ODF vs OOXML: Yes it does seem that Microsoft was caught napping (for so long it has assumed that its Office formats i.e. .doc, .xls were de facto standards).
Yes, it also seems, as others have pointed out, that money talks, and probably Microsoft will bully its way into having its OOXML a standard of sorts.
Does that mean OOXML is the better "standard"? I can't say.
Will two standards be able to co-exist? Maybe but probably not. Too many personal and corporate egos and lust for money involved here (see also BlueRay vs HDDVD above).
But there again ... we do have +/- CD/DVD technology co-existing to a certain degree - certainly in computers. But what a pain when a +R DVD won't play in a -R only DVD player!
From my point of view there should only be ONE standard. My preference is for ODF, simply because, for many reasons, I was an early adoptor of OpenOffice.
Ultimately, though, there probably will be format converters built into all programs, and each will be able to read from, and write to, the other's "standard" and the problem may simply go away. We'll just have to wait and see what happens.
fell into the same trap that most other posters fell into
(confusing competing PRODUCTS with competing STANDARDS),
you nailed a few of my favorite examples of how competing
standards ensure everyone LOSES.
Betamax vs VHS. Betamax was simply better. Period. But we
ultimately fell for the inferior VHS. My parents still have Betamax
tapes that now can't be played at all, unless someone can tell me
where to reasonably buy a Betamax machine.
Removable storage media. I have a zip drive in a couple of my
older computers which are bordering on useless because few
other people have them (still good enough for quick backups
though).
CD/DVD +/- R/RW. What a cute mess this is. 'Nuff said.
Blueray vs HDDVD. This one is hardly even out of the gate yet
and I'm already hearing many people saying they'll wait to see
which one wins out. They remember the Betamax/VHS fiasco (or
LaserDisks, or Digital Audio Tapes) and don't want to be caught
again.
If M$ succeeds at buying a standard, you can bet your
grandmother that they'll spend a ton of $$$ trying to kill off the
other standard. Why? Because they can't control it, because they
didn't create it, because it isn't theirs. Once they have the
competition out of the way, I'm sure they'll keep it open for all.
They have a history of being open you know.
(Besides, how "open" is a standard that tells you to emulate word
spacing as Word 95 did? If you read their "standard", you'll laugh
your head off.)
The only people who could possibly think this is a good thing
are either young enough (or dumb enough?) to not know what
kind of mess this can create, or are paid off by M$.
This is MS way of fragmenting the standard so there will not be ANY real standard.
"In the Beginning DOS"....
http://www.os2bbs.com/os2news/OS2History.html
Which is first - The Chicken or the Egg?
One must admit, these were indeed some of the most focused posts for a CNET NEWS article on Microsoft without the usual MS bashing.
Now, getting back to the main issues here; and, as one particular poster asked - "What's the purpose of each standard?"; but, let us all ask also, where did it all begin and where is it going? Similar to development of the office productivity suites there were also that of the Operating Systems; and, the fact that there are interdependencies... should not considerations be given to the standardization of the Operating System as well; and, here is one simple statement: "if we try to convert a file from Lotus into Excel or Excel into Lotus, due to differences in the products not every feature will be converted perfectly with the file filters that are available. Both Lotus and Microsoft create similar spreadsheet programs; however, there are several differences in both programs and these differences will remain to distinguish the products apart. We do try to design conversion filters that will allow as much of the file formats as possible to be exchanged and converted without disrupting the actual file design and format.". Surely, there are other productivity products other than Open Office and Microsoft Office products; namely, Software For Economic Evaluation (SEE), UNIDO's COMFAR ( http://www.golem.at/comfar/default.htm ) So, what are the objectives of the proposed standards for (the still work-in-progress) Office Open XML and the already (also work-in-progress) standardized ODF; and, where are their (ODF/OO-XML) "philosophies" against the background of other productivity suites such as Software For Economic Evaluation (SEE), UNIDO's COMFAR....; also, is the machine (computer/computing task) complete without the proverbial "wheel" (Operating System)!
Regardless of the outcome, MS is not going to ever support .odf.
The "standard" MS is proposing is going to still be controlled and manipulated by Microsoft for Microsoft. It is going to be proprietary in every sense of the word.
We are talking about document standards here. This situation is radically different then say, network standards. ATM or MPLS can co-exist in a world dominated by TCP/IP, UDP, and ethernet. Two competing document standards, one of which is not really open or will be available on non-MS programs keeps the status quo. ie Keep the customers under the thumb of a tyrant.
This situation will only serve to further to control that Microsoft lives on. Of course, ISO knows this and I seriously doubt they will be another rubber stamp for Microsoft. To do anything else but reject this nonsense will take away much, if not all of the respect of and influence of the ISO.
Microsoft submitting this to ISO is equivalent to an average high school paper submitting her paper to a peer reviewed journal. It just won't fly.
---Hadnt, much of the world-market prosecuted Microsoft for numerous "Anti-trust" issues..?
---Werent large numbers of, said, prosecutors pointing-out that Microsoft was basically, simply, refusing to "compete fairly", even after numerous judgments, and court-orders, against the company..?
---Hasnt Microsoft, repeatedly, been found guilty of using its, so-called, "standards" to "...erect barriers to competition", "intentionally-dilute", or otherwise... -undermine-, competing-products..?
---Wasnt Microsofts "proprietary standards" considered, by most experts, to be a clear and present danger to "interoperability", low-cost, reliable, access to documents... and therefore, a serious impediment to reasonable-choice and control..?
---And, werent large numbers of governments, and agencies, officially declaring their intentions to abandon such "proprietary" (Microsoft) formats..?
And, wasnt that EXACTLY when Microsoft began dumping tons of cash into railroading this, massive, poorly laid-out, allegedly "open", competing, "standard", through... just when Microsoft desperately needed a bit of positive PR and some serious FUD to defuse the situation..?
And now... here people are... trying to "rationally" discuss the supposed "relative merits" of the two standards. Instead of bothering to point-out, WHY Microsoft did this, in the first place.
I guess Microsofts-strategy worked...
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/07/formula-for-failure.html
http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2007/07/mathematically-.html
and here is what microsoft is actually doing -
glad that netscape/doj thing changed their behavior. microsoft is De-commoditize protocols & applications.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070720073215943
Based on what was written about the OASIS process for developing ODF, part of the goal of that standard was to provide as much compatibility as possible with existing products while producing a standard that anyone could implement. I've read that a fair amount of time was expended in trying to provide compatibility (in terms of features available) with Microsoft Office products, but the only inputs to this effort were the results of reverse engineering by other parties because Microsoft didn't see a need for an open standard and refused to participate in the ODF development, even though they are a member of OASIS.
Only after several government organizations began announcing that they were going to only store files in formats conforming to open standards did Microsoft begin talking about trying to standardize OOXML. But in typical Microsoft fashion, they wrote a specification that cannot be fully implemented by anyone else and selected a standards organization (ECMA) that was willing to rubber stamp their specification and had some hope of getting it fast-tracked through ISO with little or no changes to fix technical problems with the specification.
Whether there is any justification for having two standards rather than working to improve the existing ISO standard, it is this fast-track approach to getting it approved that is especially distasteful and will make ISO a joke if Microsoft succeeds. In addition, it gives some credibility (in at least some circles) to allowing Microsoft to redefine "Open" to suit their purposes.
- No problem if they release it inder the GPL3
- by sinczar July 25, 2007 7:01 AM PDT
- More than one document standard would be
- Reply to this comment
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- NOT!
- by jhhdk July 25, 2007 7:07 AM PDT
- OOXML has no justification.
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(24 Comments)acceptable to me if Microsoft released it under
the GPL3, so that other companies could write
document processing software that would include
its "advantages", or those areas that differ
from ODF.
Rich D
One standards gives:
- Competition
- Interoperability
- Lock-in prevention
Additional standards hinders all of the above.