Microsoft’s OOXML standard did not manage to achieve the global support Redmond had hoped for, but this is just one lost fight, not the war.
But what exactly is this OOXML that Microsoft wants so badly to be adopted? According to the
International Organization for Standards,
“Office Open XML (OpenXML) is a proposed open standard for word-processing documents, presentations, and spreadsheets that can be freely implemented by multiple applications on multiple platforms. Its publication benefits organizations that intend to implement applications capable of using the format, commercial and governmental entities that procure such software, and educators or authors who teach the format. Ultimately, all users enjoy the benefits of an XML standard for their documents, including stability, preservation, interoperability, and ongoing evolution.”
“The use of XML offers the benefits of greater transparency and openness than were possible with the previous binary file formats. The new formats allow Office documents to easily integrate with existing and future line-of-business systems, as the contents are now open and accessible. The new formats are also designed with long-term robustness and accessibility in mind. (...) The binary file formats in use currently were designed in 1994—before the advent of XML and before widespread exchange of documents and data that is common today. These file formats, .doc, .xls, and .ppt, were introduced with the release of Microsoft Office 97, at a time when it was important to optimize the files for storage on slow hard drives and “floppy” disks; it was not as crucial to focus on easy access to data within the files for better content reuse, document generation, and seamless integration of the documents into business processes. (...) The new XML-based file formats in these programs enable broader integration and interoperability between Office documents and enterprise applications.
Additionally, “Office 12” files are all wrapped using ZIP technologies, which allows for easy access to the content parts as well as standard compression, reducing file sizes and improving reliability and data recovery. (...) Because documents stored in the Open XML Formats are machine-readable and editable by any text editor or XML processor, solutions need not use Microsoft Office programs to view or edit content within the documents. Enterprise business solutions can access document contents easily and efficiently. Technology providers can utilize the Microsoft Office System and Office authoring applications within their solutions, reuse Microsoft Office documents as other Office documents, or open and act on Office documents on other platforms and in other applications.”
However, no matter how innocent that might sound, there’s a lot of money involved behind this, and where there’s money there’s also a good chance to have accusations of corruption. The first ones appeared in Sweden, whose vote was invalidated because of Microsoft involvement in the pre-vote discussions. Following that scandal, Ireland, South Korea, Norway and Denmark said NO to OOXML and eventually, the ISO rejected Redmond’s proposal, at least until the next meeting.
The accusations that have been thrown pinpoint to the fact that MS mingled its dirty hands in the voting process even more, trying to bar those who opposed to the standard, while a national body that was going to vote no all of a sudden abstained after a meeting with MS officials.
In its press release, Microsoft sees things differently (shocking, eh?). The Redmond giant boasts with the support it got for the OOXML from 51 ISO members, representing 74 percent of all qualified votes. The voting procedure requires those who vote against a new standard to provide additional information that might help improve the standard in the future. Under ISO/IEC’s Directives (IEC JTC 1, the international Joint Technical Committee dealing with standardization for information technology) a vote must have one of three responses: Approval; Disapproval, or Abstention. Disapproval must be accompanied by Technical Comments. Microsoft said that many of the remaining ISO members (actually those who voted against, or those who abstained) would support Open XML after their comments are addressed during the final phase of the process, which is expected to close in March 2008.
“We are extremely delighted to see that 51 ISO members, representing 74 percent of the qualified votes, have already voiced their support for ISO ratification of Open XML, and that many others have indicated they will support ratification once their comments are resolved in the next phase of the ISO process,” said Tom Robertson, general manager for Interoperability and Standards at Microsoft Corp. “This preliminary vote is a milestone for the widespread adoption of the Open XML formats around the world for the benefit of millions of customers. Given how encouraging today’s results were, we believe that the final tally in early 2008 will result in the ratification of Open XML as an ISO standard.”
“Technical experts around the world have provided invaluable feedback and technical recommendations for evolving the format,” Robertson added. “The high quality of the Open XML format will be improved as a result of this process, and we take seriously our role in working within the Ecma technical committee to address the comments received. We believe that the ISO National Bodies will be pleased with the results.”
It’s easy to fall under the charm of the Microsoft official’s words, but in reality, what really pissed off the open source community (including IBM, which is one of the fierce rivals of the OOXML and also a main promoter of the Open Document Format) are the technical details that flagrantly contradict Redmond’s claims about interoperability.
For starters, the largest software developer in the world has a long and fretful history of abandoning its promises. Not only those concerning the release of its own products (see Vista and Office 2007 for that matter) but also concerning the partnerships it establishes with others. Microsoft’s credibility among voters was at an all-time record low, although some might say that what you don’t have, you cannot lose…Moreover, changing specifications is one of Microsoft’s favorites and in time developers and programmers are often left clueless about the modifications Microsoft operates in its software, although the US authorities have taken the necessary steps to prevent that from happening too often.
Second of all, but much more important, it’s actually the lack of interoperability that OOXML suffers from that renders the standard useless for many governments. For example, Office for Mac, whose update has been delayed until early 2008, is not even capable of working together with OOXML formats included in Office 2007 for PC, despite the use of the famous Open XML Translators Microsoft has been working on with its recent Linux partners (Novell, Linspire or Xandros).
You could say that interoperability is actually a sweet dream that will never come true at Redmond, considering the scarcity of the open projects Microsoft currently boasts with. A quick look at a list of open source projects developed at Redmond shows that they are either written to work solely with Vista and only with Vista (since for example, the top project listed there, VMukti P2P Multipoint Real-time Rich Media Collaboration Platform, uses C#, WPF- Windows Presentation Foundation, formerly Avalon, WCF- Windows Communication Foundation, formerly Indigo- and .Net 3.5) or are simply outdated (like the Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Engine, which hasn’t received an overhaul since December 2005). Other so-called open source projects are mere snippets of code aimed at… helping customers build Composite Smart Clients using Microsoft proprietary programs such as WinForms, WPF, etc.
For a full list of technical issues (explained in detail and with very cute examples) that OOXML has to overcome if it wants to get accepted I advise you to visit this
link.
From February 25 to 29, 2008, national boards will meet in Geneva to discuss and vote finally on OOXML.
