Contributing author: Melanie Chernoff
Over the past year, the OOXML debate launched a worldwide discussion about what an open standard should be, how it impacts the technology industry, and why open standards are important.
Last week, OOXML–an XML format designed for Microsoft’s office suite–was approved as a standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). In past articles1 2, we have discussed problems with voting irregularities, the use of a fast-track process without adequate industry review, proprietary Microsoft technologies used without specification, and other problems. Now that OOXML has been approved despite these objections, let’s take a look at the standardization process and the impact that OOXML’s approval will have in the office suite space. » Read more
Contributing author: Melanie Chernoff
You probably don’t lose any sleep worrying that your word processor is saving files in the wrong format. You may have some old files that don’t open correctly, or someone might have sent you a spreadsheet that doesn’t work in anything but Excel, but you probably found some way to work around the problem.
But when data is important and needs to be used in different ways or archived for a long time, the format really does matter. It all boils down to one question: who owns your data? If your data can be used in a wide variety of applications, you own it. If it can only be used cleanly with one vendor’s applications, that vendor is really the one with control.
This is why standards are so important. A complex standard that can only be fully implemented by one vendor does nothing to solve this problem, especially when the format was designed for only that one vendor’s data. This is the crux of the debate over OOXML, an XML format designed for Microsoft’s office suite, which was submitted to ISO for fast-track standardization as DIS 29500. This proposal will be accepted or rejected on March 29, 2008. » Read more
