We Made the Formal OOXML Announcement on April 2 for Obvious Reasons …

John Paczkowski — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 15:25:20 +0000

It’s no April Fools’ joke. Microsoft (MSFT) has indeed won an international standards designation for Open XML, its open-document format. This morning, The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) confirmed that Open XML had won the two-thirds approval it needed to pass. The announcement marks the end of Microsoft’s long and, how shall I put this, aggressive campaign to have the format recognized as an international standard for electronic documents. It also reverses the loss Microsoft suffered in first-round voting, thanks to some intense lobbying by IBM (IBM) and Sun (SUNW) who, together, developed the rival Open Document Format. But for how long? This latest vote is already mired in controversy, with tales of delegates being manipulated into voting against their will, votes of ‘No’ suddenly changed to ‘Abstain’ or ‘Yes‘ and an assortment of protests and complaints being made against the entire process. And beyond that, there is the issue of the Open XML standard itself, which, as some observers have noted, needs a bit of work. “No one can actually implement this standard–not even Microsoft,” said Groklaw’s Pamela Jones. “… The format references proprietary stuff from the past. Stuff that is patented, no doubt, but mainly just unknown and unknowable.”

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We Made the Formal OOXML Announcement on April 2 for Obvious Reasons …