A Groklaw post regarding Microsoft’s attempt to make their document format an ISO standard like OpenOffice.org’s ODF.
Difference is, Microsoft’s “standard” is incomplete, at best. And this is well known, going by the huge number of objections to this becoming an ISO standard. Their format lays out an XML-based format with metadata within the XML to describe a document for their Office products. Problem is, the metadata isn’t well-defined, unlike OpenOffice.org’s ODF which is described in painstaking detail in the standard.
Doesn’t matter, apparently, because on the recommendation of one person, Microsoft’s “OpenXML” format is getting the fast track to approval.
How is this possible? Let’s read between the lines, shall we?
OpenOffice.org and other open office suites decided on a standard format which was well documented, open, and allowed interoperability between any program that used it. Therefore, given that this is the sort of thing that the ISO makes a standard, ODF went through the ISO approval process and became a standard with little, if any, opposition.
This pissed Microsoft off, since now their competitors in the world of office suites could rightfully claim that they use standard, published, and documented formatting that could be used in a wide variety of programs, and would never become obsolete. The idea that their competitor was using an ISO standard made companies and organizations seriously consider using it over the overpriced Microsoft Office suite, since they knew with ODF their data was not locked up in a proprietary format controlled by Microsoft’s whims. Even if OpenOffice.org folds and the program is no longer available, any other program (several of which do exist) that implements the standard could retrieve their data successfully.
Microsoft could not stand to lose their dominance over office suites to a clearly superior product.
So what do they do? Same as they always do: whatever is necessary to win, including questionable practices. Reading between the lines of this report, we see that Microsoft is (allegedly, of course) paying someone under the table to fast-track this inferior “standard” so that they, too, can claim to have an “open” document solution, when in fact, they will still be able to lock up your data just as easily with undocumented metadata structures in their “standard.”
And people wonder why we hate Microsoft so much.
Microsoft, we know what is going on. I only hope that you eventually get what is coming to you.
You will not win. The future will be built on open standards and the free exchange of ideas, just as the past was. No amount of dirty money changing hands can stop that now.
