OpenOffice may support Microsoft's Office Open XML standard in future, but the organisation behind the open source productivity suite anticipates that everyone including Microsoft will have "difficulty" in making the format work.
The specification for Office Open XML (OOXML, or Open XML), was officially passed as fit-for-purpose by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) on Wednesday, despite many allegations of improper practice in the voting process. It also appears that more than 3,000 technical questions surrounding the format have not been properly addressed, despite its passage through the ISO process.
Barring any formal complaints to ISO by the national standards bodies that are its members, OOXML will now be a rival standard to the OpenDocument Format (ODF), which was ratified by ISO two years ago.
Reaction to the news of OOXML's success was immediate. Mark Shuttleworth, the entrepreneur behind the most popular Linux distribution, Ubuntu, told ZDNet blogger Paula Rooney that "the ISO [had not been] not willing to admit that its process was failing horribly".
"[ISO] is an engineering old boys club and these things are boring so you have to have a lot of passion… then suddenly you have an investment of a lot of money and lobbying and you get artificial results," said Shuttleworth. "The process is not set up to deal with intensive corporate lobbying and so you end up with something being a standard that's not clear."
Shuttleworth also said that his company Canonical, which oversees Ubuntu, would "not… invest in trying to implement a standard that is poorly defined".
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"If we get close to implementing it, Microsoft would move the goal post," Shuttleworth added. "Microsoft doesn't think it's bound by the standard."
OOXML is crucial to the future development of Microsoft's Office suite, and the chief rival to that product is the free OpenOffice suite. John McCreesh, the marketing lead for OpenOffice.org, the organisation behind the software, told ZDNet.co.uk that OpenOffice might have to support OOXML in future.
"We adopted ODF as our default document standard in response to pressures from the marketplace, particularly governments and public administrations," said McCreesh on Wednesday. "It's the same approach to OOXML — we'll wait and see if its widely adopted by the market. If it is and people start developing [to] it then we'll support it."
McCreesh warned, however, that the complexity of OOXML — the 3,000 unanswered technical issues stem in part from the specification's 6,000-page length — could stymie its implementation.
"Anyone, including Microsoft in future versions of its software, will have difficulty in implementing [OOXML]," said McCreesh. "I suspect that its technical flaws, rather than anything else, will limit its rate of uptake in the marketplace. There is only so much you can work around a bad specification."
McCreesh also claimed that Microsoft "used its position in the marketplace and its not inconsiderable lobbying powers to get an inferior-quality standard given the rubber stamp by ISO", and said OOXML "risks creating confusion in the marketplace".
"The whole beauty of a standard is you have one standard and everybody works to it," McCreesh said. "That's why the internet works so well — anyone can create a website. It would be difficult to see how the internet would work as it has if there had been two competing standards [rather than just HTML]."
Ovum analyst David Mitchell wrote on Wednesday that, in the immediate aftermath of the ISO's decision, "very little will change".
"Those who were protesting and opposing the Open XML progress through the standards process will still oppose it," wrote Mitchell on his company's blog. "The nature of their protest will evolve. To begin with, there have been challenges to the process — and these will continue."
Mitchell added that Microsoft would now have to "update its existing products and planned future products to support the format that was actually ratified", adding: "It is likely to take some time for this to be completed and Microsoft will also need to provide tools to convert from the existing Office 2007 formats into the new Open XML standard." He also warned that other developers "would not be wise… to ignore [OOXML]".
Talkback
So OOXML is ratified, who benefits? according to Microsoft the user because some things are missing in the ODF standard. but what we also get is confussion, a need for converters and more work for developers who wish to meet both standards?
"The whole beauty of a standard is you have one standard and everybody works to it," McCreesh said. "That's why the internet works so well — anyone can create a website. It would be difficult to see how the internet would work as it has if there had been two competing standards [rather than just HTML]."
Perhaps that's a principal ISO should have taken more seriously! now how long before another company comes up with its own standard?
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Does this mean that Micro$oft, and developers utilizing OOXML, will have to adhere to the open source standards? Or, will we see a mixture of open source and proprietary documents? Looks like it might be a lawyer's dream.
I came across the blog on ThinkFree's upgrade to be implemented on 7th April 2008.
http://blog.thinkfree.com/2008/03/24/quantum-leap-thinkfree-will-launch-the-new-service-site-on-april-7th-2008/
Amongst the improvements listed is the following:-
"6. Compatibility increased
-Read/write MS Office 2007 Documents (OpenXML format)
-Windows Vista and Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) platform supported"
From which you will see that ThinkFree are incorrectly and inaccurately suggesting that .docx and the OOXML format are one and the same.
It occurred to me that this might be the next obfuscation by M$ to imply that OOXML is MS Office compliant or, vice versa, that MS Office is OOXML compliant, i.e. docx is an OOXML format, which it clearly isn't.
Thus promulgating the suggestion that you must buy Microsoft products to be compliant.
ThinkFree will apparently NOT be adopting ODF under direct or implied pressure from Microsoft. Some of the posts make interesting reading including ThinkFree's own statement that they can't inplement OOXML without M$'s goodwill and assistance.