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Microsoft Promises To Fully Support OOXML ... Later

Posted by Soulskill on from the sounds-like-a-government-timetable dept.

Raul654 writes "OOXML is the Word document format that Microsoft rammed through the ISO last year. Last week, we discussed a blog post by Alex Brown, who was instrumental in getting OOXML approved by the ISO. Brown criticized Microsoft for reneging on its promise to support OOXML in the upcoming release of Office 2010, and for its lackadaisical approach to fixing the many bugs which still remain in the specification. Now, Doug Mahugh has responded to Brown's post, promising that Microsoft will support OOXML 'no later than the initial release of Office 15.'"

15 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Office...15? by Jazz-Masta · · Score: 4, Informative

    Office 14 is Office 2010.

    So, Office 15 will be the version after 2010.

  2. No it's not. by thePowerOfGrayskull · · Score: 4, Insightful

    OOXML is the word document format that Microsoft

    No it's not. It's the document format for representing all supported document types within the Office suite.

    Yeah, OK, we all know what he's talking about. But still... is it really that hard to get the basics right in a summary?

    1. Re:No it's not. by dwiget001 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And, no, it's not the document format for representing all supported document types within the Office suite.

      If it was, then it would have already been implemented *and supported* in Microsoft Office.

      Microsoft just wanted to get OOXML an ISO stamp of approval, so it could say that it's products conformed to international standards when quotes for potential purchases required such a thing. Of course, in hind sight, it was all a lie, Microsoft never did support the ISO approved OOXML standard, and never intended to. And that's a realted but slightly different story.

    2. Re:No it's not. by cheesybagel · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You have to realize the biggest client for Microsoft is the government. Governments like standards compliance, even if the standards themselves do not mean a damn.

    3. Re:No it's not. by marcosdumay · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Ok, that old story... ODF does have ISO approval, and governemnts around the world were trying to require open office (lower case "o" here) suites by requiring ISO approval of their document format. Then, MS got into a delay and destroy tatic that consisted on making a lot of confusion about what does or does not have ISO approval, and on the sideline continuing their usual way of gaining governement bids (that is composed of bribes, lock-in and blackmail). Now, their task is done, but everything would start again if they just recognized that they'll never support OOXML, so they must keep the fuzz alive.

      --
      Rethinking email
  3. I 3 Alex Brown by Chris+Burke · · Score: 4, Funny

    *Alex brown shakes his fist at MS* "Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!"

    --

    The enemies of Democracy are
  4. This is why I love Microsoft by NaCh0 · · Score: 4, Funny

    All of my software bugs get fixed in the "next" version.

  5. As the old saying goes. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I will gladly support your standards on Tuesday for the 'standards compliant' checkbox I need to continue my lucrative market dominance today...

  6. They promised to support OS2 too by demigod · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And Microsoft promised to support OS/2 after it sold 2 million copies.

    Never happened.

    --
    "The last thing I want to do is deal with a bunch of people who want something."
    Major Major
  7. Another Battle Lost Because MS Has No Mojo by salesgeek · · Score: 4, Funny

    Wow. I can't believe that MS wasted three years and $millions on this. MS really needs to take a look at what is going on and do something about it:

    * MS Tablet PCs fail
    * Windows Mobile fails
    * MS ISO Standard file format fails
    * Windows Live fails
    * Zune fails

    The bodies are getting stacked deep, there MS. Time to get back to what made you great and become hacker friendly again... and not in the sense that your OS and software have lots of security holes.

    --
    -- $G
    1. Re:Another Battle Lost Because MS Has No Mojo by jollyreaper · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Wow. I can't believe that MS wasted three years and $millions on this. MS really needs to take a look at what is going on and do something about it:

      * MS Tablet PCs fail
      * Windows Mobile fails
      * MS ISO Standard file format fails
      * Windows Live fails
      * Zune fails

      The bodies are getting stacked deep, there MS. Time to get back to what made you great and become hacker friendly again... and not in the sense that your OS and software have lots of security holes.

      Nobody looks forward to using Microsoft products. They use them because they have to. Even if you think that all the hype around Apple products is just advertising brainwashing and the fans are just drooling zombies, here's a thought: Microsoft has even more money to spend on branding and they can't even manage to inspire lukewarm enthusiasm.

      --
      Kwisatz Haderach
      Sell the spice to CHOAM
      This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
  8. It's their own format...... by GreatDrok · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They're responsible for this abortion of a standard and yet even they can't implement the thing. So much for eating your own dog food. They should be *MADE* to use it or the ISO should simply kill the standard since clearly it can't work.

    --
    "I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
  9. Re:Office...15? by marcosdumay · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ok, then. They'll support it on the next version, just what they promissed by 2007.

    --
    Rethinking email
  10. The real story. by pavon · · Score: 5, Funny

    Office 13 existed as a skunkworks project within MS. It fully supported the ODF 1.1 standard, and was crossplatform to Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, and BeOS (which MS also had plans to revive). It had clean, standards compliant HTML output. Even more surprisingly, it was decided that the project would be released as open source. Everything was going great until orders from the top led them to try and include Clippy. During the initial commit of the Office 2007 Clippy source there was a large bitsplosion leaving the GIT repository in waste. Forensic analysis concluded that the disaster was the result of the collision of evil bits and non-evil bits, which annihilated one another on contact, releasing huge reserves of pure information, scrambling anything in proximity. Furthermore, due to quantum entanglement, all backup copies of the promising office suite also disappeared, along with any instances of Clippy in Office 2007.

    After this incident, MS abandoned any attempts at supporting open source and open standards projects. Ms Gates still bitches about the loss of Clippy in Office 2010.

  11. Re:I Don't Care by Bryan3000000 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Okay, you got your facts wrong. They pushed OOXML through a standards body to make it a new open standard, ostensibly to address the clamoring for interoperability. So really, it's not that they fail to support their own format, it's that they fail to support the format that they tried to set up as a new standard of interoperability.

    In other words, the point is that this kind of proves that Microsoft rammed the OOXML standard through not to help achieve interoperability, but to prevent governments and companies from switching to other standards which truly do provide openness and a greater level of interoperability. It's evidence of further anticompetitive conduct by a company with a functional monopoly.