Rejecting OOXML

Good objective journalistic article on Reuters about the ISO vote (ending this weekend) thanks to Georgina Prodhan, Reuters' European Technology Correspondent.

George Greve, Head of FSFEurope comes off typically to the point...

"The absolute nightmare scenario is that Microsoft says: 'Update your licenses or we'll turn off your access'."

"Access to governmental data will completely depend on the existence of Microsoft," said Greve, who expects Microsoft to lose the ISO ballot in a close vote.

"This is a classic vendor lock-in strategy," he told Reuters. "It's not that new, it's not that ingenious but it's quite effective."

Georgina concludes with what appears to be decent advice from Gartner...

"The problems associated with the need to translate between formats will continue and will diminish the value of XML."

...however the problem is already solved, yet the solution is unwanted by the vendors. Ironically, the vendors are the very people you'd expect to be desperate for a way to stall en masse the knee-jerk Vista|Office upgrade by customers.

The solution: both Georgina and Gartner are unaware that the OpenDocument Foundation's da Vinci plugin together with the Interoperability eXtensions (to the ODF format defeated this year by Sun within the OASIS TC) are a workable solution to bridging the two formats (and will successfully kill OOXML in the marketplace if implemented).

The vendors don't want ODF to interoperate with MS Office formats because they are afraid it extends the life of Microsoft's applications. What the vendors do not realize is that the CUSTOMER -- i.e., CIOs across state government all over the world -- as well as earlier ISO Directives have demanded da Vinci's unique level of interoperability or the CIOs will simply adopt Microsoft's downloadable Compatibility Pack to get MS OOXML working in their Office 2003 installations at no cost.

All the CIOs say they want is XML documents; unfortunately they aren't as aware as Georg Greve, above, that Microsoft's implementation of XML is exceedingly half-hearted.

For further background, here's an old article that originally ran in Spanish featuring our objectives...

"Interoperability: Will the Real Universal File Format Please Stand Up?" (Novatica | UPGRADE, December 2006)

Comments

[Zaine Ridling]

Wow, for so many complex reasons surrounding MS-OOXML pro/con arguments, I appreciate the clarity of your coverage of this issue, Sam.

If someone said, "Give me ONE reason why ODF is a better choice than MS-OOXML," I'd easily say: "Control. ODF is independent in every way; MS-OOXML will always be controlled by Microsoft." There's no way Microsoft would relinquish control of MS-OOXML. If they ever intended to that, they could have more easily worked to include the relevant parts of their spec into ODF.

[Sam Hiser]

Thank you Zaine for your added colour.

I feel your logic applies also to the recent 3rd-party deals Microsoft has hatched; not just with the Linux vendors (Novell, Linspire & Xandros), but also the indirect ones which syphon the autonomy from erstwhile open-source vendors Scalix (acq'd by Xandros) and XenSource (acq'd by Citrix).

These companies too are no longer on the Free Software list.

Stay away!