OOXML kerfuffle similar to that of 2007

Sam Varghese
Wednesday, 26 January 2011 06:55

Opinion and Analysis

The kerfuffle over Microsoft Office OOXML, that began when the Australian Government Information Management Office released a draft document recently stating that it would be the document format for all of government, is quite similar to that which occurred a little more than three years ago.

At that time, Microsoft was trying to get Office OOXML accepted as an ISO standard in opposition to the Open Document Format (ODF) which had been championed by OpenOffice.org and its variants.

Comments, reportedly made by members of Australia's GNU/Linux community, reflect exactly the kind of ambivalence which was expressed by the GNOME Desktop project in 2007.

At that time, once it was discovered that people from the GNOME Foundation were participating in meetings to discuss adoption of this OOXML, then-foundation media spokesman Jeff Waugh had to try and douse the flames. He was not successful.

Things became worse when the KDE Desktop Project issued a statement, saying it would not offer support for the Microsoft standard, because in part, "The standardisation process of OfficeOpenXML has turned sour, not in the least because Microsoft couldn't resist the temptation to cheat."

There was a lot of shuffling backwards and forwards by various people in the FOSS community to try and hose down the situation but it all failed. Let me not bore you with all the details, dear reader, they are here for your reading pleasure.

All one needs to mention is that, emboldened by the activities of all these "open-source advocates", Microsoft, which had initially said that ISO would have control over the OOXML standard, changed its tune and said control would remain with ECMA. As it has.