Microsoft puts Office Open XML format up for international vote
Push for a new standard criticized
After months of debate and controversy, Microsoft Corp. will reach a pivotal moment this weekend in its effort to win approval of its Office Open XML document format by a key international standards organization.
The process won't end there, but the result could play a big part in determining how things play out in the months ahead.
The national bodies taking part in the International Organization for Standards, or ISO, process face a Sunday deadline for submitting their preliminary votes on the proposed standardization of the Microsoft format, commonly abbreviated OOXML.
Microsoft has defended itself in recent days from assertions that it has wrongly influenced the vote by stacking various national organizations with its own partners. And the company says an employee in Sweden acted without authorization when offering extra marketing support to two of those partners in an e-mail message about the process.
In pursuing standardization of the format, Microsoft says it's responding to calls by groups including the European Commission to become more open. In general, a standard is meant to help other companies and developers implement a format in their own products. In the case of document formats, one goal is to make it easier to exchange documents between different types of productivity software.
In Microsoft's case, the company says the Office 2007 file formats implement the Office Open XML standard. And in theory, the standardization of Office Open XML would provide extra technological fuel to Microsoft Office's direct competitors.
So from a business perspective, why would Microsoft do such a thing?
"This is really an issue of the pie expanding," said Tom Robertson, Microsoft general manager for interoperability and standards. "We're creating what we think is a catalyst for a whole new generation of innovation that's going to benefit our customers."
Others in the industry suspect different -- or additional -- motives. For example, the outcome could influence the competition between Microsoft Office and the free OpenOffice.org productivity suite, which uses the rival Open Document Format, already declared an ISO standard. That has implications in the marketplace. IBM and Sun support Open Document Format. And standards play a role in government buying decisions.
"Office is a huge business for Microsoft, and of course they want to hang on to it," said lawyer Andrew Updegrove, an open-standards advocate who tracks the issue on his Standards Blog.
"So Microsoft is trying to look like they're being open," he added. "But the real threat that they're trying to counter here, I believe, is ODF, which is the first real chink in their armor since they became the dominant player in office productivity software."
Because Microsoft has opened up the technical ingredients for Office Open XML, Microsoft's Robertson said, he expects "very wide uptake" of the format -- citing support in products from Novell, Corel, Apple and others.
One group urging a vote against Office Open XML standardization is the Linux Foundation. Jim Zemlin, the group's executive director, cited factors including the complexity of the related documentation -- said to total more than 6,000 pages -- and the fact that Open Document Format is already a standard. He also pointed to reports of unusual activities within the various national bodies deciding their votes on the issue.
People involved in the ISO process are expecting the results of the preliminary vote to be made public next week. Regardless of the outcome, the process would then move to the next stage, where criticisms from the voting organizations are addressed.
But if Microsoft doesn't get the required number of votes this weekend, its challenge would be bigger, because it would need to get some national bodies to change their minds before the final vote, expected in March.
By : TODD BISHOP
Keyword : Microsoft puts Office Open XML format up for international vote
