July 3rd, 2007
Is Microsoft OOXML the best deal open source can get?
The Microsoft Office formats are in the news again. (Picture from Stephesblog, copyright Hugh MacLeod.)
Massachusetts has backed-down and accepted the Microsoft Office OOXML format as a standard while the companies in Microsoft’s open source orbit promise they will work together on conversion routines between OOXML and Open Office’s ODF.
Many in the open source community are angry. They see the conversion work as phony, and the standards-setting as fixed. Once more it’s promises of what might happen in exchange for acceptance of the Microsoft monopoly.
Bob Sutor of IBM sees Microsoft trying to get its PDF-replacement approved by ECMA as a standard and smells a rat.
OOXML was not an anomaly, we now have a pattern. You can either object and do something about this, and that includes helping to stop OOXML, or else you can wake up one morning and find “international standard” being increasingly synonymous with “defined in Redmond, WA.” You have a choice.
Well, yeah. But is anyone putting a gun to a customer’s head and saying “you must buy Microsoft Office?” No. And what has IBM done for Open Office lately, to improve its functionality and documentation? Anything?
I have Open Office, and try to use it. But the Microsoft Office suite is more complete and has better documentation.
Instead of complaining about Microsoft’s tactics in maintaining Office’s monopoly, it’s past time the complainants got into the trenches and made Open Office a viable substitute.
Don’t get mad. Get even. Or get out of the way.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 07/03/07
