Microsoft Office Format as ISO Standard - I hope not.

One of the things I absolutely hate about the business of IT is vendor lock-in. While it is often in the vendor's interest to lock a customer into their technology, nothing is more frustrating to an IT manager than trying to switch vendors or technologies and facing an uphill battle fighting data inconsistencies and proprietary formats. While many image formats (such as jpg, gif & png) are open standards and the same across all operating systems, many document formats (such as Microsoft's doc, xls & ppt) are not open standards and do not work the same across operating systems let along office suite applications. This is a major point of frustration for organizations wishing to abandon applications that they no longer want to use in favor of alternate suites.

I'm sure most people remember the headache that came when trying to convert from the old Word Perfect format (wpd) to Microsoft Office Document (doc) format. Although many alternative office suites like Open Office, Star Office, iWork and Lotus Symphony are able to read and modify Microsoft Office formats, there are compatibility issues with the Microsoft formats that may cause the document to look different (at best) or not open at all (at worst.) Since the Microsoft Office formats are not based on open standards, no alternative office suites can reach 100% compatibility in every aspect of these formats. This has enraged many people and organizations, and efforts are underway to ensure that any file formats used in the future will be open standards based. Microsoft has relied on this form of vendor lock-in to maintain their monopoly over the software industry. Now that their position is threatened, they are making an attempt to have their new office format (OOXML) made into an ISO standard. After looking over their proposition to the ISO, I can only say that I disagree with allowing their OOXML format to become an ISO standard. The noooxml.org website most accurately summarizes the various reasons for this.

Their petition states:

"I ask the national members of ISO to vote "NO" in the ballot of ISO DIS 29500 (Office OpenXML or OOXML format) for the following reasons:

1. There is already a standard ISO26300 named Open Document Format (ODF): a dual standard adds costs, uncertainty and confusion to industry, government and citizens;
2. There is no provable implementation of the OOXML specification: Microsoft Office 2007 produces a special version of OOXML, not a file format which complies with the OOXML specification;
3. There is information missing from the specification document, for example how to do a autoSpaceLikeWord95 or useWord97LineBreakRules;
4. More than 10% of the examples mentioned in the proposed standard do not validate as XML;
5. There is no guarantee that anybody can write software that fully or partially implements the OOXML specification without being liable to patent lawsuits or patent license fees by Microsoft;
6. This format conflicts with existing ISO standards, such as ISO 8601 (Representation of dates and times), ISO 639 (Codes for the Representation of Names and Languages) or ISO/IEC 10118-3 (cryptographic hash);
7. There is a bug in the spreadsheet file format which forbids any date before the year 1900: such bugs affect the OOXML specification as well as software applications like Microsoft Excel 2000, XP, 2003 and 2007.
8. This standard proposal was not created by bringing together the experience and expertise of all interested parties (such as the producers, sellers, buyers, users and regulators), but by Microsoft alone."

I ask everyone to consider every single one of these eight points and consider if it would be in everyones' interest to continue what has been happening thus far in the software industry, or it is better to force Microsoft to adhere to true open standards that are already in place. Understand that adherence to true open standards means that people and businesses will be empowered to change software vendors at will if they feel the need to. This means that if a competitor to Microsoft offers an office suite that meets your business needs at a cheaper price, you can change suites and your business data will be read and modified exactly the same as it was before. Not only that, but if you feel that a software vendor is no longer meeting your needs or taking advantage of your business, you may switch to another vendor just as easily. In my eyes, this is the way all business should be. No company should be allowed to have a monopoly or force organizations to do business with them against the organizations' will. No software vendor should be able to stand in the way of innovation or progress through underhanded means such as vendor lock-in. If you feel the same way, I urge you to click on over to NoOOXML.org and sign their petition.

You can reach the petition at http://www.noooxml.org/petition

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