OOXML Won't Get Fast-Track ISO Standardization

realdodgeman writes "The International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) recently held an internal poll to determine the position that the United States should take on Microsoft's request for Office Open XML (OOXML) approval. With eight votes in favor, seven against, and one abstention, the group was one vote short of the nine votes required for approving OOXLM ISO standardization. This will mean a huge slowdown to the standardization to the OOXML format. 'Given the controversial nature, relative complexity, and significant importance of the standard, the results of INCIT's vote is unsurprising. An INCITS technical committee also voted against fast-track OOXML approval last month prior to the executive board's vote. Further deliberation is clearly needed as well as further refinement of the format. It seems as though many of the organizations participating in the approval process are generally supportive of the standard itself, but are unwilling to voice unconditional support until their concerns are resolved. OOXML may be down, but it's certainly not out.'"

OOXML

Its by Microsoft, they cant even make their various versions of office forwards and backwards compatible and people expect them to put a standard out that will hold to the same?

Also why doesnt Open Office.org sue Microsoft for trademark infringement or something for their obviously deceptively labeled standard that is being proposed?

Re:OOXML

Well, firstly it's Office Open XML, not Open Office XML.

Whoa. Try selling Koka Kola or MyCrewSoft-brand software and see how far you get. Just try - please.

Exactly. Or try selling "lindows" [slashdot.org].
To launch openoffice apps, on linux at least, one uses oowrite, oocalc, and so on. So OOXML name is a clear admission of hypocrisy: not a surprise to me anyway.

Re:OOXML

Yeah I just read here [pcworld.com] that Apple's iWork '08 supports OOXML very well, while MS is still struggling with their OOXML implementation in Office for the Mac. I can hardly believe that story; why would it be more difficult to implement OOXML on the Mac than on Windows? Does OOXML depend on some built-in properties of the Windows OS? If that is the case it will never be an open standard.

Re:OOXML

Too bad iWork isn't open source. I really would like to see how they implemented the "AutoSpaceLikeWork95" feature. I would also like to know if the implemented all the spreadsheet functions incorrectly as they were documented in the standard.

Re:OOXML

Yes, one well-documented and full-featured autospace function is enough.

It's there because Microsoft does not want anyone to be able to do a full implementation. It's there because "OO"XML is not open standard.

Re:OOXML

Yeah I just read here that Apple's iWork '08 supports OOXML very well, while MS is still struggling with their OOXML implementation in Office for the Mac.

That's not what the PCWorld article says at all.

iWork '08 is claimed to be able to open but not write OOXML. In practice, it doesn't appear to do even that well. http://www.bioneural.net/2007/08/11/iwork-08-and-s upport-for-open-xml/ [bioneural.net]

Re:OOXML

It's actually "Office Open Extensible Markup Language".

Re:OOXML

"The entire standard in verbatim is 'Open Office Extensible Markup Language'."

It's not.

It's Office Open Extensible Markup Language.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML [wikipedia.org]

No lawsuit.

And besides, Open Office precedes OOXML by a few years. If anything, OpenOffice.org *might* have a complaint about Microsoft misappropriating and reversing their name.

--
BMO

Re:OOXML

Actually OOXML stands for Office Open XML which is really just short for Microsoft Office Open XML. This whole naming issue is really rather laughable being that OpenOffice.org has to include that .org in their name to avoid infringing on another existing trademark.

Re:OOXML

So it's really MooXML? Personally, that sounds like a much better name to me :)

blah blah bovine overlords blah blah

obligatory

In Soviet Russia, ISO standardization fast tracks YOU and I for one welcome our new OOXML over.. oh wait.

Re:obligatory

IN SOVIET RUSSIA, tired old meme regurgitates formula on you!

this is disgusting

it is disgusting that it came out with: "With eight votes in favor". i think these 8 members of the board need re-evaluated. This is a sad reflection on how big business can mess-up wonderful things made by society.

Re:this is disgusting

What are you talking about? ODF was designed by the OASIS group - a group of a dozen different companies. It was open for any to participate in. Even Microsoft themselves were at the start involved, but they decided to drop out.

It was then developed in the open over a period of 3 years. It reuses as many previous open standards as possible (MathML for math stuff, SVG for vector graphics, etc).

In what possible way can you claim that this is a proprietary proposal and not an open design process? It seems your love for MS has blinded you.

Re:this is disgusting

The fact that everyone acknowledges here is that Office is the defacto standard for document markup.

"Document Markup" is an interesting way of describing of .doc and friends.

The ISO process does not require standards to be open.

And yet, Microsoft prance around with the "Open" prefix. And yet, their RAND patent license excludes free software.

Meanwhile Sun's proposal is just as proprietary as Microsoft's, neither is the process of an open design process, they are merely a schema dump from an existing program.

The difference being that Microsoft's spec has things like "do it the way Office 97 does it", and the ODF spec doesn't.

The simple fact that there are other Office suites already reading and writing ODF files other than OOo/StarOffice (Abiword, KOffice for example) demonstrates that it is a viable and workable standard.

It's my impression (others have read more of the 6,000 pages of documents than I have) that the same could not be successfully achieved from the OOXML spec.

And Sun has a vastly worse history as far as open standards go, suing companies for not implementing Java in their prefered maner.

That's funny, exactly what Microsoft seems to be planning [eweek.com]. Their royalty free patent license may only be granted if you implement their standard EXACTLY (a herculean feat in itself). Want to enhance or modify your software, as the GPL explicitly sates you should be allowed to do? Sorry, you just agreed to get sued by Microsoft..

Personally

I don't think this standardization is being passed for the benefit of the consumers. Microsoft has had a firm grasp on business establishments with MS Office for quite a long time. There was competition, but nothing ever really came close to worry Microsoft. I find it not all that coincidental that now Microsoft has real competition (Google, Open Office, etc.) that they're trying to pass a standard. Microsoft is trying to reinstate a strong presence in the office. It hasn't really lost the one it has, but its teetering over the edge. Especially with all the relatively recent reports of various government offices going to open source, free software suites.

Re:Personally

I've spent the last 5 years working in the office software space (mobile phones). From what our customers tell us, Microsoft's dominance of the office market is still incredibly strong. We've toyed with ODF support, but customer demand simply doesn't exist. At the end of the day our customers (many many millions) have expressed very little enthusiasm for anything but the Microsoft formats.

In reality (at least as I see it) Microsoft has pushed their XML format not to maintain market share, but rather to give them a foothold in web services. They see their productivity suite as a broad authoring tool for not just documents, but all kinds of data. The closed formats where a major roadblock for them, because their customers could not use the data produced by the suite to actually do anything useful with it in a web 2.0 sense. A open, standardized format gives Microsoft the ability to pursue this "software as a service" model in a much more meaningful way.

It's interesting, since there are several companies (most of which have been rolled up in one way or another now) that where doing exactly what Microsoft wants to be doing. They had reverse engineered the binary office file formats, and where using that knowledge to provide data processing for various companies wanting to use the suite as an authoring tool for their internal services. I think Microsoft looked at that (along with what Google and the like have been doing) and simply saw a really good opportunity to extend their near monopoly on productivity into an entirely new business. I really do believe it is nothing more evil than that.

Re:Personally

I think Microsoft looked at that (along with what Google and the like have been doing) and simply saw a really good opportunity to extend their near monopoly on productivity into an entirely new business. I really do believe it is nothing more evil than that.

Then why the unseemly haste, committee stacking, and other nefarious practices to get adopted as an ISO standard?

Why the attacks on ODF adoption? If Microsoft had any intention of being interoperable, they'd have supported ODF from the start..

That was too close!

Given the speed with which Microsoft attempted to ram through their "standard" and the dubiousness of the tactics employed (see discussions over on Groklaw [groklaw.net]), that was far too close to take any comfort from.

The real questions now are:

(a) how to ensure that the various standards organizations around the world really sit up and pay attention so that the obvious technical deficiencies and the crippling lack of open-ness in the proposal -- which were pointed out over and over again by individuals and companies opposed to the fast-tracking -- will be truly taken into account?

(b) how to keep Microsoft from succeeding with their tactic of stacking attendance at national standards organizations meetings to carry the day for them?

They almost succeeded the last time. If something doesn't change, they won't fail next time.

The more time....

people have to digest this standard, the more they will come to realize that it is anything but. It is obviously designed to choke the competition in a pile of meaningless drivel. Most of things it "specifies" is that the result should be the name as Microsoft Word XXXX. Therefore, the majority of the specification is external to the specification. You could not implement the specification without referencing the behavior of each of the major revisions of Word. IMHO, a specification, such as this should stand alone. Open Office can do this, why can't Microsoft?

Par for the course

Way to sensationalize the title, Zonk. The organization which will form the official position of the US voted against approving the standard. That's quite a leap from saying "OOXML Won't Get Fast-Track ISO Standardization". Guess what the "I" in "ISO" stands for? (Although if MS can't even get the US to vote for them, it's hopefully doubtful that they'll get most other countries...)

Monkey Bussiness

What happened to all the funny little Microsoft partners that were voting last time? They didn't seem to show up on the list this time.

INCITS is USA only, not the world

If you look carefully at their web-site (http://www.incits.org/ [incits.org]), INCITS is the "InterNational ...", not "Internation ..."; and it "is the primary U.S. focus of standardization" and has only one vote on the real internationl body.

My canonical reference for these things is Andy Updegrove's blog (http://consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/ [consortiuminfo.org]).

Department of Homeland Security?

Why does the Department of Homeland Security vote on computer document standards?

Do they have some special expertise in the area or what?

Keep It Simple Stupid?

Isn't MS' OOXML relatively complex when compared with ODF? I've read that MS' xml is filled with tags specific to their current and past versions of office formatting. Now ODF isn't loaded with that kind of cruft; its much more streamlined in it's tags. With this in mind, which xml format should be adopted as a starting-base - keeping in mind that whatever is chosen will be extended as time passes leading to even more complexity?

I don't mind it being a standard if....

I don't mind this becoming a standard if it is truly "standard", which means that in the implementation documentation, EVERYTHING about it is disclosed, with no NDA, or proprietary "features". If that happens, I support OOXML for standardization. I (and many others) would welcome MS disclosing how it will work, as well as how all parts are suppose to work, which means explaining how to make something "work the way Office 97 cell format spacing" works and all other definitions in the standard which state it will the same way something else already works in previous Word and Excel versions. Tell us how to do everything and I will give MS full support for it being a recognized ISO standard.

Problem Solved

> OOXML Won't Get Fast-Track ISO Standardization

If Rupert Murdoch can buy The Wall Street Journal, why can't Microsoft buy ISO?

PS. Bill, US$680K plus options a year and I'm yours! I've even got a plan to bring that pesky Slashdot into line. ;-)

Misleading article headline, it's far from over

This decision was only for the U.S. and it's not over there. Look carefully at the comments [itic.org] by those who voted, and you'll see there is room for changes. Look at Lexmark's comment...

It's very important to understand that the OOXML fight is not over. Microsoft are doing a fantastic job of explaining to committees why this format deserves to be an international standard, and of ensuring no-one gets onto the committees who can raise this dreamy proposition.

We are looking at a lot of votes between now and end-August, across the world, and it's still not too late to submit comments to - for example - the Australian Standards Authority, which will almost certainly vote YES to OOXML.

On NoOOXML.org [noooxml.org] the FFII is coordinating the fight. If you've not signed the petition, please do so.

Say what?

Given the controversial nature, relative complexity, and significant importance of the standard, the results of INCIT's vote is unsurprising

Of the 15 that voted, it got 53% of the vote, only needed one more (which could have been achieved as there was one abstention) to be given ISO standardisation - and this is "unsurprising"?

What this says to me is that the people doing the voting do not understand the issues at hand. If they did, then there should have been no-where near that number of votes for this format.

RTFA...

And understand. The companies that voted for OOXML are:
- Apple
- The Department of Homeland Security
- EIA
- EMC
- HP
- Intel
- Microsoft(!)
- Sony

How many of those are Microsoft partners, retailers, or Microsoft itself?

And MSFT announces a new International Committee

In a late breaking development,Microsoft announced the creation of a new Open International Committee for Information Technology. Microsoft spokesman affirmed the commitment of Microsoft for providing choice for its customers. Mr Toungei N Cheek said, "We have always promoted the idea of choice for the customers. They should be able to choose between multiple standards. But we realized we were all supporting the standards issued by a single international agency. We decided we need choice there too. So the customers will be able choose between multiple standards from multiple agencies. To provide for consistency and reliability the customers should use just a single vendor, us. Apart from that all these standards and standard creating agencies are just so many bullet points for the dumb CIOs and Pointy Haired Bosses to justify continuing to send billions of dollars to Redmond. So let us see it in the proper perspective."

Just watch, even if/when it becomes a standard

Even if or when it becomes a standard I don't think Microsoft themselves could fully support it in the long term. Part of the reason many of us programmers re-invent even our own wheel is our old wheels get real mucked up over time with patches enhancements and exceptions, etc, periodically it is time to re-think and re-tool the concept to better integrate the whole idea.

From reading about MS's OOXML they are long overdue for a reinvention of the wheel (and thinking about it, whats to stop them? I can see them with OOXML as ISO saying "we have an ISO standard" and then put in something that's truly fixed (also proprietary and designed to automatically be native), much of the public won't know it is not 'the standard' but believe it is because thats how PR wants it. And then we have this mess again.

ODF vs. OOXML

If you compare OOXML to ODF, neither one actually wins. Both have their drawbacks and advantages:

• Open Document Format lacks some features expected from modern office applications. As a result, many applications use their own extensions. These, of course, make the files incompatible: While other applications can read the document, some of the formatting is simply lost. Office Open XML has a complete feature set. It's actually based on a full word processing application, not on the lowest common denominator.
• Open Document Format is underspecified. It does not speficy exactly how to lay out the elements of a document. As a result, the same document looks different in different applications. Office Open XML exactly specifies all of that. This ensures that applications can actually share documents but makes the specification much longer and harder to implement.
• While Open Document Format is an open standard, one usually uses the OpenOffice.org flavour. This is not really different from Office Open XML and its Microsoft Office flavour. The OpenOffice.org flavour is only documented as OpenOffice.org's source code, the Microsoft Office flavour is mostly documented in the standard.
• Open Document Format allows easy upgrading from StarOffice/OpenOffice.org documents. Office Open XML allows easy upgrading from Microsoft Office documents.
• Open Document Format has a longer history as an open standard and is already an ISO standard. Office Open XML is derived from a proprietary format.
• Open Document Format has more existing implementations. Office Open XML has currently just a single implementation - Microsoft Office. There's the risk that something is missing in the standard making it unimplementable by competitors.

The best thing, IMO, would be to combine the two specifications: There should be a profile/extension for ODF that adds the things missing from ODF but present in OOXML: missing features and missing depth of the specification.

Apple

Who was it that said, "If Apple didn't exist, Microsoft would have to invent them?" I'm also really frustrated that the IEEE (to which I belong) wouldn't take a stand against a standard that blatantly references commercial products.

OOXML sucks because...

it allows for binary large objects (BLOBS) of undefined format so doesn't actually solve the problem at all.
Its not hard to guess that Microsoft will just go on using their old closed proprietary formats, just as a BLOB encapsulated in a thin OOXML wrapper.
OOXML used this way would be a quick solution to give a fake legal veneer of openness rather than a real attempt at an actually open format.

Ars is hitting the MS kool-aid harder than usual

Anybody else feel like this is the case with the ODF/OOXML issue?

Re:DHS impression of ODF is flawed

What are they smoking?

Darl McBride's crack pipe. Now that Darl doesn't need it anymore he loaned it to them.

Re:DHS impression of ODF is flawed

Didn't ODF start out as the proprietary XML format in StarOffice?