Will ISO follow either the AFNOR or Brittish proposals to merge ODF and OOXML? I think so. If they continue on their current path of big vendor sponsored document wars, ISO will beocme irrelevant. Sooner or later the ISO National Bodies must take back the standards process from corporate corruption and influence.

One thing is clear. Neither Microsoft or IBM is about to compromise. IBM has had many chances to improve ODF's interoperability with Microsoft Office and the Office documents, but has been steadfast in their stubborn refusal to concede an inch.

Microsoft hides behind their legacy installed base of over 550 million MSOffice desktops. There simply isn't a pragmatic or cost effective way of transitioning the installed base to ODF without either seriously re writing and replacing those applications, or, changing ODF to be compatible.

The marketplace is clear on what they intend on doing. Pragmatism will rule. Productivity trumps standards initiatives whenever they are out of sink.

In the face of this clear marketplace intent, one would think IBM might compromise on ODF. No way! They are intent on using ODF to force a market wide rip out and replace of MSOffice.

Most people assume that there are two opposing groups at war here; the Microsoft OOXML group vs. the IBM ODF group. This isn't an accurate view at all. There is a third, middle group of developers working the treacherous space of conversion - the no man'sland between OOXML MSOffice and ODF OpenOffice.

The conversion group know the problems involved, and are actually trying to dliver marketplace facing solutions. The vendors of course are in this war to the bitter end, and could care less about the damage they cause to end users.

It's also true that the conversion group seeks to bridge desktop productivity into the larger, highly interoeprable web platform.

It's also possible that ISO will chose to merge ODF and OOXML, as proposed by the French AFNOR plan as well as by the British. To do this they must first remove entirely the coproarate vendor influence of Ecma and OASIS, and perfect the merger entirely at ISO. The big vendors will of course fully oppose this approach.

My post just happened to coincide with ISO Governor Mark Bryan's "Standardization by Corporations" letter where he expresses a derpressing but nevertheless very true concern.

In fact, the OpenDocument Foundation was created specifically to address our concerns about the undue influence big application vendors were exerting on ODF following the April 30th, 2005 approval of ODF 1.0 (which went on to become ISO 26300).

~ge~

Of course this "incompatibility"outcome was planned years ago.  What else could we expect since Microsoft has steadfastedly refused to participate in the OASIS Open Office XML (ODF) effort, which began in 2002 with Microsoft joining the group, but noticeably choosing to observe without contribution or participation.

So it is Microsoft who is a fault for any finding of ODF - MSOffice incompatibility, not the OASIS ODF Technical Committee or ODF community of vendors, developers and users.

Our friends in Redmond planned and plotted for this dilemma.  Their intentions are to control completely the migration of information and information processes from legacy binary file formats to their own version of XML.

One thing many people miss about this is that Microsoft mus tmove to XML fiel formats no matter what.  The Internet has usshered in a new age of collaborative computing based on universal access, connectivity and exchange.  It's a world driven by HTML, XML and RDF/XML.  Microsoft either embraces this juggernaut, or gets left in the dust.

Interestingly, i for one believe that Microsoft has the best next generation Internet - XML stategey out there.  There's a lot of low level wiki - writely collaobration out there.  And of course Lotus Notes has reigned for years, alone and unchallenged in the client/server area of intelligent documents, forms, managed workflows, scripted routing, and collaborative computing.  Microsoft's extraordinary opportunity is to leverage their desktop MSOffic emonopoly of over 500 million users into the emerging arena of highly interoperable "Information Processing Chains".

Because of Redmond's iron fisted monopolist control over MSOffice desktop productivity environment's, they own entirely the Information Processing Chain opportunity.  And the Vista Chain (Stack) is a wonder to behold.

The core of the Vista Chain is the OOXML document/data transport connection between MSOffice and the Exchange/SharePoint/Groove Hub.  IE and Vista augment this chain in that they are OOXML fluent and OOXML enabling. 

The idea here is for Microsoft to migrate to the E/S XML HUB both the MSOffice bound binary documents and the volumes of critical day to day  MSOffice bound business processes, line of business integrated apps, and scores of assistive technology type add-ons.  Microsoft has to ge this job done before others swoop in and do it for them.  Others would be SaaS, SOA, and a host of Enterprise 2.0 collaborative computing initiatives.

The Vista Chain is based on the portable XML document/data transport, OOXML; and,the Vista .NET 3.0 framework.  Legacy Win 32 APi application and platform dependencies that bind those billions of binary documents to MSOffice, are replaced in OOXML by bindings to the Vista .NET 3.0 dependencies.  From the E/S Hub, it's easy for end users to create data and workflow bindings involving MS SQL Server transaction and data processing backends.  Same with MS Live, Office Communicator, Active Directory, MS ERP, MS CRM, and MS Money.

The Vista Chain is good stuff.  Moving those MSOffic ebound business processes to the E/S XML Hub is not all that difficult, and the reward is a guaranteed leap in porductivity.  A giant leap.

Which brings us back to the challenge ODF faces.  Will there be an ODF Chain?  Not if users and providers are unable to perfectly convert those MSOffice bound billions of billions fo binary documents and MSOffice bound business processes to ODF.

The challenge for ODF is in doing exactly what OOXML does.  The end users migration to XML and the XML Hubs is entirely dependent on three successive stages.  All of which OOXML can currently master:

1. Perfect Conversion Fidelity :: of billions of binary documents to XML (ODF - OOXXML)
2. Perfect Round Trip Fidelity :: MSOffic ebound business processes Workgroup - WorkFlow
   
3. Application Interoperability :: between all processing chain application participants, even as they
   span desktop, server, device and Enterprise 2.0 serivces and systems.