Microsoft's last chance for OOXML standard approval

Microsoft's efforts to gain standard approval for its Office Open XML (OOXML) format is about to come to a close. We examine what the International Standards Organisation is looking for and what the likely outcome will be.

By Richard Hillesley, 29 Mar 2008 at 12:59

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Both ODF and MS-OOXML are imperfect solutions to the problem of data neutrality and the integrity of office documents, because both lack an interoperability framework which might preclude proprietary extensions to the format, which is why many experts in the field are leaping onto the World Wide Web Consortium's Compound Document Formats standard.

ODF at least benefits from the active participation of multiple vendors and a long passage through the standardisation process. There are multiple implementations of ODF, which is the first prerequisite for acceptance of a standard. It is not clear that any other vendor will ever be able to implement MS-OOXML or to guarantee interoperability with Microsoft Office, and it is not clear that interoperability has ever been an imperative for Microsoft.

The way to interoperate with Microsoft Office is to use Microsoft Office, which is why, whatever the outcome of the ISO decision-making process, many governments across the world will opt to support ODF.

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