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If the OOXML format in its current form cannot get made into a true ISO standard, it could lock Microsoft out of any future plays in what could be the biggest IT revolution to date. Here are the pieces of the puzzle that fit together for me:

"Amazon SimpleDB is a web service for running queries on structured data in real time."

"Structured data." And what's a good way to contain such data? In well-built structured data file format of course. Like, for instance, the Open Document Format (ODF). And who has a vested interest in ODF? IBM certainly does. And so does Sun. And these two companies, along with Google, Microsoft, and I'm sure many others, realize that if cloud computing does indeed take off, then it will be the file format that makes the whole thing work. Which is why Microsoft feels it must get their format standardized. Even with tactics that ironically have started to attract the attention of the EU again. How else can they get a piece of the cloud pie?

7. it must provide all feasible functionality required to suppport full fidelity conversions from and to existing office document binary file formats.

4. The Reality in the Punchbowl Meanwhile, Sam Hiser offers a different impression of the DIN effort [4]: "The ODF-to-OOXML harmonization effort being hosted by the German standards group, DIN, is Europe's best effort to resolve our Mexican Standoff between Microsoft, Sun and IBM. Even though harmonization is laughably complex and will not work unless the applications are harmonized too, the best and brightest of Germany are left to hope for success."  [emphasis mine: dh] Although the mission of the German effort is translation (Übersetzung), not harmonization, I find there is a very important point that is not made often enough:  People write, read, and edit office documents with little, if any, understanding of the particular format that makes them persistent in digital form.  The XML-based open formats do not change that.   People adapt to the software/device they are using by trial and error.  We train ourselves to obtain the visible results that we want.  Different people obtain superficially similar results by quite different means.   Even when someone has gone to the trouble to create style sheets, forms, macros, templates and other format-impacting aids, it is very loosey-goosey in practice.  And it still does not require paying attention to the file format.  

The Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre at the University of New South Wales recently hosted a symposium to discuss issues surrounding the proposed Microsoft OOXML document format standard. In attendance at a technical session were representatives from Microsoft, IBM, Google, the Open Source Industry Australia, Standards Australia, the National Archives of Australia, and the International Organisation for Standardisation.

What IBM VP Bob Sutor does not want you to read Submitted by marbux on Thu, 01/31/2008 - 23:36. This site is now live, although there's a ton of customization and configuration work to be done. But we might as well kick off by reprinting a comment I unsuccessfully attempted to post on IBM vice president Bob Sutor's blog today. I'm flattered that my post was the apparent triggering event for Sutor's announcement later in the day that he will now only allow comments from people who use their "real names."

"IBM have asked governments to have an open-source, exclusive purchasing policy," Tsilas said. "Our competitors have targeted this one product — mandating one document format over others to harm Microsoft's profit stream." "It's a new way to compete," Tsilas said. "They are using government intervention as a way to compete. It's competing through regulation, because you couldn't compete technically."

In Belgium, for instance, the government is using plug-ins to enable Microsoft Office to read and save files in ODF, Marcich said. The same plug-ins are being used in Massachusetts, which was the first governmental body to move to ODF. One prominent ODF backer, the unrelated Open Document Foundation, said in late October that it would stop backing ODF in favor of a more viable universal format called the Compound Document Format (CDF). Marcich said that "won't have any effect on the alliance or on ODF" adoption. Moreover, CDF, which is a World Wide Web Consortium format, differs greatly in features and goals than ODF. "We're talking about apples and oranges here," he said.

The overall document summary: Industry debate about the relative merits of OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Ecma 376 Office Open XML (OOXML) highlights the significance of the productivity application market shift from binary and proprietary file formats to vendor- and product-independent Extensible Markup Language (XML) models. The competitive stakes are huge, and the related political posturing is sometimes perplexing. In this overview, Research Directors Guy Creese and Peter O’Kelly introduce ODF, OOXML, and related World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards, and project their implications for future productivity applications.

IT managers and CIOs in large companies who have actively resisted embracing Web 2.0 technologies like wikis, RSS, blogs and social networks will likely begin adding them to their priority lists in 2008, according to a report released Friday by Forrester Research Inc.

the WG is busy working on a first draft. This'll include mainly work in Wordprocessing. Spreadsheet and Presentation is still in the very early work. So help from the ODF TC would be great --- and a liaison would make sense IMHO. To give you an idea why help from the ÓDF TC would be needed I'll briefly outline some questions which arose: * Need for more use-cases, i.e. feasable interop scenarios * Discussions of unspecified behaviour (e.g numbering in 1.0, spreadsheet formulas, compatibilty options, etc.) and their impact on interop scenarios * Questions regaring generic settings like e.eg. form:control-implementation="ooo:com.sun.star.form.component.Form", or tweaking a la http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=51726. * Possible interop problems not handled by the specs (e.g. graphics, WMF, EMF, SVM, etc.) or e.g. font metrics and font embedding. As you see there are a lot of overlapping areas with eg. the "ODF interop" we dealt with in the workshop in Barcelona. [This issue is hosted in the Adoption TC, right? Maybe this TC is also suited as a liaison partner?]

Events have played out in the media and in the blogosphere over the last couple of weeks that represent a breakdown of some of those anti-OpenXML arguments that have been played back so frequently over the last year. Arguments that there is a lack of demand for Open XML, the specification is too complex to implement, the specification can’t be deployed cross platform and the long running but baseless claim that the Ecma-376 specification might be encumbered by IPR and patent threats all appear to have been cast aside as big blue steps up to meet the demands of their own customers and the market in general. Here is a blow by blow review of the relevant activity over the last two weeks…

Well, I think the problem we face is that there are different interpretations of the 1.1 specification regarding the numbering of numbered paragraphs that have different list styles assigned. We therefore cannot say that the one or the other proposal is backward-compatible to the ODF 1.1 specification regarding the number or the style. We can only say whether it is backward-compatible to a certain _interpretation_ of the ODF 1.1 specification regarding the number or the style.

Where can we expect challenges?

[Fwd: clarification: OpenDocument and SVG] From Lars Oppermann <Lars.Oppermann@Sun.COM> on 2 Feb 2005 10:31:44 -0000 Re: [office] [Fwd: clarification: OpenDocument and SVG] From Michael Brauer <Michael.Brauer@Sun.COM> on 2 Feb 2005 12:16:44 -0000 Message not available. Message not available. Message not available. Re: [office] [Fwd: clarification: OpenDocument and SVG] From Michael Brauer <Michael.Brauer@Sun.COM> on 3 Feb 2005 10:14:18 -0000 Message not available. Re: [office] [Fwd: clarification: OpenDocument and SVG] From Michael Brauer <Michael.Brauer@Sun.COM> on 3 Feb 2005 14:01:24 -0000 Propsal regarding the use of the SVG namespace in OpenDocument From Michael Brauer <Michael.Brauer@Sun.COM> on 3 Feb 2005 13:49:10 -0000 Use of SVG namespace From Patrick Durusau <Patrick.Durusau@sbl-site.org> on 7 Feb 2005 13:34:56 -0000

Of course, all companies try to bend the rules in the their favour, and it would be unfair to pick on Microsoft for doing the same. But what has happened over the last year and a half goes so far beyond the accepted rough and tumble of the standards game that cumulatively it can only be considered as an all-out attack on the machinery of standards-making. Consider the evidence.

The battle over OOXML standarization is all about money and marketshare. Microsoft wants OOXML to qualify as an “open standard” so that the company can continue to sell Office into governments that see ISO as the gold standard bearer. Many of the companies  that have fought publicly against OOXML gaining ISO standardization approval are hoping that failure of OOXML to get the ISO nod will give them a chance to gain more marketshare in a world where Office still runs on more than 90 percent of Windows desktops.

ISO is bound to the business of "interoperability", and has very strict guidelines for interoperability requirements, that are themselves tied to international trade agreements and legal conventions. In this context, it is beyond surprising that ISO allows the "OASIS PAS" and "Ecma Fast Track" channels to remain open, with specification work remaining under the controlling influence of the vendors.IMHO, the change in Patrick's position is entirely due to the realization that it is impossible to map between OOXML and ODF. I don't know this for sure, but when i read the German Standards Group (DIN) report on harmonization, authorized by the EU-IDABC and provided to ISO, i couldn't help but wonder how Patrick would react. The report definitively ends his OOXML ODF mapping dream.