[odf-discuss] Private deal to approve OOXML? More evidence surfaces

[Ian Lynch]

> E.g., Microsoft has always played the embrace and extend game with
> their own formats.

That's not really surprising since format evolution would normally add
to an existing specification.

> ISO/IEC:29500-2008 grants Microsoft permission to continue the same
> game in the XML context with the legal status of an international
> standard. They remain eligible for government procurement contracts.

This I can't see. If the EU specifies that member status must use an ISO
document standard, using Office 2007 won't comply unless it has
comprehensive support for the document standard. Just because MS has
some theoretical standard it doesn't mean it can be practically
implemented and if it isn't why would any government choose it over a
standard that can be practically implemented? Furthermore if there is no
general support for multi-vendor interoperability it's likely that the
EU would veto it anyway even fine MS for further anti-trust violation.
If a tender goes out for software that complies with ISO xxxx the first
thing I would do if I was managing the tender would be to check that
companies were putting forward products that supported ISO xxxx, not a
piece of paper saying they had a standard and promised to put it into
something some time in the future.

> Microsoft's primary product feature throughout its tightly integrated
> stack  is interoperability. But interop only for Microsoft apps and
> only for the latest versions of them. It's the upgrade treadmill
> whilst maintaining a moving interoperability target for competitors.
> 
> The key fact here is that ISO/IEC:29500 is not a true standard. It
> does not specify a standard, uniform product. It includes some 600
> identified extension points with no specified functionality, for
> "future" vendor-specific extensions. (Grep for the exLst attribute in
> Part 4.)  It's riddled with options and permissive "may" and "should"
> interop breakpoints that conceal by ambiguity the hard-coded
> SHALL/MUST decision points in the MS Office/Sharepoint, etc.,
> interoperability framework, which is not part of the standard's
> specification.
> 
> There are of course collateral benefits to Microsoft in monopolizing
> OOXML interoperability, e.g., MOOXML is also a communications protocol
> between MS Word and Sharepoint Server. So MOOXML extends the vendor
> lock and competitor exclusion from MS Office into the Web 2.0 space.

So is OOXML going to be used in practice as a document format or just as
some theoretical possible envelop for encompassing a range of diverse MS
formats? If the latter, it at best maintains the status quo for MS and
seems to serve an entirely different purpose to odf. 

Ian
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