By Dale Vile, 4 April 2008 15:06
COMMENT
Amid anger and disbelief, it emerged this week the ISO is ratifying Microsoft's OOXML as a standard. Cooler heads have wisely prevailed, argues Dale Vile of Freeform Dynamics.
News this week that Microsoft's OOXML document format has been adopted as an ISO standard has sparked outcry and frustration in the anti-Redmond camp.
Many feel the arguments against ratifying OOXML were so strong that the decision suggests the ISO process is broken. Some of the objections are convincing.
The most obvious one is that a perfectly good ISO standard for storing office type documents in XML format already exists in ODF (OpenDocument Format). Microsoft should have adopted ODF rather than forcing through its own proprietary alternative.
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This argument portrays ODF as clean, well structured and designed for extensibility, while OOXML is a poor foundation for the future because its confused specification has been bloated to support the features of generations of Microsoft Office.
Beyond questions of fitness for purpose, there are bigger concerns about a standards body making decisions that could perpetuate an effective monopoly - in this case, Microsoft Office on the desktop. This issue has arguably provoked the most disappointment.
But the case for the defence is that the OOXML specification is actually well structured, extensible and not a tangled mess. Also, ODF is relatively immature and incomplete.
Microsoft also asks what more can it do? It is constantly pressured to be more open, so it switches from binary to XML formats, and passes the end result to an independent standards body for analysis and control.
Both sides make some convincing points. But the exchanges have been particularly highly charged because the outcome has hard-nosed commercial implications.
We have witnessed a no-holds-barred political battle between two big industry power bases, with the foot-soldiers from the open source community unwittingly lending their support to a thinly veiled corporate commercial cause.
The sad thing is that the relevance of all this to users of IT has been lost, or at best distorted. The anti-Microsoft camp in particular has put words into the mouths of customers in a divisive manner that often misrepresents mainstream views and priorities.
We hear, for example, that customers feel as if Microsoft is holding their data to ransom by keeping it locked up in proprietary formats. It is also claimed that everyone would dearly love to break free from the shackles of Microsoft Office and take onboard more open alternatives.
Neither of these claims is accurate. Apart from feedback we receive from a minority of very vocal activists, we see little evidence in our research to corroborate such sentiments.
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What we actually find when we research this area is that the overwhelming majority of business users are actually quite content with Microsoft Office and are not particularly motivated to move away from it at all.
Whether this is because they regard it as the best solution available - or think moving away from what is effectively a de facto standard for office tools in the Western world will be more trouble than it is worth - doesn't really matter.
What does matter is that IT departments and business users have more pressing things to worry about than fixing something they don't consider to be broken.
The key fact is, most of what's in Microsoft Office has been used by someone somewhere in the past and will continue to be important to someone in the future.
OOXML is thus a natural vehicle for organisations to look to as they drive more towards XML-based storage for documents.
OOXML is the default format for files saved in Office 2007, so we might as well accept it will become a fact of business life, whether we consciously decide to adopt it or not.
Against this background, it is better that a pervasive file format is managed in the safe hands of a standards body.
If ISO standardisation had been successfully blocked, Microsoft would have suffered some damage in its public sector business, and the rest of the market would have been left reliant on a format controlled in a proprietary manner.
Put another way, the anti-Microsoft lobby seemed willing to trade mainstream security for an opportunity to inflict damage on a competitor.
Thankfully the right decision was arrived at. It would be nice to think that common sense and mainstream customer interest counted for something along the way.
But the reality is we were probably just lucky this time that the political shenanigans came out in the customer's favour.
Comments
There are 13 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
If the ISO rejected OOXML this March, Microsoft could then have gone about this the right way - by resubmitting the standard through a non-fast-track process and cooperating with others.
In fact, the rejection of OOXML the first time (in 2007) made the standard better because it forced MS to cooperate with others to a certain extent. The Ballot Resolution meeting in February did some good - but there was not enough time to fix the 6000 pages. A second rejection by the ISO (in March 2008) would have done the standard even more good (assuming MS wouldn't have taken its ball home to cry).
Instead, we are left with a broken and incomplete standard. This is bad for everyone.
2. James
Dale,
While I see your line of thinking, I think that (aside from the zealots who scream just because they hear the name Microsoft) the main reason everyone is a bit upset is because OOXML just isn't ready to be a standard, with thousands of raised comments not looked at during the process, some serious irregularities surrounding it's favorable vote and amongst other things there was no reason to fast-track a specification that was more than a few 1000 pages long.
If as you say customers (I assume you meant governments and not businesses at this point because they are the ones who are most discussed as requiring open standards) didn't care about the status of OOXML why fast-track it at all?
Anyway, I could write reams on this subject, many already have, obviously I don't agree that OOXML should be backed, but I'd have been happy to support it had maybe not been for the "four-fifths" of the proposed changes to the draft standard for the OOXML document being waved through, undiscussed at Geneva. That alone means nothing is safe even in the hands of a standards group.
Regards
James
3. James
Additional, you state that "OOXML is the default format for files saved in Office 2007, so we might as well accept it will become a fact of business life,"
Office 2007 shipped before ecma submitted OOXML to ISO for standards approval. There have been hundreds (thousands?) of changes to the spec since it was implemented in Office 2007. In fact, Microsoft's Jason Matusow states as such in his blog.
Once again I firmly believe that A lot of clearly smart people have invested a lot of time money and effort in this standard, but that doesn't make it best, good, or even right.
4. anonymous
Even while Microsoft is promising interoperability and openness it is actively subverting the primary interoperability vehicle of the international computing community: the standards-setting process.
The question that should be on everyone's mind is, "If OOXML was truly an open standard, why did Microsoft need to use their political will to force the standard rather than open the standard for technical discussion."
5. anonymous
"OOXML is the default format for files saved in Office 2007, so we might as well accept it will become a fact of business life, whether we consciously decide to adopt it or not."
No, it is not. Don't confuse things. This is exactly what MS wants to let you believe.
MS Office 2007 XML was created a lot BEFORE OOXML.
Then, they introduced some changes to make it a bit more palatable for international organizations, and presented OOXML for ISO.
Then, they introduced many other changes to accommodate some of the complaints received during the ISO process, so they got to the current OOXML revision, that is way different from the format used in Office 2007.
I don't think that MS will ever implement OOXML as the main format of Office, since the format is a complete mess.
Instead, they will probably add a "Save as OOXML" option, so they can comply with states and countries administrations that require that an office suite should be able to manage "standard" file formats to be used by them, but the suite will continue to save by default in a proprietary format (Office 2007 XML, or whatever comes after that).
6. anonymous
"OOXML is the default format for files saved in Office 2007, so we might as well accept it will become a fact of business life, whether we consciously decide to adopt it or not."
No, it is not. Don't confuse things. This is exactly what MS wants to let you believe.
MS Office 2007 XML was created a lot BEFORE OOXML.
Then, they introduced some changes to make it a bit more palatable for international organizations, and presented OOXML for ISO.
Then, they introduced many other changes to accommodate some of the complaints received during the ISO process, so they got to the current OOXML revision, that is way different from the format used in Office 2007.
I don't think that MS will ever implement OOXML as the main format of Office, since the format is a complete mess.
Instead, they will probably add a "Save as OOXML" option, so they can comply with states and countries administrations that require that an office suite should be able to manage "standard" file formats to be used by them, but the suite will continue to save by default in a proprietary format (Office 2007 XML, or whatever comes after that).
7. Shawn Kimball
You couldn't be more wrong. This issue is about documents being available to all citizens. Microsoft can write code so its documents can be saved as ODF and then everyone can read them. M$ will continue to benefit as people think they have to buy the new version of MS Office so they can read and print documents.
8. anonymous
This view is extreemly short sighted. In the future governments will be seeking to switch to lower cost solutions for word processing & spreadsheets. Handling old documents has always been the hangup, and the adoption of OOXML perpetuates Microsoft's dominance in this area.
Because Microsoft refused to release OOXML under terms that would allow it to be distributed under the GPL, Microsoft's biggest competitor (Open Source) will be locked out to a significant degree. Surely this was the plan for at least the past year.
I do believe that ultimately Open Source and Open Documents will win out. There is no better price than free and when big organizations realize the savings to be achieved they will force the move to products like Open Office even if the conversion fidelity from a .DOC/OOXML file is only 95%.
The real looser on this is ISO which will be tarnished forever in the eyes of most technical people. OOXML should never have been submitted at all (it isn't even stable) never mind fast tracked. What were they thinking?
9. Yesudeep Mangalapilly
You are an idiot. It has not created an outcry in just the anti-Redmond camp. It has created an outcry in the pro-FOSS camp. If you don't know what FOSS is and how it aims to free software from its shackles, go read up on it before you start spreading misinformation.
OOXML may be readable by you and is called an "open" standard, but it contains references to opaque innards of the Windows operating system---something other vendors will never be able to implement without Microsoft opening those up as well. A standard is created to neutralize too many vendor-specific products that are incompatible with each other.
What you don't understand is that ODF lacks the problems OOXML has and while I'd have to agree that it is not as mature as Office documents are, ODF has a much better scope for improvement than OOXML documents.
What you have witnessed has been
aptly described here: www.nooxml.org.
Stop spreading bullshit. Read the friggin' standard before you comment about it. Microsoft has just made customers purchase Office 2007 or higher if they want to be able to view "open" documents. It's a sad day when management decides the technology to be used, when technology should be chosen on MERIT.
10. Reform ISO
Which world are you living in Dave? The "cooler heads" that you talk about were cooled down by Microsoft's cajoling and threatening. The technical bodies in Sri Lanka, Malaysia and other countries voted No to OOXMl and were overuled by their political masters for reasons that you and I can guess. The manner in which ISO has been subverted by Microsoft should not be acceptable to anyone. Countless other standards bodies were stacked with Microsoft supporters. Many of the members who joined the JTC1 committee at the last minute voted for OOXML. FRAUD prevailed, Mr. Dave Vile and NOT "cooler heads."
Most of the emerging economies voted against OOXML and that is a very sharp indicator of what they think of Microsoft's OOXML. If ISO and other standards bodies can be hijacked in this manner by monopolies, ememerging economies may have to create their own standards as China is doing.
11. anonymous
ISO was not right to make a standard out of OOXML for at least two reasons: there are still tons of technical bugs in the text proposeed by MS and there is no way to validate an implementation, since there's no validator or independent certification organism available. You could say that the 7000+ OOXML spec is unusable - and it is 7000 pages long because it's badly written. Antoher problem with OOXML is that in some points it collides with other ISO standards.
ODF is not bad or unstable. It's just more limitted in scope than OOXML. Nevertheless, it covers the explicit purpose of OOXML - office documents. I wouldn't regard video streams or other such exotic stuff in OOXML as being office-related at the moment.
Your argument for OOXML makes me wonder. Either you wrote an article (actually two) about OOXML without reading the text of the spec and the thousands of observations submitted by national bodies (of which only 20% were addressed individually and specifically, the remaining 80% being still valid and not addressed in the final text of the standard), or your comments are biased.
Which leads me to another issue: how can a standard riddled with errors (some independent studies show that there are many more errors, of smaller importance, not even discussed during the standardization process) be of use to a customer?
If MS wished to be more open, it would suffice to publish the spec on their site, available for anybody to download. They do this with RTF, and RTF is pretty much understandable. They didn't push RTF to become an ISO standard, although it mis much more mature, stable and usable than OOXML.
Then there's a naming issue which bothers me. Why did they choose such a name that most ppl not aware of the debate will confuse it with n abbreviation of OpenOffice XML?
12. anonymous
Standards Agencies - 'Shaking my head in disbelief'
I suppose they are self serving, why have one standard when 2 will do
13. Simon
What a pile of crock - that article is WAY off line and gets several things seriously wrong.
>>> What we actually find when we research this area is that the overwhelming majority of business users are actually quite content with Microsoft Office and are not particularly motivated to move away from it at all.
Whether this is because they regard it as the best solution available - or think moving away from what is effectively a de facto standard for office tools in the Western world will be more trouble than it is worth - doesn't really matter.
My experience is that business leaders take the attitude that "everyone else uses MS Office so we have to" - in other words the only way they can do business is to use what everyone else uses. This is exactly what Microsoft wants, and what the argument was (still is) about. I once had a conversation, and my Director turned round and said, with no hint of irony, that "people send me Excel documents so I NEED to have Excel". You see MS have been so good at their marketing spin that they have managed to distort peoples mindset away from "documents" to "application formats".
Given a sufficiently open document standard, it really won't matter what package you use because the document will be portable. THIS is what the argument is about.
>>> OOXML is the default format for files saved in Office 2007, so we might as well accept it will become a fact of business life, whether we consciously decide to adopt it or not.
Correction, it is NOT. An Office 2007 doc is not compatible with OOXML and I highly doubt if it ever will be because that would not be to MSs advantage. I confidently predict that MS will play this "standard compliant" card for all it's worth while quietly neglecting to mention that there are, in total, in the whole world, from all vendors, a grand total of ZERO implementations - in particular their own is non compliant.
And lets not forget that wonderful "get out" for them, the BLOB ! All MS have to do is wrap their closed BLOB in XML and they've got something that ticks the boxes but is as closed as all their previous formats.
>>> Against this background, it is better that a pervasive file format is managed in the safe hands of a standards body.
Is it ? Firstly there appears to be a "certain amount of suspicion" (to be polite) about the independance of ISO after this debarcle. Secondly, I seriously doubt if we'll see any serious attempt to clean up the mess it's saddled itself with. Even if it does upgrade the standard, I can't see MS implementing it.
Any proper cleanup would have to so radically alter the standard that it would probably be better to start afresh - oh, we did that and look where it ended up !
>>> If ISO standardisation had been successfully blocked, Microsoft would have suffered some damage in its public sector business, and the rest of the market would have been left reliant on a format controlled in a proprietary manner.
No, what would have happened, over time, is that MS would have been forced by the (sadly minority) of public bodies and large corporations who understand the issues to come to the standards table. Seriously, there is NO damage to MS involved that isn't by their own choice.
You seem to be saying that it would be damaging to MS to have to support an open standard, but it's not damaging to them to support an open standard ? The only difference being that one open standard is supposed to be what they already write.
You fall into that common trap of believing that the current situation isn't damaging. The last few years have been VERY damaging to the whole industry and to us, the end users. OOXML will NOT change that as it now hands MS a licence to control the market and gives them a way round the inconveniences forced on them by those public bodies and large corporates insisting on interoperability.
When you can cite a couple of available implementations of a fully compliant OOXML capable office suite