Microsofts victory or cause celebre?

Microsoft's victory or cause celebre?

The ISO seal to Microsoft’s OOXML could have a long way to go before it gets a universal approval

Pratima Harigunani

Thursday, May 08, 2008

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PUNE, INDIA: Microsoft finally was able to pull it through in the International Standards Organisation (ISO) voting, thus getting approval for its Office Open XML (OOXML) standard in April 2008.

The Open Document Format (ODF) has already garnered ISO status.

Opponents of the Microsoft certification had argued that introducing a rival to the already ISO-approved ODF, developed by a consortium around Sun Microsystems, defeated the purpose of having standards.

However, ISO's seal has not been able to cure away opponent's allegations that pivot around the argument that OOXML, a default file-saving format in MS Office '07, is technically flawed, opaque and incomplete, and a serious concern from the view of interoperability with competing document formats.

The opposition is mustering in against the perceived attempt of Microsoft to usurp monopoly in the office applications software market.

A trophy without applause

Saifi Khan, from TWINCLING Society and Linux and Open Source Promotion Society, Hyderabad explains the issue from a technical lens.

Khan says: "ODF stands for OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications. It is an OASIS Standard, which in its version 1.0 manifestation, was published as ISO/IEC International Standard, ISO/IEC 26300:2006 in November 30, 2006. Microsoft's OOXML was developed as a successor to its binary Microsoft Office file formats. Microsoft is an OASIS member. It was aware of the ODF development, but never participated in the process at OASIS. OOXML is about Microsoft and not the customer."

In Khan's assessment, by going with ODF, Microsoft would have lost the leverage it has in the Office suite market. It adopted the own approach of creating what the standard should be.

"Most products Open source or commercial would develop translator programs to convert from one version to the other. Most of the Indian IT services companies would gladly do what their alliance partners would want them to do. The government bodies in India are latecomers to the entire discussion and lobbying should have started a few years ago for the results to be seen in 2008," he adds.

Refraining to comment on the OOXML issue per se, SQLite expert and open source evangelist, Shanatanu Oak, ILUG, Mumbai says: "The lack of competition does make businesses lax and sooner or later they start taking their customers for granted. Multiple standards are in itself a contradiction."

The standard, he points out, should come from a non-proprietary concern that has no business interest in the outcome of the opportunities arising out of the decision.

Whereas OOXML has been opposed on appropriating market share in a malafide manner. While reckoning both OOXML and ODF at par from a technology perspective, Oak doesn't think that this would give way to evolution in technology, improved content management and productivity as argued by Microsoft.

If OOXML is able to crack adoption then what would it mean for the extra effort to be spent by users and developers to migrate from old system to new and to get the hang of the new standard? There are thus migration and administration issues with OOXML as perceived so far.

"There are always some overheads when you plan some change. Marriage, birth of child, etc all brings in their problems with them. But it's worth it. Right? "I am used to living in such a way and I don't want to change." is something only a man in the cave can say!," says Shanatanu Oak.

According to NoOOXML's press release, "Governments worldwide are switching to the ISO standard ODF as their default format for office documents. The reaction of Microsoft to defend their monopoly position was to rush through their incompatible alternative format OOXML via ECMA international to become a second ISO standard. Although the OOXML format lacks maturity on formal grounds Microsoft has been able to hijack the entire ISO process."

Knock-out but not out

Opposition seems to follow loud and clear even after MS has got the nod. Protests continue both in the virtual and real world.

NoOOXML feels that Microsoft has used unfair practices such as committee stuffing in several countries and political interventions of ministers in the standardization process to get ISO stamp.

Initiator of NoOOXML campaign, Benjamin Henrion's quote on the site states: "Committee stuffing is a standard practice for Microsoft. Microsoft raped ISO with their office file formats, leaving the organization in limbo. The campaign against the format have raised an army of people, furious about the dirty tactics used by Microsoft to get the broken standard through ISO. The reputation of Microsoft went down below zero with this process."

As an open source evangelist says on a blog post, OOXML did not win because it was a good format; it won because people were "pushed" (to put it mildly) to vote in favor of Microsoft.

Bloggers are emphatically suggesting this in the form of a solution, "Don't use it. Period."

Laurent Richard, of the Belgian Association Electronique Libre, said in the NoOXML release: "The real war will be the adoption of OOXML by governments, and their citizens, which will have to buy again a copy of Microsoft Office to find out what the decision makers are doing."

What we need in India specifically is something equivalent of a 'Class Action Suit' to protect the interest of the customers, says Khan.

©CyberMedia News

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