Microsoft accuses IBM of derailing Open XML fast track

Adam Turner
Friday, 16 February 2007 04:09

Business IT - Technology

Microsoft has publicly accused IBM of waging a "global campaign" to disrupt the adoption of Microsoft's Open XML as an international standard.

IBM's opposition to Open XML is a "blatant attempt to use the standards process to limit choice in the marketplace for ulterior commercial motives," said two Microsoft managers in an open letter. Open XML is Microsoft's new "open" format, designed to placate growing international backlash to proprietary formats.

Open XML competes with the open source Open Document Format, used by open source office suites such as OpenOffice and StarOffice. Such suites have the look and feel of Microsoft's Office suite, offering much of the functionality of Word, Excel and other Office applications. They are considered by some a threat to Microsoft's efforts to convince organisations to upgrade to Office 2007.

ODF was made an ISO standard last year. The open source community has also developed a Microsoft Office plugin, with Microsoft's blessing, that allows Office 2007 to work with ODF files. Work is also underway on an Open XML plugin for OpenOffice.

IBM's lone opposition to Open XML during voting by the Ecma international standardisation body and the ISO/IEC JTC1 '"fast track" process is an attack on "consumer choice and technological innovation," says the open letter - signed by Tom Robertson, Microsoft's general manager for interoperability and standards, and by Jean Paoli, the company's general manager of interoperability and XML architecture.

"When ODF was under consideration, Microsoft made no effort to slow down the process because we recognized customers’ interest in the standardization of document formats. In sharp contrast, during the initial one-month period for consideration of Open XML in ISO/IEC JTC1, IBM led a global campaign urging national bodies to demand that ISO/IEC JTC1 not even consider Open XML, because ODF had made it through ISO/IEC JTC1 first – in other words, that Open XML should not even be considered on its technical merits because a competing standard had already been adopted," they wrote.

"This campaign to stop even the consideration of Open XML in ISO/IEC JTC1 is a blatant attempt to use the standards process to limit choice in the marketplace for ulterior commercial motives – and without regard for the negative impact on consumer choice and technological innovation... IBM ignores the fact that the vast majority of ISO members chose not to submit comments and that most if not all issues will be addressed during the technical review still to come."

The open letter ignores the fact at least seven countries also submitted formal objections to Open XML becoming an international standard. All up, nineteen countries submitted comments and objections.

While Microsoft describes Open XML as open source, it's not licensed in a fashion that proponents of open source licensing would recognise as being open. Rather than granting users open source-like rights to the format, the license consists of a promise by Microsoft not to sue those who use the format. It also leaves the standard open to drop in proprietary code.

The ISO objections comes as another blow to Microsoft as two more US states - Texas and Minnesota - consider turning their backs on Microsoft and adopting open document formats under separate bills put to the state legislatures. By as early as next year they could join Massachusetts, the first US state to mandate the use of ODF as the standard format for all state agency documents.