It’s official. The ISO has approved Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) document format as an international standard. The move comes after much controversy, especially in the open-source community, where many people had been rooting for standardization of the competing Open Document Format (ODF). This decision could have major repercussions on open standards for years to come. A complete analysis can be found on our open source blog, OStatic .
Just one nit: Open Document Format (ODF) is already standardised by ISO, it’s ISO/IEC 26300. Many people were routing for OOXML to be disproved.
ITYM “many IBM employees were rooting for OOXML not to be standardised”, because they (IBM Global Services) liked the idea of all those nice fat government contracts that would be attendant upon ripping out MSOffice and installing LotusOffice.
Ironically many of the people around ODF who don’t work for IBM – like Gary Edwards or Patrick Durusau – were rooting for OOXML to be standardised too, based on the observation that they filled different needs.
A standard is a true standard as determined by its adoption. Nothing else. I won’t be surprised ODF continues its push, and, becomes the real standard.
I work on the Voices for Innovation program (a Microsoft supported community) and I thought you may be interested to read this post: http://janvandenbeld.blogspot.com/2008/04/hypocrisy.html by Jan van den Beld, Fmr. Secretary General of Ecma International in Geneva.
He notes that even though the standards community overwhelmingly approved Open XML, it seems some players just are not willing to accept their decision. Needless to say, he thinks this is a big insult to the integrity of the thousands of people who worked on this Open XML process.