What Happens Next on the US Vote on OOXML

Andy Updegrove writes "As you may know, V1, the INCITS Technical Committee that had charge of the US vote on Microsoft's OOXML, failed to reach consensus on either approving or disapproving the specification. As expected, Microsoft has turned to the full INCITS Executive Board in an effort to salvage the situation. Between now and Labor Day, a complicated series of fall-back ballots and meetings has been scheduled to see whether the Executive Board can agree to approve or disapprove OOXML, in either case "with comments." A vote to approve would mean that addressing the comments would not be required for the US vote to stand, while a vote to disapprove would hold the possibility of US approval if the comments are satisfactorily addressed. The bottom line is that a vote to approve (either in the US or in many other nations around the world) does not appear likely, due to the sheer number of technical issues that have been raised with OOXML, and the expedited schedule upon which Microsoft has insisted throughout the process."

Comments

Re:I, for one, am for choice

[ozmanjusri]

Or, would you rather the MS Office document standard to remain closed?

OOXML doesn't open it.

It just describes it, and incompletely at that.

The sole purpose of OOXML is to torpedo any real standard document format. With Microsoft's machinations in the various ISO committees, it's ridiculous to continue pretending they have any intention of allowing real interoperability.

Re:I, for one, am for choice

[kennygraham]

Or, would you rather the MS Office document standard to remain closed?

OOXML is still closed. When the spec has things like "This element means to parse it like Word97 with all of Word97's obscure bugs", that's not an open standard. What we're opposed to is having garbage like that officially recognized as an open standard.

Re:didn't know what OOXML meant

[mdm-adph]

Don't feel bad about not knowing -- the confusion was intentional on Microsoft's part.

Re:I, for one, am for choice

[uglydog]

In the end, its about choice. With standared, published formats it is possible. Or, would you rather the MS Office document standard to remain closed? (Perhaps that is what those whose goal in life is to bitch endlessy about MS want?)
There is nothing preventing MS from publishing their format. That is very different from being ratified as an ISO standard. I could publish my very own file format. But if I have shoddy documentation for the file format, it is useless. No one, besides myself, could effectively use the format.
Ratification is when a group (of people, states, etc) approve of something (a constitution, a file format). In the case of my file format, they wouldn't ratify my format because it is useless to them.

Re:I, for one, am for choice

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Choice in products, not in standards. You want GE and Sylvania and all other light bulb vendors fighting to sell you a light bulb which will fit the fixture you have in your house. GE should not be promoting its own "snap in" bulbs and Sylvania pushing its "screw in" standard and Phillips proposing a spring loaded catch standard. Just yesterday I discovered that the table lamp I bought from IKEA uses a bulb R17, and even IKEA does not carry replacement bulbs. I get R12 and R26 but not R17. Three "standard" bulb types and they manage to screw me. That lamp is junk now. That is what happens when you have multiple standards.

Do you really want both Betamax and VHS? Do you really want both DVD and Laserdisk? Come on. Demand real open standards. It is not about free software. It is not about open software. It is not about non-commercial software. It is perfectly OK to have two or three proprietary closed software supporting ODF and one or two Open Source but not-free software and a couple of Open Source and free software all supporting one document standard with perfect portability across them.

Only when users demand the ability to switch from one software to another without any loss of functionality they will have the power in negotiation. In the present situation, they have to buy whatever MSFT charges. Did you really think people will be forking over 150$ for a spreadsheet and word processor 10 years ago? The whole MS Office was selling for 50$. Now it is supposed to be 500$. Dont you see where the customers lost the ability to negotiate better prices because of vendor lock in?