Patent Threats In OOXML

An anonymous reader notes an initiative by the New Zealand Open Source Society to weigh in on the question of standardizing Microsoft's OOXML. The organization has authored a white paper (available in several formats, HTML here) laying out the ways in which the OOXML spec falls short of what a standard should be. From the article: "'If OOXML goes through as an ISO standard, the IT industry, government and business will [be] encumbered with a 6,000-page specification peppered with potential patent liabilities' said New Zealand OSS President Don Christie. 'Alarm bells are going off in many parts of the world over OOXML. Normally ISO draft standards would be drawn up by a number of stakeholder organizations, involving an often slow process of consensus building and knowledge sharing. Since many aspects of the office document format remain proprietary, OOXML has not taken this development track.'"

Comments

Re:Open standards often are patented

[killjoe]

Given that there are two competing potential standards and one has patents and the other doesn't then why should ISO choose the one with patents? Of course it also doesn't help that one standard is 600o pages long and can only be 100% implemented by MS.

Clearly the ISO bodies are being corrupted (packed) by MS and I really don't understand why. MS has never obeyed any standard and they will not obey this one either. Why does ISO even pretend that MS has respect for standards? Why do would they ratify a standard which will immediately be extended by MS?

Re:There can be only one

[Billly Gates]

when peoples bosses email ooxml ms word and ms excel files waiting back for an answer we can find a sure winner. It will be what yoru employer uses and will most likely be microsoft based.

Re:Open standards often are patented

[realdodgeman]

1) The format is open and not subject to change/closure at the whim of a company (generally controlled by a standards body).

Microsoft is going to break this one anyway, and without getting punished for it. They don't need to change the specification, just their own implementation. And then suddenly nobody that actually followed the specification is able to read documents produced in MS office.

"Auto space like Word 95"

[mrchaotica]

'Nuff said.

The existence of shit like that in the spec -- not to mention the obsolete HTML export described in the post below yours -- indicate that the OOXML architecture is just as shoddy as the grandparent post asserts!

In other words, he's right and you're trolling, so STFU and HAND.

Re:Open standards often are patented

[mrchaotica]

Clearly the ISO bodies are being corrupted (packed) by MS and I really don't understand why. MS has never obeyed any standard and they will not obey this one either.

Well, obviously Microsoft doesn't care about standards itself. However, others do, and Microsoft wants to abuse that fact. Understand now?

Oh, please.

[pallmall1]

it was put together over a number of years

That's how long it would take to read the 6000 page spec, let alone to write it out. How is it that Microsoft and the ISO could reasonably expect the spec to be thoroughly examined in the fast-track time period alloted? It's absurd. The sheer size of the spec should have disqualified it for fast-track approval.

Not even Microsoft believes in the technical merit of their own spec, which is why they are resorting to their usual underhanded and corrupt tactics.

Re:Why am I not surprised

[splict]

While you have some interesting ideas, I can't see them working in practice. They generally rely on different charges for patents based on the size of the company. Unfortunately, bypassing this is trivial.

1. Start a new company
2. Patent something
3. License patent to big company

The nice thing about standards

[flyingfsck]

is that there are so many of them.

Microsoft XML standard compliance would be just as useful as their POSIX compliance.

Re:Open standards often are patented

[donaldm]

If something is patented then the description of that patent should enable replication by any third party who then can legally produce and/or use that thing for a "Reasonable" and "Non-discriminatory" payment to the patent holder for the life of that patent. So basically all patents are open, however if the patent is vague or obvious then it should never have been granted in the first place.

Getting back on topic. I think the following from the conclusion of the article says it all: "While Microsoft has granted patent use over the required portions of the specification that are described in detail the numerous undisclosed behaviours and inexplicit definitions are not covered, providing a legal as well as technical barrier to OOXML's implementation". I think we can quite easily arrive at the conclusion that to adopt OOXML is to adopt something that cannot easily be implemented by a third party, so we can assume this is a proprietary format that is dressed up to look like it is an open format.

Why would they say that?

[WebMink]

Which says that MS themselves said that you cannot change the default 'save as'.

Given that Sun's ODF plug-in for MS Word does exactly that (simply adds ODF to the list of supported formats everywhere they occur in Word, including allowing it to be set as the default), it makes me wonder why Microsoft would say that.