RSSOffice Open XML Gains ECMA Approval; IBM Votes No
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published December 7, 2006, 5:53 PM
Citing major collaborative contributions from a dozen companies and institutions, including Novell, Apple, Intel, the British Library, and the US Library of Congress, the Ecma International standards body today approved what will now be called Ecma Open XML - formerly Microsoft's "Office Open XML" - as an international standard for document formatting.
Suddenly, the world's top three word processors -- Microsoft Word, Corel WordPerfect, and OpenOffice -- will all have provisions to support two XML-based formats. OASIS' OpenDocument format (ODF) will be one of them, and the Ecma Open XML format proffered by Microsoft will be the other.
All the other applications in the Microsoft Office 2007 suite, including Excel, have adapted to the new format, with their Office 2003 counterparts as a fallback.
At this point, maintenance of the Ecma Open XML standard moves from Microsoft to Technical Committee 45 of Ecma International (no longer all-caps). While supporting vendors remain free to innovate their own functionality, changes to the standard itself must now be approved by TC45.
Also, the standard moves up the international chain, where like a Miss USA winner moving on to Miss Universe, it will be proposed on a fast-track process to the International Standards Organization, which certifies industry standards and practices on a much broader level - Ecma deals with computing and communications exclusively.
"Thanks to the depth of the technical resources the TC45 created, the Open XML standard covers the full set of features used in the existing corpus of billions of documents," reads an Ecma statement this afternoon. "Developers have the flexibility to decide whether they want to take advantage of subsets or the full feature set of the Office Open XML formats. In addition, the format enables organizations to integrate productivity applications with information systems that manage business processes by enabling the use of custom schemas within Open XML documents."
Ecma does not publish the votes of its members, nor the final tally, though with the list of supporters mentioned today, it's likely the majority in favor was sizable.
Among the most vocal opponents of adopting Microsoft's proposal was IBM, who in recent months has claimed the company is simply moving its existing functionality into whatever public arena best suits that company at the time -- in this case, open standards -- just as a means of keeping its own proprietary product suite front-and-center.
In a statement on his personal blog today, IBM vice president for open source Bob Sutor made a bold pronouncement: "We think the OpenDocument Format ISO standard is vastly superior to the Open XML spec. ODF is what the world needs today to drive competition, innovation, and lower costs for customers. It is an example of a real open standard versus a vendor-dictated spec that documents proprietary products via XML. ODF is about the future, Open XML is about the past. We voted for the future."
Sutor's claims run contrary to those of Ecma's Open XML white paper, offered to prospective supporters and the general public, well prior to today's vote.
"The interoperability of OpenXML has been accomplished through extensive contributions, modification, and review of the Specification by members of the Ecma TC45 committee with diverse backgrounds and corporate interests," the paper reads. "During preparation, committee members raised and resolved hundreds of issues regarding policy, clarity, semantics, and possible dependence on environment."
The paper goes on to list "specific areas in which OpenXML departs from the original binary formats for the sake of interoperability." Among them are the fact that embedded images may be of any type, embedded functionality is not dependent on any one programming language or runtime environment, and that embedded fonts utilize font metrics systems for determining the best available font on any user's system, when the specified font is not available.
In a blog posting written last October, IBM's Sutor argued that by Microsoft essentially leaving the choice of embedded functionality providers, to borrow a phrase, "open." Users of the format would be forced not to choose their own providers to fill in the blanks, but instead to choose whichever providers Microsoft appears to favor at the time, since theirs is the most prominent suite using Open XML.
"Since they [Microsoft] have avoided using industry standards like SVG [Scalable Vector Graphics] and MathML," Sutor writes, "you'll have to reimplement Microsoft's flavor of many things. You had better start now. So therefore I conclude that while Microsoft may end up supporting most of Open XML...other products will likely only end up supporting a subset.
"That means that other products and software, in practice, will NOT be able to understand arbitrary Open XML that might be thrown at them," he continues. "There is just too much. Therefore they will only create a bit that they need and send that off. Send it off to whom? The only software that might understand it, namely Microsoft Office."
Microsoft is preparing a comment in response to today's vote, and BetaNews will bring that to you once it's ready.
Almost since its inception, Microsoft has gone out of its way to avoid open or internationally agreed standards. Over the years, Gates has repeatedly said that standards stifle innovation thus we've seen proprietary file formats for just about every product M$ has ever produced.
If it could, Microsoft would make HTML proprietary, or it turn our open-standard 2000-year old alphabet into M$'s 'Malphabet' then patent and copyright it to ensure it became proprietary to Microsoft.
Microsoft's success at having "Office Open XML" standardized as the international Ecma Open XML standard for document formatting shows us all how politically powerful this Corporate State has become. The fact that it can overlord its partners and seduce or cajole them to vote for its so-called 'standard' attests to this.
True to character, this is Microsoft's latest move to thwart the progression of open document interchange standards and it's in no one's interest other than Microsoft's for it to succeed. This is a divide-and-rule tactic by Microsoft to split the market, as it knows this will benefit it financially. Microsoft will be able to leverage its strengths in its products to ensure that its customers exclude the better utilitarian XML-based OASIS OpenDocument (ODF) format from corporate environments where its products are used.
Microsoft doesn't have to force or use strongarm tactics on corporations and their IT Managers to exclude products whose native document support is OpenDocument (ODF). Anyone who's worked in these pressure-filled environments knows that another document format is to be avoided at all costs for a multitude of operational reasons, thus the ODF format will be excluded automatically.
It is incumbent on people of good will to avoid using the "Office Open XML/Ecma Open XML standard if at all possible, instead they should use the better OASIS OpenDocument standard. Where this is not possible, then users should try to do everything they can to encourage developers to ensure that OASIS-based products seamlessly interoperate with those that use the Ecma Open XML format.
By such efforts, we the users, little by little, will be able to claw back our open document interchange standard. When we own it we'll benefit, if Microsoft owns it then it will be the beneficiary at our expense.
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|Interesting, interesting!
Ah, I see an empire trying to hold on to a thread that's about to break.
Here's Microsoft's choice.
Adopt the "open source" business model for it's operating systems, and offer it's operating systems for free (even Apple is "utilizing" open codes), or sit back and watch the whole thing crumble before them.
This should make the contest between proprietary code and open code fun to watch.
My money's on open source!
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|I've been using Open Office for several years. I have many opportunities to read and modify ms.doc and ms.xls and Open Office does it with ease. I have no reason to go back to an inferior product just because they have approval from Ecma.
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|MS Office is not free but it's format is open and a standard?
When will MS make an official .NET runtime for Linux?
I wonder...
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|kmleow,
You said: "When will MS make an official .NET runtime for Linux? I wonder..."
That'll be when we have a fair and level playing field for everyone.
...And, according to Microsoft, that'll be when the world becomes flat and Hell freezes over.
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|despite being really old i feel like "rabble, rabble, rabble!" is appropriate commentary on ibm and this subject.
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|Who cares. We still have choice. All this means is that now OO and Corel have their work cut out to stay "ahead" in the marketing race. All three players will have to stay on their toes to win hearts and minds. We all gain from this.
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|Bob Sutor is right on this one. If you haven't worked with Open XML, it's truly a mess, reminiscent of WordHTML. Here's a side-by-side comparison between the two notations. Note the redundant prefixes and what takes three lines in ODF takes two to three times as many lines in OXML.
It's no longer about the word processor, it's about the format. Given the way Microsoft has treated the world in the past two decades, would you stake your future on the world embracing Microsoft? Not me, thank you, I'll take a big heaping helping of ODF.
Here's the crux of Microsoft's Ecma push.
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|What exactly Microsoft has done in the past 2 decade? They bring computer to the mainstream. Any idiots can run a computer because of Windows. MS Office kicks everyone butt, and also, any idiots can play around it and use pretty advance functions. MS make PC easier for the majority. In the matter of fact, I think most people will again MS bring computer to their life. I know some IT Pro and fanboys from other companies will disagree with me.
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|"Given the way Microsoft has treated the world"
???
You're talking out of your a**. Why should anyone take you seriously?
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|Wow. From that emotional response, I take it you haven't read any tech news in, oh, the last fifteen years?
Microsoft is master of the dirty 3-letter acronyms: SCO, OGA, WGA, etc. Like it or not, Office 2007 unintentionally commoditizes Microsoft's file formats in favor of ODF. This means it doesn't matter what program you use, if we're all trading XML files now which Novell will make interchangeable, then there's no reason to buy Microsoft Office anymore and suffer their silly patents, volume licenses, EULAs, activation and validation schemes, and don't forget that continued their constantly s***ing formats.
While you're jumping from one foot to another, upgrading your files every two years, Microsoft is laughing its crack off.
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|A fine observation, but what does this have to do with the Open XML format?
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|zridling:
You say "Bob Sutor is right on this one."
Having just read his post on the subject (your link above) I'd have to absolutely agree with you.
He's absolutely correct but that doesn't mean the world will listen to him, or to you or to me let alone take heed of our views.
Galileo was also right but no one listed to him for a long time, in fact, he was persecuted for being correct. The real issue is that in today's world, where spin--or to use the precise word--propaganda reigns supreme, that the rational, or the logical or the sensible just float out the window.
Propaganda works, especially when in the hands of the powerful. …And the powerful have marketing departments which only reinforce the propaganda.
Microsoft, with its financilal and political power, together with its superbly efficient marketing [sorry--I meant propaganda] department in full flourish, then it's difficult to see why Microsoft would not be successful in having Office Open XML/Ecma Open XML subvert the standards process. Clearly, one would expect this.
The key question is what can be done about it. In the current climate, I fear it's not much but we must continue to try.
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|"We think the OpenDocument Format ISO standard is vastly superior to the Open XML spec. ODF is what the world needs today to drive competition, innovation, and lower costs for customers. It is an example of a real open standard versus a vendor-dictated spec that documents proprietary products via XML. ODF is about the future, Open XML is about the past. We voted for the future."
Oh, get over it, IBM. It is now clear as to why Microsoft had to leave you in order to profit--I mean, you really didn't see this comming?
As to the rest of his argument, I believe it to be plain BS. Let's wait for the Microsoft response and find out--can't wait!
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|So I am stuck with a choice. Microsoft, Corel, or OpenOffice.
OpenOffice continues work on thiers. OpenOffice it is.
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|To each his own, the most important thing is that these programs will be able to share documents in a standard and supported way. That's all that I really care about when looking at these issues. Microsoft Office 2007 is what I use, but I'm glad to know that joe schmoe OpenOffice user will be able to read a document I send him out of the box the way I want him to read it.
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|exactly.
not only so, it should be cleaner than the .doc we got now..., which is a mess.
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|"stuck with a choice"?? Is that a bad thing? I suppose having NO choice is better? Choice implies competition. Competition benefits us all. When the competition is over, we lose.
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|Either pay or free.
I tried Office 2007 Beta and did not like it.
Wordperfect was on this machine, but was a demo.
Open Office is free (though not Sun's Star Office, the commercial version)
Wait till I get married. I will buy either Wordperfect or Office 2007.
I am sure they have improved since then.
bmj2006
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