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Story: Google: OOXML 'insufficient and unnecessary'

Posted by: garyedwards (Monday 3 March 2008, 7:13 PM)

ISO Credibility

IMHO, ISO has been terribly damaged by this document format war.

Think about why it is that both Ecma and OASIS sought to have their format proposals approved by ISO? What's wrong with Ecma and OASIS? What do ISO and the W3C have that Ecma and OASIS do not?

The answer is that both Ecma and OASIS are vendor driven standards consortia. ISO/IEC is driven by the world's governments, with participating members recognized as National Bodies representing nations, and activities heeling to international trade and finance agreements. The W3C is more of a humanitarian cause, chartered with the future of World Wide Web technologies. Their work always begins with the primary goal of universal interoperability.

Being vendor driven doesn't necessarily mean that everything Ecma and OASIS touches is rotten. Having market waring vendors sit down and come to agreement on standards is extremely important, but we have to see it for what it is.

Consider for a moment the recent Blu-ray - HD DVD battle. Sony led a Blu-ray consortia of vendors against the opposing Toshiba led HD DVD consortia of vendors. The standards winner wasn't decided by some measure of technical excellence or an internationally recognized arbiter of standards. Blu-ray triumphed because of the persuasive marketshare Sony Pictures Home Entertainment brought to the table.

There is nothing new about warring vendor consortia fighting it out in the marketplace. When governments and consumers get involved though, trusting our digital future to vendor consortia simply isn't good enough.

Here's the interesting point about Ecma and OASIS that truly differentiates the vendor consortia from ISO and the W3C. ISO and the W3C demand interoperability frameworks that will guarantee application-platform-vendor independent interchange. Ecma and OASIS have no such requirements for interoperability.

The document wars are just the tip of the iceberg. Look what happened to Microsoft-IBM Web Services initiatives before they finally landed at the OASIS vendor consortia. OASIS vendors actually re wrote the OASIS IPR rules governing all specifications work to accommodate specific web services vendor needs! There is nothing new about vendor groups forum shopping to either protect marketshare or attack the marketshare of enemies. Nor is there anything new about consortia forums like OASIS shopping for vendor owned standards!

The key to navigating our way through this sludge is to focus on the way any standards proposal balances interoperability and innovation.

Vendors, no matter which side of the battle they come from, will argue for innovation over interop. Their proposals will reflect this. The rules that govern their vendor consortia processes will allow this. Competitive marketplace differentiation needs drives profitable vendor innovation efforts. Limiting interop and enabling a larger space for vendor specific innovative features in this context is essential to vendor profitability.

Governments, FLOSS, and consumers on the other hand, MUST argue the first law of the Internet; that interoperability trumps everything. Including innovation.

Universal interoperability is possible. We see it everyday with the wonders of the web. But that doesn't mean it's easy, or that we can afford to put our guard down for even one moment. We MUST demand that formats are open, unencumbered, designed from the start for universal interop, web ready, and entirely application-platform-vendor independent.

One last thought. No matter what happens at ISO, we all lose. If ISO approves OOXML, we lose our precious Internet as a universal platform of access, exchange and collaborative computing. If ISO kills OOXML, Microsoft will eXtend and enhance ODF as needed because that is how ODF is designed. There is no ODF interop framework or accompanying compliance-conformance tests. So ODF ZERO interop will rule, and our expectations for

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