Microsoft stumbles in Open XML standards vote
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Open XML fails to get majority needed to get ISO ratification, although the process can continue.
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The Open Document Format saw a marked uptick in use last year across the globe, according to the ODF Alliance&#39;s 2007 report.Twelve countries and six regional governments have adopted &quot;pro-ODF policies,&quot; according to the group, composed of companies and organizations that advocate for the format. The latest countries are the Netherlands and South Africa, which require government agencies to use the format. Also, more than 40 applications now support ODF, and the Alliance&#39;s membership ranks are set to rise above 500, according to the report.&quot;Considering where we started when we launched the alliance back in 2006, the developments in 2007 are amazing in terms of the progress that has been made,&quot; said Marino Marcich, managing director of the group.&quot;It&#39;s one thing to recognize ODF as a matter of policy in an enterprise architecture framework and another to mandate its use,&quot; he added. &quot;Proprietary formats in the public sphere are going out of style and becoming unacceptable globally.&quot;The ODF Alliance&#39;s report marks another chapter in the long-brewing debate over Microsoft&#39;s Office Open XML document format and ODF, which is supported by the likes of Sun Microsystems&#39; StarOffice application suite and Google&#39;s hosted productivity software.OOXML is the native file format in Microsoft Office 2007, and&#160;Microsoft is attempting to get it recognized as a standard. ODF advocates have lambasted OOXML, calling it far too proprietary to warrant such a stamp of approval.Marcich echoed that charge. &quot;Microsoft certainly has the right to advance its proprietary format,&quot; he said. &quot;What it doesn&#39;t have the right to do is call OOXML open and interoperable. ... We&#39;d love it if Microsoft supported ODF in its products natively.&quot;Despite the prevalence of Office software, ODF nonetheless has a chance to thrive, Marcich argued.Today, he noted, Microsoft&#39;s&#160;DOC format, not OOXML, is still dominant. &quot;If the question is &#39;what is the future,&#39; clearly ODF has the lead right now,&quot; he said.OOXML cannot supplant&#160;DOC until the majority of organizations and users upgrade to Office 2007, he noted, a process that will not occur imminently.&quot;We have a window here where governments have time to make a decision as to upgrading,&quot; he said. &quot;I think 2008 will be a critical year as to which format will emerge as the format of the future.&quot;Another ODF advocate, Andy Updegrove, also expressed pleasure over ODF&#39;s adoption to date and optimism about its future. &quot;The tipping point has been passed. I don&#39;t think it will lead to a deluge, but progress will continue,&quot; said Updegrove, an attorney with Gesmer Updegrove in Boston. Updegrove serves as legal counsel to technology companies as well as standards bodies, including OASIS, and closely tracks the ODF-OOXML saga on his blog.Updegrove predicted that 2008 will be &quot;a tough year for Office,&quot; pointing beyond ODF and OOXML to broader trends in computer usage. &quot;The monolithic idea of an office suite is really eroding, and the younger you are, the more meaningless it becomes,&quot; he said.Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment Friday.Another win for ODF in the United States could come soon. New York officials are expected to decide which format the state will use in its systems. The public comment period for the matter had originally been scheduled to end on Dec. 28, but an updated document on the state&#39;s Web site indicates that the period has been extended to Jan. 18.
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PC Magazine - A Microsoft official says IBM was the only company that voted against approving its OpenXML specification as a standard.
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Data exchange format is just too slow, some say. But there's debate over the best way to make Extensible Markup Language fly.
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(InfoWorld) - You might think the steady defeat of bills in several U.S. states to mandate the use of free interoperable file formats might dampen the spirits of IBM, one of the prime supporters ofÂ ODF (OpenDocument Format). Far from it, said IBM's Bob Sutor, who sees the recent news as par for the course in the evolution of any open standard. Last week, California became the latest U.S. state to stall or shelve proposed legislation to require its agencies to adopt open file formats like ODF instead of Microsoft's proprietary Office formats. Similar bills in Connecticut, Florida, Texas, and Oregon have met with the same fate, while Minnesota only passed legislation after it was changed from a mandate to use an open format to a call for the state's IT department to investigate the issue. Massachusetts, the first and so far only, U.S. state with a policy on using open formats, shifted that position somewhat last year to order the adoption of plug-ins to enable Office users to create and save files in ODF. In an interview earlier this week, Sutor, vice president of standards and open source at IBM, talked about ODF and Microsoft's rival Office Open XML document standard. IDGNS: What's your take on the defeat of legislation in several U.S. statesÂ that would've mandated the use of open document formats? Is it a setback for the adoption of ODF? Sutor: We've seen this before around open standards. Take the Web itself. It went mainstream in about 1994 to 1995. If you trace it back, the Web was starting in the late 1980s. It takes most technology standards between 5 to 10 years to become established. They start in committees, come into their own, and then commercial interests come in. Web services kicked off in 2000, and we saw SOAÂ in 2004 to 2005. Now, no one doubts that SOA is big business. In the same way, if you look back at ODF, you can go back to 2003 or 2005. It's still very, very early. We wouldn't have thought it possible in 2005 that in 2007 there would even be any legislative considering of ODF. It's great that people are even talking about this in the first place. It's extremely early. Legislative committee talks take time. One year, a member proposes something, they meet that year on it, and the next meeting isn't until the next year. In some states like Texas they only meet every other year. I certainly expect the legislation to come back with a vengeance in the next sessions. Also, government IT policy makers aren't waiting for legislation, they're making active decisions. Changes are under way. Minnesota's bill will give a strong lead to other states. IDGNS: Where do you think ODF is at in terms of your prediction of five to 10 years for a standard to establish itself? Sutor: We're at about year three or four. IDGNS: It seems as though IBM and Microsoft are pitted against each other with ODF versus Microsoft's OpenXML. Sutor: The only one talking about a feud between Microsoft and IBM is Microsoft. On the ODF side, it's not just us, but we're a such a big company, we're going to say something. There's nothing whatsoever about ODF that particularly enables IBM. OpenOffice [an open-source office rival to Microsoft's Office] benefits; that's not our baby, we don't control it. We've put ourselves in a position where [with ODF] there are all the potential benefits of open source. It's interchangeability along with interoperability so if someone doesn't want to use someone's software, they can choose to use something else. I absolutely don't see this as a feud for Microsoft and IBM. We provide chips for the Xbox, we have a large, if not the biggest, services business around .Net. There's no feud. ODF is in the Oasis [standards body]. Microsoft is on the board of directors of Oasis and has steadfastly refused to participate in ODF. We're happy for them to join and would welcome them with open arms. IDGNS: Some potential users would like to see one single standard, a combination of ODF and OpenXML. Could that ever be a possibility? Sutor: It's more a difference in technology. Microsoft XML technology is simply not good XML. Look at the English language. It's a bunch of letters, words, and grammar, and you can use the rules to form sentences. That's similar to XML. You can sit down to write a novel, and so can I. I might write the worst novel, and you write the best. Just using XML doesn't guarantee quality in the same way that using English doesn't guarantee great novels. Microsoft's XML doesn't take into account modern design and steadfastly ignores other XML standards. I have a sneaking suspicion that OpenXML isn't the last format we'll hear from Microsoft. It's totally a personal thing, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a new XML from Microsoft in a few years and one with an architecture a lot like ODF. I could then see a natural convergence which could bring the two together.
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(InfoWorld) - A technical committee in India unanimously rejected Microsoft's Office Open XML file format as a standard, ahead of aÂ vote on Sept. 2 by the ISO on whether to approve Open XML as an international standard. However, the rejection may be temporary should Microsoft meet some of the objections to Open XML raised by committee members. The technical committee was set up by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), India's national standards body, which is a founder member of International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and represents India at the international standards organization. "There were a large number of technical objections raised about Open XML, and many of which Microsoft was not able to address at this point," said D.B. Phatak, professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Mumbai. One of the objections was that Open XML was not fully compatible with OpenDocument Format (ODF), a rival existing ISO standard, he added. IIT Mumbai is a member of the technical committee. The decision not to back Open XML as a standard was taken after a late evening meeting of the technical committee on Thursday in Delhi. Microsoft and Indian outsourcer Infosys Technologies were in favor of the committee voting "yes" but with qualifying comments, according to informed sources. That option wasn't available for voters. Open XML will be again reconsidered for a standard by the technical committee and BIS after Microsoft makes the required changes to the document format, Phatak said. Microsoft said in a statement that it respected the decision taken by the BIS, but it was important to note that all the BIS members unanimously supportÂ  the need for multiple standards. The company will work with the BIS and the committee members on the comments noted during the ballot resolution process, the statement added. Â
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Amid intense lobbying, Microsoft is expected to squeak out a victory this week to have its open document format, Office Open XML, recognized as an international standard.
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The head of the International Standards Organization committee JTC 1 has given her official approval to giving consideration to Microsoft's Office Open XML document standard under a fast-track process.  This despite some opposition, though apparently fewer formal objections than had earlier been anticipated.
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Since the number of "principal" or "participating" (P-class) voting members of the International Organization for Standardization's JTC 1 SC 34 working group increased by eleven prior to last month's preliminary ballot on the approval process for Microsoft's Office Open XML format suite, participation by nearly all members on important matters other than OOXML appears to be waning.
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Did Redmond try to pack standards groups? Microsoft's failed attempt to get its Office Open XML (OOXML) file format adopted by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) could land the software giant in hot water with the European Commission (EC).â¦
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Proposed technical guidelines include Microsoft's Office Open XML on the list of "open format" standards.
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A panel of software experts unexpectedly rebuffed Microsoftâs bid to have its open document format, Office Open XML, recognized as an international standard.
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Explosion of special-interest XML dialects could mean the standard is a success or could be the start of a new headache.
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(InfoWorld) - MicrosoftÂ has achieved a small victory in itsÂ effort to make Open XML an open technology standard. Massachusetts, the U.S. state that has mandated the use of open technology formats in its government agencies, has put the specification on its list of possible standards that can be used for documents, according to a document on its Web site. The current 4.0 version of the state's Enterprise Technical Reference Model (ETRM) -- a framework defining where standards will be used and which ones are permissible -- lists Ecma-376 Office Open XML Formats (Open XML) as an acceptable "open format." The state is adding Open XML to a short list that also includes OASIS Open Document Format For Office Applications (ODF) v. 1.1, the current version of the rival standard supported by IBM, Sun Microsystems, and others. Bethann Pepoli, acting CIO for Massachusetts, said Monday that Open XML was added to the list because it now meets the commonwealth's criteria for an open standard, which requires that formats "are publicly available and are developed by an open community and affirmed by a standards body." Massachusetts has been releasing a revision to the ETRM every six months, and in December when the last version was released Open XML had only recently been approved by Ecma and did not have the required industry support, she said. Massachusetts residents have until July 20 to comment on the current draft of the ETRM. Microsoft submitted Open XML toÂ Ecma InternationalÂ in November 2004, and the standards organization hasÂ approved a final version of the specification. The International Organization for Standards (ISO) is expected to vote on the Ecma version of Open XML later this year. ODF already has been approved by the ISO as an international technology standard. In a statement through its public-relations firm Monday, Microsoft applauded the addition of Open XML to the Massachusetts list, saying it gives users "the ability to choose the open file format standard that best serves their needs." When Microsoft submitted Open XML to Ecma, the company said it was in part to make the document format Microsoft developed in house for its Office 2007 suite a more viable option for governments and other institutions that are beginning to standardize only on technology formats that are available for anyone to use. But critics -- mainly those who support ODF as in favor of Open XML as the standard for documents -- have complained that Microsoft has been too controlling when it comes to the Ecma standards process, ensuring the technology it submitted as a "standard" looked the way Microsoft wanted it to at the end of the approval process. And since the company didn't allow third parties to create implementations of Open XML before it was submitted, critics say Microsoft has misused the standards process, which is meant to be more open. One of those most outspoken critics, IBM's Vice President of Open Source and Standards Bob Sutor, Monday spoke out in favor of Massachusetts decision to let its residents review Open XML alongside other formats. However, he took a dig at Microsoft with a reminder that the ETRM is still only in draft form and that opposition remains to the state's decision to use Open XML as a standard. Â
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The standards body ECMA International voted to make Microsoft's Office Open XML document format an international standard.
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The executive board of the INCITS standards body voted yesterday to approve the recommendation of Microsoft's Office Open XML standard to the International Standards Organization as Draft International Standard 29500, once concerns voiced by some of its members have been attached and adequately addressed by Microsoft. The vote was 12 yea, 3 nay, and one abstention - again by the IEEE.
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In another carefully timed move to garner support for its document format still under consideration for an international standard, Microsoft today altered the terms under which use of its Office Open XML format by developers is permitted.