OOXML: disquiet across the Tasman

Sam Varghese
Monday, 11 February 2008 19:19

Opinion and Analysis

In a few short weeks, it will be time for national standards bodies to decide whether the Microsoft Office Open XML specification will be accepted as an ISO standard or not.
And as the day approaches, there is an air of disquiet growing across the Tasman with regard to the way the whole issue is being handled.

A bit of history: the first vote on whether to make OOXML an ISO standard was held on September 2 last year after lengthy specifications had been provided to the industry standards body ECMA by Microsoft. Round one was a pass with 19 "difficulties" - which resulted in a vote on OOXML being fast-tracked to the level of a standard - but round two produced a "no" vote.

The ISO has now scheduled what is called a ballot resolution meeting (BRM) from February 25 to 29 in Geneva. All countries which voted in September last year are eligible to participate in the final vote which is scheduled to be held 30 days after the BRM.

In September, New Zealand voted against adopting OOXML as a standard.

In the period between September and the BRM, standards bodies have been allowed to raise their concerns about the proposed specifications. The back and forth from these exchanges has not exactly been satisfactory, going by what people involved in the process say.

Don Christie, president of the New Zealand Open Source Society and a member of the Standards NZ (SNZ) OOXML Advisory Committee, says: "It is the view of the NZOSS that Microsoft and ECMA have failed to provide quality responses to SNZ comments. Even where they have supposedly 'agreed' with the comment the actual resolution has either introduced more/different problems or simply made the original item 'unspecified'."

Christie says he has reviewed all the ECMA responses to SNZ's comments, researched a whole lot of background issues and, with Matthew Cruickshank, a standards and accessibility expert who has advised the NZ government on such issues, consulted pretty widely.

Both Christie and Cruickshank were part of the advisory group that took part in the face-to-face discussions with Microsoft representatives as part of the SNZ decision regarding the OOXML ISO fast track decision in September.