Microsoft Wins Industry Standard Status for Office

everphilski writes "The International Herald-Tribune reports that Microsoft has won industry standard status for Office. EMCA International, a group of hardware and software makers based in Geneva, approved the MS file formats with only one dissenting vote - IBM. IBM backs the OpenDocument standard, which was approved by the ISO in May of this year." From the article: "Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president for open source and standards, called Microsoft's Office formats technically unwieldy - requiring software developers to absorb 6,000 pages of specifications, compared with 700 pages for OpenDocument. 'The practical effect is the only people who are going to be in a position to implement Microsoft's specifications are Microsoft,' Sutor said."

Comments

6,000 pages (in what format?)

[yagu]

Wow, 6,000 pages to describe an "open" format? Never underestimate the power of committees.

Sutor, IBM's dissenting voter says: "The practical effect is the only people who are going to be in a position to implement Microsoft's specifications are Microsoft." This in the context that the OpenDocument (competing) standard is only 700 pages. Seems like both must be quite verbose, but I'd opt for mastering 700 pages.

6,000 is a lot of pages to master, but it should be freely available for others to interpret, correct? On the other hand, since it is "essence of Microsoft", there's probably lots to misstep with and lots to nuance for interpretation letting Microsoft essentially maintain a proprietary flavor of a supposedly open standard.

Also of note from the article:

Van den Beld of ECMA International said the standard recognized reality. "The vast amount of data in the world is in Microsoft format," he said.

Van den Beld might be an idiot. Using his logic we should strike Microsoft Windows XXXXX as the standard for OSes, not.

Hopefully there is still some inertia for the OpenDocument (yes, I know it's an ISO Standard) standard to gain purchase and compete. It is largely the emergence and work done with OpenDocument that has pushed Microsoft into the uncomfortable arena of pretending to like open standards.

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[enc0der]

1. I'd hate to see the word file with 6,000 pages in it, will that fit on a dual layer DVD?

2. I guess I kind of look at standards like the dictionary...just cause I don't know everything in there doesn't mean I can't speak at least at some meaningful level. I'd also take 6,000 well written, well thought out pages as opposed to 700 if they were missing content. Comparing page count to me is like comparing CPU Ghz....it's not the whole story. I've seen neither document, so I really don't know.

3. Now I understand why word.exe was so huge... :)

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[SquareOfS]

6,000 is a lot of pages to master, but it should be freely available for others to interpret, correct? On the other hand, since it is "essence of Microsoft", there's probably lots to misstep with and lots to nuance for interpretation letting Microsoft essentially maintain a proprietary flavor of a supposedly open standard.

The problem is, if we know anything about Microsoft, even if they're doing it with otherwise decent intentions, they're writing Office-the-software first and Office-the-standard second -- and therefore, there's a significant risk that the standard will always lag the implementation, and since their installed base is so big, the implementation will just win over the standard.

Exactly what was happening on the web for a while when IE's implementation of HTML/CSS could trump the standard to the degree that other vendors had to encode "quirks modes" into their own implementations to deal with people who wrote to the implementation rather than the standard. . .

And I would feel differently about this if it weren't for the fact that MS is bolting an XML format onto an existing product, which means that reverse-compatibility decisions are likely going to be determinative in the engineering.

So it's not the 6,000 pages -- it's the internal memos interpreting the 6,000 pages that we never get to see that are the problem.

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[macshit]

What's amusing is that a previous ECMA rubber-stamping of a microsoft product as a "standard" was the C# language, which (at that point) almost nobody used!!

It's pretty clear that ECMA exists mainly as a tool for rich corporations, when they want to add a veneer of respectability to something (and/or subvert government purchasing regulations).

Bias

[suv4x4]

IBM's vice president for open source and standards, called Microsoft's Office formats technically unwieldy - requiring software developers to absorb 6,000 pages of specifications, compared with 700 pages for OpenDocument.

This piece of information is of little use without comparing the supported *features* in both format and their implementation.

Re:Bias

[ArtDent]

Naturally, a restatement of MathML is not included in the Open Document specification.

But here's the point: by reusing MathML, instead of reinventing the wheel, Open Document also allows existing implementations of that standard to be reused.

The size of Microsoft's spec is a real problem. A Word developer estimates more than 4 years for a team of 5 (within Microsoft) to implement just the Word portion in Word for Mac. Apparently, that's too much work, so they're just going to "port" the Windows version.

Is a standard with only one, proprietary implementation much use to anyone?

why are there two standardization groups

[moochfish]

I am not an expert on these bodies so can someone please explain the difference between EMCA International and ISO and how the approval from each organization differs.

One question...

[robyannetta]

'The practical effect is the only people who are going to be in a position to implement Microsoft's specifications are Microsoft,'

Then WHY was it approved as a "standard"?

Will Microsoft stick to it?

[kherr]

It's all well and good that OOXML is a published standard, but how long until Microsoft decides they need some enhancement and just add it without going through a revision to the ECMA standard? It's one thing to get something to become a standard, quite another to adhere to it. Think of how Netscape decided they wanted new HTML features but didn't want to wait for W3C and just dreamt up stuff like the blink and marquee tags. Once Microsoft Office diverges from the OOXML standard we're right back to where we started—a proprietary document format.

Microsoft as a company may decide product features mean more to them than adhering to a standard, even one they created. I'll never forget Microsoft's FORTRAN compiler under MS-DOS described by Microsoft as "a superset of a subset of FORTRAN 77." In other words, whatever they hell they felt like implementing.

Re:Sounds about right

[AKAImBatman]

"The great thing about standards is that there are so many to chose from." --Attributed to Admiral Grace Hopper

Re:Bitch, bitch, bitch......

[Grishnakh]

They could have avoided sucking by just using Open Document instead of inventing their own pseudo-open format. Why reinvent the wheel?

Not sure why parent was modded 'flamebait'

[Tarlus]

That's a very valid point, I don't see what makes it a "flame".

I am also pro-open and have my own irks with Microsoft. And I do use OpenOffice.org when I can.

But like it or not, MS Office is still in the lead as far as being intuitive and functional. OO is close, but certain parts of it still fall short of MS Office. Microsoft has been developing and refining this stuff for a long time, and it is by far used by more people (and businesses) than any other office software suite.

Plus, it works. Sure, MS Office has its flaws, but let's face it: So does OpenOffice. This doesn't change the fact that it's the most widely used, and as such would be a reasonable candidate for becoming an industry standard.

(Of course, I use 'industry standard' loosely since different groups seem to declare different standards for document formats...)

Since it's apparently grounds for automatic down-modding to express a valid opinion in favor of Microsoft on Slashdot, you people can 'troll' or 'flamebait' me all you like. Doesn't make my point any more or less reasonable.

Specification Weight

[4of12]

While I'm inclined to a cynical view that Microsoft is unnecessarily burdening the specification - and they probably don't mind the fact that this will impede the development of competitors products - I do have to admit the possibility that they are addressing a different criticism that many have made of them in the past.

Namely, that Microsoft specifications are incomplete and/or imprecise (corner cases, etc.).

Albeit verbose, is their specification technically watertight?

Or is it merely, "Here's everything Word can do as a result of development since 1985." with no overall logical structure?

Embrace and extend, business version 2.0

[bigpat]

How long until Microsoft embraces and extends its own standard? This is simply an old Microsoft trick with a new twist. As soon as Microsoft documents break compatibility with ECMA OOXML, then every other third party software will lose the ability to read and write compatible documents. Worse than the current situation, because an attempt to maintain compatibility with Microsoft Office might violate the conditions of the OOXML license. And no doubt break the format they will, in subtle ways of course, a little bit off here and there just enough to make a document look much better in Microsoft Office than it will in other applications.

The Microsoft license to use ECMA OOXML is contingent on following the standard to the letter, which is a seemingly innocuous condition until you realize that Microsoft itself is under no legal obligation to follow the standard to the letter. So you will have a bunch of third party software that follows the standard which won't be able to accurately read or write documents written by the dominant office software, it will just look like the other software is defective when really it is working according to the standard. And even if the other software developers want to break the standard in favor of microsoft compatibility, they won't be allowed to do so under the OOXML license. Microsoft wouldn't do this at first of course, what good is a trap sprung before your prey are fully in, so I am sure that Microsoft would spend a year or two adhering rigorously to the standard, just enough time for other software to incorporate OOXML compatibility. Then it would be time to break compatibility and continue the microsoft monopoly for another few years, while things work their way through the courts.

If Microsoft itself makes a legally binding and enforceable commitment to follow the ECMA OOXML standard to the letter, then I don't see a problem with another document format standard. But as the licensor, I don't see how they could be forced to adhere to the OOXML standard. Unless Microsoft itself can be forced to rigorously follow the OOXML standard, then this is just a monopolist's trap.

OpenXML is not open

[Eric Damron]

FOSS should avoid "Open" XML because Microsoft has encumbered it. Their game is now on. Offer code and protocols that they claim is "open" but, when push comes to shove, they alone control.

Down the road a bit they will begin strategic law suits and try to make FOSS programmers look like a bunch of thieves for implementing the "open standards" they pushed through without paying royalties.

Microsoft is not even a bit interested in competing on a level playing field. For a very long time they have used their monopolies to gain unfair advantages; antitrust laws be damned. Now they want to use their monopoly muscle in their Office package to control a "standard" that they feel will lock out their greatest competition. They know that GPL'd software CAN NOT be encumbered by patents.

They have no intention of real cooperation.

The solution: EVERYONE must work to make them irrelevant. Put them into a position where they either start playing fair or die. Not an easy task. We must press our Justice department to hold them accountable for breaking antitrust laws. The Courts MUST break Microsoft into a least three separate companies. This can easily be justified by their continued disregard for the law.

We should only support protocols and "standards" that are truly free. No unacceptable licenses, no royalties etc. As Linux gains market share there will come a time when Microsoft's insistence on being incompatible with OSS will begin to work against them.

We should push for laws that force standards and protocols to be truly open and available to everyone including Open Source.