OSRIN.net

As we know, last Wednesday ISO/IEC announced that DIS29500 had gained enough votes for it to pass the ratification process and become IS29500.

The last week has been a quiet one for me personally, I have spent most of it clearing up many of my badly neglected admin tasks interspersed with reading news stories and blogs that document the ongoing OpenXML conversations.

Groklaw and Slashdot are buzzing away quietly with various stories, looking for conspiracies in the darkest corners of the internet. Some of the news stories are focusing on the facts, some are praising Microsoft for the steps we have taken over the last two years, others are predictably saying that we have not yet gone far enough. Give us time on the last point, we still have a lot to learn and even more to do.

A few of the blog entries caught my attention along the way.

Jan van den Beld, the former Secretary General of Ecma has been blogging for a while now, I have highlighted a couple of his posts already.

His most recent post reflects on the process, how strong the support for OpenXML is globally and what he describes as the hypocrisy of those who are still pushing back on the tremendous amount of hard work that has been applied by so many over the last fifteen months.

This is a resounding collective voice of support from countries around the world, including the four largest IT markets: the US, Japan, Germany and the UK. Is there any other document format standard that has received such widespread support from the global community? No. This was not a close vote – Open XML won by a healthy margin. Only ten markets voted against ratification, and in a number of those there were strong voices in support of Open XML. By any measure this is a clear statement of support for ratification after a very careful review process that rivals any other standards review in history.

… he goes on to talk about some of the negative voices that are currently echoing around the blogosphere.

These direct attacks on the integrity or national standards bodies are without merit. They reflect a lack of understanding of how standards are developed and how standards bodies operate, or are a cynical attempt to spin things now that 61 countries have decided not to follow their hotly delivered directions. Understandably, national standards bodies are striking back, protecting their hard-earned and well deserved reputations from this smear campaign.

Jason Matusow has posted some related comments, he talks a little about participation in the national standards bodies and highlights the fact that lots of people from all parts of the industry have come to the table to participate in the conversations around DIS29500, many of whom were not there two years ago.

He highlights some examples where IBM and Google have come late to the party, along with the fact that they have as valid a voice as anybody else at the table, providing the NB rules allow their participation.

In Norway when IBM and Google join the committee 2 days before the final vote…or when IBM brings a subsidiary company to the table with them in Italy effectively giving one company 2 votes…or when Oracle and Red Hat join the US V1 committee just before it votes….that is participation, right? I actually believe that to be true. It is no different than Microsoft or its business partners coming to the table to have their voices be heard in the process. As long as the participation is within the context of the rules for a given NB, then it is legitimate participation.

From a personal point of view, I say the more the merrier.

My only hope from here is that the many industry voices who have turned up for these discussions in local committees stay engaged as further specifications are brought to the table, regardless of who submits them or how they’re submitted.

Finally, Miguel de Icaza talks a little about the progress that has been made by Microsoft during the process to standardize OpenXML, I would like to think that whatever your personal views are around the process or the specification that some goodness has come out of this for the entire community.

Speaking as a Microsoft employee I see an amazingly strong commitment at all levels of the company to get our participation in the standards processes right, to change the company in whatever way is needed and to ensure that we continue to have a strong, interoperable and participatory role in the community and the industry as it evolves from here.

Here are just some of those steps, as highlighted by Miguel.

1. The specifications for the old binary file formats were published under the OSP (February of 2008).

2. The above documents were backed up by the British Library in case Microsoft ever stops publishing them (announcement).

3. Microsoft is funding the development of a translator between the old binary file formats and OOXML which should assist folks that have experience in one format and want to understand the other, or just want to convert documents back and forth. If your app lacked support for OOXML, but had support for the old formats, you can use these tools.

4. Microsoft agreed that future versions of OOXML will be covered by the OSP a concern that some people had about future versions of the document.

5. Microsoft pledged to modify future versions of Office to implement the ISO version of OOXML.

6. working group was created to look into harmonization of OOXML and ODF, something that many developers involved in office suites have been advocating for a long time.

7. Microsoft pledged to support features to support other file formats as native file formats in their office suite:

Last year we sponsored a translator project that gave people the ability to read and write ODF files from Microsoft Office. Last month we announced that we would update the Office product so that the ODF translators could natively plug into Office and give people the same options they get from the other file formats. People will be able to set ODF as the default format in Office if that’s what they want by simply installing the translators and then changing their settings.

8. Lots of clarifications went into the spec, and people should be happy about that.

9. And finally, now that OOXML is an ISO standard, as Patrick Durusau implied there are many winners.

If you’re looking for a real conspiracy – for the last two years my wife and I have been planning a trip to Africa, we leave tonight and will be gone for two weeks… with the process to standardize OpenXML now complete it will not conflict with my vacation.

I can assure you that the completion date for the OpenXML standardization process was not planned with my vacation in mind, or was it?