February 5th, 2008
Super Friday to climax Microsoft Open XML push
Forget Super Tuesday. Consider Super Friday.
Super Friday is February 29, the end of the ISO Ballot Resolution Meeting which will decide the fate of Open XML as an ISO standard.
Opponents say Microsoft has been packing national standards bodies to assure a “yes” vote on Open XML, which opponents call OOXML. The Open Document Format (ODF) used by Open Office was approved as an ISO standard in 2006.
Microsoft hosted four different conference calls last week where officials called its proprietary XML standard essential to progress, and said Microsoft could not possibly support the Open Document Format.
How far has the rhetoric gotten?
Consider that Microsoft’s Jason Matusow recently blogged approvingly of IBM support for Open XML. Nothing wrong with that, but IBM has called Open XML technically inferior and is fighting hard against ISO approval.
Microsoft has many technical reasons for supporting Open XML, and lots of business reasons, but the bottom line here is that OpenXML is proprietary. Microsoft can change OpenXML to control the market. Microsoft has a history of doing that.
Blogs like Boycott Novell and Noooxml have gone into fine detail on Microsoft’s takeover of national standards bodies and its attempt to, in effect, transform the ISO into a vendor consortium.
So success by Microsoft could have far-reaching effects. Stealing an international election is actually worse, in my mind, than stealing a national one.
The effect of a specific company gaming the system in this way can also rebound against the entire nation where that company is located.
Corporate advantages tend to be temporary, especially in technology. To fold technical arguments, or world trade, under a single vendor’s wing is to surrender the permanent to the temporary.
Or to put it another way. Would Microsoft like to see Google’s search algorithms become an ISO standard?
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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