Open Letter From Chris Capossela, Office Open XML

Chris Capossela is the Senior Vice President at Microsoft who ultimately leads the Microsoft Office business.

His support for the standardization of OpenXML focuses strongly on the benefits that this process brings to our customers and our partners, while at the same time bringing a new level of openness to Microsoft Office in the marketplace in general.

It seems Chris spent part of his St Patrick’s Day publishing an open letter that outlines themes that are on his mind as we come towards the end of the voting process. Including the benefits of OpenXML, what comes from global stewardship of the development of the format, and pledging the companies commitment to the standard as it evolves.

An excerpt from the letter is below;

The benefits of global stewardship
Over the past 14 months the global standards community has been through an amazing process, and the Open XML specification is stronger and better because of it. The 3-step ISO/IEC ratification process is designed to allow the global community the opportunity to review a proposed specification, raise issues about it and work with the submitter to improve it before a final determination is made. It is designed to move national bodies towards consensus approval of the specification. At the close of the second phase on September 2nd, 74 percent of the voting national bodies supported approval of the specification and many national bodies issued comments for resolution in the final phase. What’s truly remarkable is how responsive Ecma’s technical committee was in reviewing and responding to every one of those comments, often working with national bodies to ensure that the responses fully addressed the issue raised. Ecma published drafts of its proposed dispositions over a period of months and issued a complete report on proposed dispositions in mid-January, giving national bodies the ability to thoughtfully consider all of them well in advance of the Ballot Resolution Meeting. Many national bodies indicated that they were satisfied with proposed dispositions before the Ballot Resolution Meeting in late February. At that Meeting, representatives from more than thirty national bodies met for a full week to prioritize and discuss key issues and refine dispositions. The meeting ended with the national bodies deciding to adopt changes to the specification to address the issues that were raised prior to September 2nd. The rigorous input and debate that the Open XML file format has received from national bodies around the world is remarkable, and the final product of their work represents engineering excellence worthy of ISO/IEC approval. If Open XML is approved as an ISO/IEC standard, the story would not end there – like any other standard, maintenance affords the opportunity for continually updating and improving the standard. In this case, the global community would be in control of the evolution of this standard going forward – a fitting result given that this format will be widely used around the world for years to come.

As a result of global feedback and consideration, the Open XML standard under consideration by ISO/IEC has been significantly improved. Microsoft has been afforded a wonderful opportunity as a result of this process. We’ve listened to the global community and learned a lot, and we are committed to supporting the Open XML specification that is approved by ISO/IEC in our products.