Crunch time for Microsoft's Open XML standards bid
Government technocrats are meeting this week in Geneva to decide the fate of Microsoft's Office Open XML, a document format that backers say is worthy of an international standard but foes call a risk to people's liberties in the Digital Age.
The five-day conference will not directly result in a "yea" or "nay" on whether Open XML will be certified by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
Instead, the "ballot resolution meeting" will allow representatives from national standards bodies one month to revise a previous vote from September, where Open XML was narrowly defeated in its "fast-track" standardization bid at the ISO.
If enough votes are changed in Open XML's favor, the document format will gain an important standards designation, particularly to governments concerned with preserving digital information. Open XML is already an Ecma International standard, which does not hold as much weight as the ISO.
Participants are supposed to determine if technical issues found in the 6,000-page Open XML specification have been sufficiently resolved by Ecma since the September vote.
The voting period, which will last until the end of March, is a critical juncture for Microsoft, which has been seeking to make Open XML a standard for about two and a half years.
Last week, it went further in an effort to show that it is trying to make its software work well with non-Microsoft applications, announcing a high-level interoperability commitment that will also help it meet its legal obligations under European antitrust regulations.
Microsoft said it will open up the application programming interfaces of Office 2007 to outside software programmers so that different document formats, such as OpenDocument Format (ODF), can be the default.
Gray Knowlton, group product manager for the Microsoft Office system, reiterated Microsoft's position that's Open XML, ODF, and other formats should coexist.
"We've said this before, but the goals of Open XML are distinctly different than ODF, PDF or UOF, and hopefully we can begin to separate the conversation about product functionality from the necessity for the Open XML standard. In our view, these have always been different conversations. The addition of these interfaces removes a potential obstacle to the adoption of other standards within our products," he wrote.
That basic view is even shared by some of Microsoft's competitors. Novell, for example, is working to support ODF and Open XML and its distribution of the Open Office open-source desktop application suite.
The editor of the ODF standard, Patrick Durusau, last week took that position as well, calling for "coevolution" of ODF and Open XML (PDF).
But Open XML continues to attract fierce criticism from people who contend that Microsoft has manipulated the standards process in its favor. Microsoft competitor IBM has called Open XML flawed technically and argued instead for a single document format.
Others also argue that Open XML is not truly "open" and controlled to a large extent by Microsoft.
ODF advocate Andrew Updegrove published an essay on Sunday arguing voting against Open XML standardization for social and political reasons.
"The Internet and the Web have become such essential services that the exercise of basic civil and human rights has become increasingly dependent upon equal and open access to these essential resources," he wrote.
Even if Open XML fails in that vote, it's not necessarily the end of the road. Microsoft can resubmit the specification for reconsideration, according to the ISO.
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. 
make its software work well with non-Microsoft applications"
They still have yet to release a convertor for Office 2004 for Mac.
Here's hoping the ISO shoots this standard out of the water...
Sun, IBM, AOL, Google, and Sony. They control what standards we use. They just voted down HD DVD and now they are voting down Open XML to force us to use their standards instead.
standard since May 2006. There is no need for an additional
office document standard that offers few additional benefits (if
any at all).
HD-DVD was also not voted down. Consumers chose and Blu-
ray ultimately won because it was in the PS3 and therefore had a
larger user base. The fact that Microsoft was involved with HD-
DVD has nothing to do with this discussion, other than pointing
out a certain amount of MS fanboy-ism on your part.
standard.
Unless Open XML is able to be freely used with Linux & other
GPL software it's just another MS proprietary format that
Microsoft will try use to lock people into Windows.
Everyone knows that which is why MS is meeting so much
resistance.
Updegrove's argument's creates a bogus public interest argument, which if extended, would take your freedom to code as you see fit out of your hands.
If you want to code for the state - go ahead. Do it on your own time, however. I shall not, and would not urge that upon others.
Look at Microsoft's track record with their standards:
. Abused their monopoly position
. Disabled competitors products on Windows
. Drove many companies out of business illegally
. Charge high prices for their standards/stuff
. Not forth coming in written specs for their standards
. Do not work with Open Source
. Are the path for most viruses to people's computers
. Are only interested in making money for themselves
. Have a history of dodgy deals, e.g., Mosaic
And then after all that, there are people actually arguing that Microsoft should have a standard.
Well isn't it obvious? How can we trust them to provide an official standard? Imagine if HTML was a Microsoft standard. Do you think that the Web would be as rich as it is now?
Wake up! Somethings are just plain obvious that they require no consideration. Microsoft can not be trusted, past, present, and most likely future.
It goes like this:
If Microsoft is forced to wait on Open Software to approve all standards - then naturally MS will trail Open Software in all development. Any attempt to follow too close can be meet with standard changes where easiest for leading open software and most expensive for MS. Thus Open Software can faster overcome MS's 90% world user share. Gee what corporation was this idea stolen from and which was derided as a consequence?
The Political Correct face of this ideal is, of course, that rich private money making should follow public dictated standards. On the surface this is to make software more user friendly worldwide. In practice even Open Software people occasionally let slip a particular choice was made to make things more MS difficult than for any other reason.
Yes Open Software generally rules standards nowadays. Standards groups are dominated by variety rather than user popularity. Variety is not MS. Within that broad staement standards boards are dominated first by academics - which is sometimes good for cutting edge outlooks. But show me any academic who does not prefer to get their hands on code for implementing the standard - regardless of its merit. And Linux is getting pretty good, especially at batch and managed combinations realtime tasks. The industrial board is of course dominated by MS competitors.
So I am fairly sure that the standards groups do NOT always produce the best results -- simply because they are weighted against accepting anything from MS. MS is not necessary brilliant. But MS isn't necessarily stupid all the time either.
- For every MS compatible standard
- by dudelookslikeachimp February 25, 2008 11:13 PM PST
- ...that is not a problem for Open Software to implement -- there is another standard that is NOT MS friendly which can be adopted by Open Software, and which has more than acceptable, if not nearly equal, long term usefulness.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(8 Comments)What most Open Software people really mean.