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

[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.

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.