OOXML Won't Get Fast-Track ISO Standardization

realdodgeman writes "The International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) recently held an internal poll to determine the position that the United States should take on Microsoft's request for Office Open XML (OOXML) approval. With eight votes in favor, seven against, and one abstention, the group was one vote short of the nine votes required for approving OOXLM ISO standardization. This will mean a huge slowdown to the standardization to the OOXML format. 'Given the controversial nature, relative complexity, and significant importance of the standard, the results of INCIT's vote is unsurprising. An INCITS technical committee also voted against fast-track OOXML approval last month prior to the executive board's vote. Further deliberation is clearly needed as well as further refinement of the format. It seems as though many of the organizations participating in the approval process are generally supportive of the standard itself, but are unwilling to voice unconditional support until their concerns are resolved. OOXML may be down, but it's certainly not out.'"

Comments

That was too close!

[Rudisaurus]

Given the speed with which Microsoft attempted to ram through their "standard" and the dubiousness of the tactics employed (see discussions over on Groklaw), that was far too close to take any comfort from.

The real questions now are:

(a) how to ensure that the various standards organizations around the world really sit up and pay attention so that the obvious technical deficiencies and the crippling lack of open-ness in the proposal -- which were pointed out over and over again by individuals and companies opposed to the fast-tracking -- will be truly taken into account?

(b) how to keep Microsoft from succeeding with their tactic of stacking attendance at national standards organizations meetings to carry the day for them?

They almost succeeded the last time. If something doesn't change, they won't fail next time.

Re:Personally

[enjo13]

I've spent the last 5 years working in the office software space (mobile phones). From what our customers tell us, Microsoft's dominance of the office market is still incredibly strong. We've toyed with ODF support, but customer demand simply doesn't exist. At the end of the day our customers (many many millions) have expressed very little enthusiasm for anything but the Microsoft formats.

In reality (at least as I see it) Microsoft has pushed their XML format not to maintain market share, but rather to give them a foothold in web services. They see their productivity suite as a broad authoring tool for not just documents, but all kinds of data. The closed formats where a major roadblock for them, because their customers could not use the data produced by the suite to actually do anything useful with it in a web 2.0 sense. A open, standardized format gives Microsoft the ability to pursue this "software as a service" model in a much more meaningful way.

It's interesting, since there are several companies (most of which have been rolled up in one way or another now) that where doing exactly what Microsoft wants to be doing. They had reverse engineered the binary office file formats, and where using that knowledge to provide data processing for various companies wanting to use the suite as an authoring tool for their internal services. I think Microsoft looked at that (along with what Google and the like have been doing) and simply saw a really good opportunity to extend their near monopoly on productivity into an entirely new business. I really do believe it is nothing more evil than that.

Re:OOXML

[Tuoqui]

Yes but what about 'Open Office' I'm sure they must have a trademark on that. The entire standard in verbatim is 'Open Office Extensible Markup Language'.

So I suppose if OpenOffice.org were to create a standard called 'Microsoft Office XML' that they were trying to pass off as a standard it would not end in a lawsuit?

Re:I don't mind it being a standard if....

[howlingmadhowie]

even if it were truly open it would be a hindrance because there already is one international standard (ODF). why a second one? microsoft can just implement that one.

ODF vs. OOXML

[3247]

If you compare OOXML to ODF, neither one actually wins. Both have their drawbacks and advantages:

• Open Document Format lacks some features expected from modern office applications. As a result, many applications use their own extensions. These, of course, make the files incompatible: While other applications can read the document, some of the formatting is simply lost. Office Open XML has a complete feature set. It's actually based on a full word processing application, not on the lowest common denominator.
• Open Document Format is underspecified. It does not speficy exactly how to lay out the elements of a document. As a result, the same document looks different in different applications. Office Open XML exactly specifies all of that. This ensures that applications can actually share documents but makes the specification much longer and harder to implement.
• While Open Document Format is an open standard, one usually uses the OpenOffice.org flavour. This is not really different from Office Open XML and its Microsoft Office flavour. The OpenOffice.org flavour is only documented as OpenOffice.org's source code, the Microsoft Office flavour is mostly documented in the standard.
• Open Document Format allows easy upgrading from StarOffice/OpenOffice.org documents. Office Open XML allows easy upgrading from Microsoft Office documents.
• Open Document Format has a longer history as an open standard and is already an ISO standard. Office Open XML is derived from a proprietary format.
• Open Document Format has more existing implementations. Office Open XML has currently just a single implementation - Microsoft Office. There's the risk that something is missing in the standard making it unimplementable by competitors.

The best thing, IMO, would be to combine the two specifications: There should be a profile/extension for ODF that adds the things missing from ODF but present in OOXML: missing features and missing depth of the specification.