Comments on: NIST conditionally endorses Microsoft's Open XML in upcoming vote

The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology rules that two document standards--ODF and OOXML--can co-exist.

[Troll Hard]

We're on the road to ISO

one step closer.

Commander Spock must not be happy about that. He wants to knife the baby, because its father is Microsoft.

[Seaspray0]

Let the ranting begin

You know you want to. You just HATE microsoft. I doesn't matter if it's good or bad if it gets ISO approval, you have that urge to rant away because it's..... microsoft. And for good measure, don't forget to throw in a few "M$, microshaft, microsux, or winblows" to prove your good intentions.

As for me, I could go either way on this one. We have several formats available to us today... open office, Adobe PDF, Microsoft Office (older versions), and we use the ones we like reguardless of what a committee says. And that's the way it should be.

[Troll Hard]

The way I see it

an open standard is an open standard.

PKWare used to control the zip standard, but eventually it got open sourced. Many other standards came out like rar, 7z, etc and from Unix we got tar, gz, bz, etc. I think there are some older ones like arc, zoo, pak, etc. The thing is most of them got started by corporations as proprietary standards and then got released as open standards.

Windows itself is a standard, but Microsoft made some of the API calls public, and there is work in the open source community to make open source standards that are Windows alternatives like WINE, and ReactOS which can run Windows programs, but are still under development.

Adobe is a company like Microsoft, and they released their PDF standard as opened and anyone can write their own PDF viewer and converter.

Lotus Smartsuite, Wordperfect Office, OpenOffice.Org, StarOffice, etc can all read the old MS-Office document formats. So they have become a bit of a standard.

Don't forget RTF, TXT, DBF, CSV, and other standards that have become open as well.

Now then why would Microsoft close the OOXML standard? It makes about as much sense as cutting their own throats, because Microsoft needs to have a way that Non-Microsoft systems can put data into a format that MS-Office and other software on Windows can read. It is like the United Kingdom changing how English works, so that only people in the United Kingdom can speak and write it, and nobody else on the planet can. English is a standard, a means to communicate with others. OOXML is a standard, a means to communicate with others.

Who cares who created the standard? As long as it can be used, as long as it is documented, as long as it is open, as long as people can write code to use it.

Either learn how to adapt to change, or die people. It is technological evolution here, those who don't adapt or refuse to adapt will end up extinct or near extinction.

Sure even a near extinct OS like OS/2 can have software written to process and convert OOXML files. Deciding not to do that, makes about as much sense as going back and living in caves and eating moss on the cave walls for the rest of your life.

[Rossdr]

OOXML Fails in INCITS

This story seems to conflict with the actual results of the voting. A vote of 9 in favor would have been required for passage, it only got 8 so it failed. ooxml will not be a ISO standard this year or next year. MS has to go back to the drawing board and work on all the technical difficulties.

[petervda]

NIST responded "NO" to INCITS Ballot 2212

The INCITS Ballot 2212 with closing date of 9 August 2007, clearly mentions that NIST voted "NO" to the Ballot.

http://ballot.itic.org/itic/archive.taf?function=detail&ballot_id=2212

The official voting results are here:

http://ballot.itic.org/itic/tallyvote.taf?function=vote&committee=INCITS&ballot_id=2212

The comment from NIST is here:

http://ballot.itic.org/itic/tallyvote.taf?function=detail&response_id=113254

and is very clear. The crux is that the rules of the INCITS vote state that a [quote] Conditional approval should be submitted as a DISAPPROVAL vote [unquote] (my emphasis added). Later in the text, NIST make it fully clear that: [quote] NIST would support a US National Body conditional approval vote (i.e., DISAPPROVE with comments) [unquote] (my emphasis added).

I find the official voting results and the official comment from NIST on Ballot 2212 of INCITS, to be in full contradiction with the title of the News.com newsarticle. A more accurate title would have been "NIST votes "NO" to INCITS Ballot on OOXML"

Peter Vandenabeele

[mlamonica]

You're right - article updated

Thank you for pointing out the voting details from NIST and other members of the INCITS committee. I've updated the post with the most recent information.

[Len Bullard]

A Choice Among White Elephants

I am of the opinion that two standards is fine particularly where one represents the document majority. The question of whether or not OOXML should be fast tracked comes down to what one considers "controversial" and since it is easy to create artificial controversy, technical merit is what is left. Now would be a good time to cut some requirements, not ladle them on in an attempt to slow a process or create controversy.

That said, technically and with respect to emerging practice brought about by web 2.0 systems, this bitter butter battle is a choice among white elephants. Why we would have to debate the document formats of 15 years ago today is beyond me.