Office Open XML Officially Approved As International Standard
Published on 1 April 2008 @ 11:37 pm
Intellectual Property Watch
By Kaitlin Mara
The much-debated open document standard Office Open XML (OOXML) has been approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), according to a document obtained by Intellectual Property Watch.
The result of the voting showed 24 supporting votes by participating national standards bodies allowed to vote, known as “p-members,” versus eight opposing votes. This translates to a 75 percent approval rating among bodies which cast a vote, greater than the two-thirds approval required for approval by ISO. However, nine national standards bodies who abstained from voting were not included in this calculation.
The ISO document is available here [pdf].
The Microsoft document standard, which is a 6,000 page set of specifications, has been hotly contested, culminating in two parallel meetings in Geneva this February (IPW, Access to Knowledge, 27 February 2008): one, the Ballot Resolution Meeting meant to resolve technical issues with the specification before approval as a standard and the other, called OpenForum Europe, in which free software and rival Open Document Format supporters called for the rejection of OOXML.
Though the public announcement has not been made, Ecma, an industry standards-making body that had approved OOXML previously, has released a press statement welcoming the approval, with secretary general Istvan Sebestyen calling it “an important milestone.” Microsoft’s statement hailed the appearance of “extremely broad support” for the standard at the end of the ISO voting process.
Opponents of the OOXML standard disagree about the support, and accused Microsoft of irregularities during the voting process (IPW, Access to Knowledge, 29 February 2008). Knowledge Ecology International released an early statement saying it was “disappointed” about the likely approval and that “Microsoft’s control over document formats has destroyed competition on the desktop.”
Several other sources have raised questions about apparent last-minute vote changes, with several countries changing their votes from disapproval or abstention to approval in the eleventh hour, they said. Most notable of these is Norway, whose reportedly last-minute “yes” vote has raised questions about legitimacy, according to a Norwegian IT blog.
The ISO is a 157-member network of national standards bodies based in Geneva.
Kaitlin Mara may be reached at kmara@ip-watch.ch.
Categories: News, Access to Knowledge, Copyright Policy, Education/ R&D/ Innovation, English, Information and Communications Technology/ Broadcasting, Patent/Design Policy
2 April 2008 at 1:28 am
* Microsoft’s own Open Office XML (OOXML) format is now an ISO standard. This means anyone with software capable of reading OOXML can can read your documents.
Translation:
* Whilst OOXML is an ISO standard now, we still own the patents and the right to sue anyone who implements it (even if we issued a covenant not to sue; covenants mean nothing to Microsoft, just to let you know). Lastly, OOXML is open however we are only ones who know how to read the blob (binary) parts of the standard perfectly and no one else can.
Internal document at Microsoft:
* Finally we have an ISO and ECMA standard, just so we can say to you that we care about the future of digital documents, when we really just want more money. Saying OOXML is an ISO standard is a great way to have businesses automatically approve of our standard. And now we can put ODF and its hopes and dreams in the dark.
—
I am very disappointed in ISO, OSI, and ECMA. I held them with high regard, until they started approving standards and licences of a company that has been holding back the PC industry all to make a little more money. I will ignore the three bodies for now, until they withdraw their positions on these Microsoft entities.
2 April 2008 at 1:48 am
Is this a bad April Fools joke?
2 April 2008 at 2:39 am
Is it a April Fools’ Day?
2 April 2008 at 3:21 am
That spells the end of ISO credibility …
2 April 2008 at 3:32 am
The only “broad support” for the standard that Microsoft talks about is the “support” that Microsoft itself created by bullying vendors, “partners,” and organizations into speaking for the standard, and that it created itself out of thin air.
The whole process is a joke, and the fact that OOXML was approved with what is pretty clearly -no- support demonstrates that the ISO is an organization that exists solely to rubber-stamp whatever is placed in front of it.
Truly, all nations and organizations should carefully consider eliminating the ISO body as a source for true standards, and form real standards bodies who will implement standards because of the technical merit and usability of the standard, not which company pays them the most, or best manipulates their system.
2 April 2008 at 3:51 am
I guess this is the straw that broke the camel’s back. ISO is completely useless when an obviously vendor-specific format is even considered when a vendor-neutral format is already the standard (ODF).
I really wish this was an April Fool’s joke.
2 April 2008 at 2:34 pm
ISO standard or not, Microsoft and its office products have never been as much in trouble as they are now. Big companies will not make their choice of office SW only based on the document format being “open”. The main concerns are price and learning curve, which OO.org addresses very well.
That being said, it is a shame that corruption seems to be spreading in the ISO body. Maybe its composition and processes should be revised ( ISO 9001 anyone ) ?
2 April 2008 at 3:11 pm
The freetardas have lost. Again.
2 April 2008 at 7:45 pm
Come on!!. did you hear about ISO 8802.3 and ISO 8802.5 Standards?. The first one is Ethernet supported by tmost of the networking comapny , The second standard is Token Ring supported only by the Giant IBM who keep some information undisclosed. Both are LAN standards and they are used for the same thing. Now Ethernet is the only one standard used broadly , therefore IBM lost.
The moral is: there are not problem with have two competing standards. the market will choose the winner and this winner hasn´t to be the big fish
3 April 2008 at 12:01 am
More futile attempts from Microsoft to prevent the world from migrating to open source. The harder you kick against the pricks… the more pain you will suffer. Microsoft should have learned their lesson from Vista.
If Microsoft would go back to their roots… and try involving the community in their production… rather than try & dictate to others what they want to happen… and make the “legitimate paying customers” suffer, they might not be failing at nearly everything.
GET A CLUE MICROSOFT! You are losing your customers faster than you can make excuses.
3 April 2008 at 1:38 am
As I said here ( http://www.geekzone.co.nz/foobar/4821 ), the only ones ever supporting OOXML were those that were paid to do so. It’s truly shameful.
3 April 2008 at 9:51 am
All contact ISO to state we can no longer consider their recommandations anymore since it is now crystal clear that these are not based on their quality.
3 April 2008 at 4:52 pm
why my country vote “yes”? cus our goverment is rich and our country is poor as a rat.
5 April 2008 at 12:14 am
Rather than engaging in character assassination against anybody supporting Open XML by leveling wild accusations at them, IBM and Friends should spend a little more time worrying about their own integrity.
Today, Jan van den Beld, former Secretary General of the Ecma International standards body, was brave enough to expose the hypocrisy of IBM’s smear campaign.
Seems that IBM has been busy getting “anti-Open XML” voices to join national standards bodies, double-voting (in Italy), authoring comments critical of Open XML for the Kenyan standards body, having IBM employees write anonymous letters to standards bodies containing factually false claims about Open XML, and welcoming Google into the 14 month standards process at the very last minute in order to have a better chance of blocking ratification of Open XML.
Oh, and let’s not forget that Avi Alkalay, who describes himself as “an Open Standards, Open Source and Linux advisor at IBM Brazil in Brazil” has called
for a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on openxmlcommunity.org, a community of thousands of supporters, users and implementers of Open XML.
It remains to be seen whether IBM and friends will stop their unethical (and sometimes outright illegal) actions. Let’s hope that they will take the advice given to them by Mr. van den Beld, who reminds them that it’s best “to move on, particularly when you are throwing rocks while living in a house with LOTS of glass.”
8 April 2008 at 10:43 pm
This seems to prove, IMHO, the points made in a 2007 ShmooCon presentation “Standard Bodies – What are these Guys Drinking”. I’ve been following the OOXML issue and am baffled. I’ve never had problems with products that have followed the ODF standard, which Microsoft chose not to follow from what I can tell. Why didn’t we stay with ODF? Could Microsoft be planning to sue those who use OOXML at some future point in time?
The final question I’ll pose is based on my reading of a white paper comparing XML to OOXML. Provided the paper is accurate, how are those of us who can read, or are proficient interpreting XML, interpret the code when fields like Fred equate to 0 in OOXML when in a spreadsheet? The white paper mentioned was written by Edward Macnaghten.
My statement. IMHO, this is a sad day for those of us who have relied upon and quoted standards to help justify the use of one solution / approach over another.
8 December 2009 at 3:21 pm
[...] scanso di equivoci riporto solo oggi (2 aprile) la notizia: OOXML è da ieri uno standard ISO. Purtroppo non è uno scherzo, ma la stentata decisione raggiunta dopo mesi di polemiche incentrate [...]