The Fools Standard

It became widespread news yesterday, April 1st, although it was only formally published today: Microsoft’s “Office Open XML” (OOXML) document format has, unfortunately, been certified as an ISO standard. There are many reasons why this is a Bad Thing.

• There is already an existing ISO-approved standard, namely Open Document Format (ODF). But obviously Microsoft doesn’t like that because they don’t control it. Microsoft likes controlling things. Microsoft’s reasons for seeking ISO approval for OOXML are at least partly driven by a desire to undermine ODF.
• Microsoft’s “Office Open XML” is not truly open. As part of the document format definition, it contains many references to how previous versions of Microsoft’s own software behave. Although some of these references have been removed in updated drafts of the format, this shows that Microsoft believes that their format should be the formal standard, regardless of how broken, incomplete or patent-encumbered it may be.
• An ISO standard is supposed to describe something which can be implemented independently by many different organisations. As far as I am aware, not even MIcrosoft themselves have an implementation of OOXML as per the written format that was submitted for ISO approval. Microsoft’s own implementation in Office 2007 is different. As with other standards in the past, such as HTML, CSS and perhaps even Java, Microsoft will no doubt be planning to utilise its famous “embrace and extend” policy. This means breaking the standard, but making use of their monopoly position to foist this bastardised standard on those who are victims of their monopoly.
• ISO, the organisation, loses an awful lot of credibility as a result of this process. There have been a multitude of reports of irregularities with the voting process from the national standards bodies feeding into ISO. Many of the them suddenly gained a lot of new members in the weeks leading up to the OOXML, with strong circumstantial evidence that Microsoft funded their membership fees.
• In most of the national standards bodies, the technical representatives were hugely against OOXML being adopted as a standard. This speaks volumes.

It is disgraceful that Microsoft has been allowed to garner supposed legitimacy to their broken document format in this manner. The fact that they even tried shows a certain desperation.

Oh, and remember that when Microsoft says something will be “good for business”, they mean good for their business.