Microsoft OOXML format goes OOPS

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 05 September 2007 00:58

Opinion and Analysis

Oops... Microsoft’s attempt at getting the ‘Office Open XML’ format ratified as a standard has hit a hurdle, prompting Microsoft to hope that its rejected standard scrapes through in the next vote during February 2008.

Amid rampant speculation on both sides of the debate both in favor and against Microsoft’s desire to see the Office Open XML (OOXML) format, a format that is supposed to convert Office 2007 formats into XML files that could theoretically be read by other office suite software program has come an actual preliminary vote.

Microsoft has been accused of both trying to buy votes among member countries voting on the ISO standardization proposal, and of trying to introduce a format that does little more than follow the ‘embrace and extend’ policies of the past with a format that is thousands of pages longer than the competing and already ratified ODF ‘open document format’ standard, and of a format that stands accused of being incomplete and unable to properly convert Office document formats into the OOXML format.

When the voting was complete, Microsoft failed to gain enough votes to secure a majority, causing OOXML sceptics to rejoice, and causing Microsoft to issue a press release touting the broad support of members which, as it turned out, wasn’t enough to see the OOXML standard ratified this time around, leaving it with one more chance early next year to see if ratification can’t be achieved by additional lobbying and fixing of problems that some countries that voted ‘no’ identified as being an issue.

Microsoft needs the OOXML standard to be ratified so it can assure governments around the world that it supports an industry-standardized ‘open standard’, helping Microsoft to dull arguments that its file formats lock users in to Microsoft products.

Critics argue that this scenario would be precisely the wrong reason to cut Microsoft any kind of standards slack, although if the standards process encourages Microsoft to produce a better OOXML format than is currently on offer, that is a good thing.

After all, despite Microsoft’s inability to get the OOXML format approved this time around, Microsoft really, really wants the OOXML format to become a de-facto standard, if not an honest to goodness mainstream standard.

So expect to hear plenty more about OOXML in the weeks and months ahead, as the battle lines have been drawn in anticipation a quite a fight in the ISO standards body over just how best to handle the Microsoft juggernaut.

So while Microsoft’s quest for OOXML may well have gone OOPS, the next time around, they could be popping champagne corks.

Choose your side wisely in the ever more exciting technology wars, so you always stay, or at least try to stay, on the right side of the technological divide, and hopefullly avoid a few OOPS of your own!