ISO Takes Control Of OOXML

mikkl666 writes "Alex Brown, head of the ISO work group responsible for OOXML, has posted a summary of their latest meeting, and he also comments on the resolutions discussed there. The basic message is that ISO now has 'full responsibility for the standard,' and that several workgroups will be established to work on OOXML. An interesting point here is that 'setting up a maintance[sic] procedure for ODF, and then working on cross-standard initiatives' is one of the explicit goals. On a side note, they also reacted to the very emotional discussion on OOXML by posting an open letter: 'We the undersigned participants ... wish to make it clear that we deplore the personal attacks that have been made ... in recent months. We believe standards debate should always be carried out with respect for all parties, even when they strongly disagree.' As Brown correctly points out, 'This content speaks for itself.' We discussed the approval of OOXML earlier this month."

Microsoft now owns ODF,

[ozmanjusri]

This is going to get bad.

The convenor of the committee is Alex Brown, an advisor to the British Library, which was a co-sponsor of Ecma putting OOXML on the fast track.

They've basically given Microsoft control over ODF's future.

Bye bye interoperability for another couple of decades.

Re:I propose we call it POXML

[Anonymous Coward]

To reflect the dreadful plague that is Microsoft and all their works.

I guess that works out to Proprietary Office XML?

About incompetence

[firefly4f4]

Meanwhile some on-looking SC 34 people felt insulted. One neutral XML expert, who I know for a fact took a very close technical look at DIS 29500 asked "what are they saying? that we are incompetent? that we do not have the right to decide for ourselves?".

No, the general public is not calling them incompetent. Other technical [alkalay.net] committees [www.scc.ca] are calling them incompetent.

They're just being polite about it.

Re:What do they expect?

[Mathinker]

> with official bodies denying, often with proof, that no 'backroom dealing' occurred

Like the Swedish official body?

From http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/08/31/Sweden-OOXML-vote-invalid_1.html [infoworld.com]:

The Swedish Standards Institute has declared its recent vote in favor of Microsoft's Office Open XML format invalid. It means that Sweden will probably abstain from an important upcoming international vote on whether to make the format a standard.

The reason given by SIS was not the controversial circumstances surrounding the vote, in which Microsoft was found to have offered companies "incentives" if they voted in favor of OOXML. Instead, SIS cited a technicality, saying proper procedures had not been followed.

SSI more or less admits that MS swayed member companies votes and at the same time claims that was perfectly OK, but there was a technical problem somewhere else (a double vote).

Are the other official bodies you're talking about applying the same "standards" as SSI to their voting procedures? If so, you might be technically correct, but as far as I'm concerned, it still stinks.

Re:why not open source Windows?

[Danse]

First of all, copyright, like any other form of property right, is a moral right upheld by legislation.

It's hardly a moral right. It's simply a compromise between the public and those who create new works in an effort to encourage such creations. They get a temporary right to exclusively duplicate and distribute those works in exchange for them being added to the public domain at the end of that period. That the copyright industry has grossly perverted that compromise is the real breach of morality.

Re:MS OOXML and ISO OXML are now different

[I'm Don Giovanni]

Sadly, much of what you say applies to OO.o and ODF. OO.o's files aren't in full compliance with ISO ODF (and therefore OO.o's ODF can be differentiated from ISO ODF), and different apps exhibit different behaviors when reading ODF documents. Indeed, many ODF apps are "second-class" ODF apps.

Here's a rating of various application's ODF support, from one star to five stars (five stars means "perfect"):
http://opendocumentfellowship.com/applications [opendocume...owship.com]

You'll note that NO app achieves 5 stars. There are a number of 4-star apps, but most are three stars and lower. (And I'd bet you a twinkie that nearly all (and possibly ALL) of the 4-star apps aren't independently developed from the spec, but are using rebranded versiond of OO.o's code. (It's known that many ODF apps are simply using OO.o code (the ODF spec is too vague in many places to create code simply based on the spec.)

(There's another web page on an ODF support site somewhere that lists details of problems when using particular apps to load ODF files created by other particlar apps (like using K-Office to load ODF files created by OO.o), but I can't find it at the moment.)

Re:Here's a message for ISO and the letter...

[Locutus]

Microsoft has no intention of supporting ISO OOXML, heck, they refused to support the ISO ODF format even when threatened with the loss of 10's of thousands of licenses for MS Office. It is a very well specified 600 page spec.

To hedge their bet on getting their own format standardized, the put out a pet project with little support behind it but a nice public face of attempting to support ODF. But it is half hearted at best.

Don't kid yourself, Microsoft has no intention of supporting the public spec which is now ISO OOXML or ISO ODF.

Also, it was Microsoft which made it a fight about MS Office vs all others. The requirement for ODF did not exclude Microsoft Office but instead, Microsoft refused to support ODF in MS Office. So, if you like MS Office you are stuck with their proprietary format and required licenses to read it.

LoB

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Here's a message for ISO and the letter...

[Jesus_666]

This seems like an assertion bordering on wrecklessness to me.What evidence is there that MS had no intention to support the ISO OOXML?

Quoth the exec: "It's hard for Microsoft to commit to what comes out of Ecma [the European standards group that has already OK'd OOXML] in the coming years, because we don't know what direction they will take the formats. We'll of course stay active and propose changes based on where we want to go with Office 14. At the end of the day, though, the other Ecma members could decide to take the spec in a completely different direction. ... Since it's not guaranteed, it would be hard for us to make any sort of official statement." [techworld.com]

Microsoft has put it plainly: If the Ecma (now ISO) spec doesn't match what Microsoft wants to do with the file format then the file format will deviate from the spec. That pretty much ruins the whole "read files 50 years from now" plan, at least for Office 14 onwards. Combined with the fact that the OOXML spec and the Office file format already don't match up I'd say that the chances of Microsoft sticking to OOXML are rather slim.

As for ODF: That would instantly diminish Office's market value by making interoperability easier (the ODF spec is much easier to implement than the OOXML one, being 1/10th the size). Microsoft lives off the being the only ones who can open their formats. They're not going to let that position go to waste.

Re:It doesn't Matter Anymore. XAML replaces it all

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything to substantiate this?

Are you new here? It's an anti-MS rant.

Re:You missed the real story with the ISO/IEC acti

[ozmanjusri]

Sorry, but this has already been debunked:

No, it hasn't been debunked.

Rick Jelliffe is one of Microsoft's guys in Australia, and his opinion does not constitute a debunking.