Monday, 9 April 2007

Microsoft Criticised for Open XML Petition

Microsoft is receiving flak by the Open Source Consortium for petitioning to get fast approval of its Office Open XML (OOXML) document format as an official international standard. Endorsement of OOXML as a standard by the International Organisation...

Microsoft is receiving flak by the Open Source Consortium for petitioning to get fast approval of its Office Open XML (OOXML) document format as an official international standard.

Endorsement of OOXML as a standard by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) and International Electromechanical Commission (IEC) would make the life of Microsoft a lot easier when it has to deal with governments that prefer ISO certification of electronic document formats.

Mark Taylor, the founder of the Open Source Consortium has not stomached Microsoft’s petition too well. He said, “In the open-source world, there’s clearly a massive grassroots thing. One of the lessons Microsoft has been trying to learn from open source is that — but they have to fake it. If there was any grassroots support behind it, the time to have done (the petition) would have been ages ago,” Taylor said.

"We already have an international standard, the OpenDocument format, and governments are increasingly adopting it. Having a second standard is utterly unnecessary", he added.

On the other hand, Microsoft said, “This campaign to stop even the consideration of Open XML in ISO/IEC JTC1 is a blatant attempt to use the standards process to limit choice in the marketplace for ulterior commercial motives – and without regard for the negative impact on consumer choice and technological innovation".