I’ve always resisted the urge to blindly bash Microsoft — indeed it does make a few really nice products, and has had a positive impact on the computing world in some important ways. I also have to try to maintain a neutral stance on computer products that I intend to review, with the understanding that a product’s quality and a company’s behavior speak for themselves. Today I’m writing about something that all computer users need to be aware of, and Microsoft’s at the forefront of the effort that goes against user interests. Specifically I’m referring to Microsoft’s crusade to convince the International Standards Organization (ISO) to adopt its proprietary Office file format as a standard. If Microsoft wins this, we all lose.
No matter what your word processor situation is, you have at some point in your life experienced file format compatibility problems. Even if you only use Microsoft Office to create and read documents and you upgrade to each new version the minute it’s released, you’ll still run into problems sending Word or Excel files to other people who don’t have the latest version. More likely, you have an older version of Office that works well for you, but you can’t read files created with newer versions of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. Maybe you’re one of the few and the proud who understands the superiority of WordPerfect or TextMaker, or you’re using the free OpenOffice.org or its commercial counterpart StarOffice. If you use one of these suites instead of Microsoft Office, then you already know the hassle involved with file format conversions.
If Microsoft wins the ISO standard war (and it’s trying really hard — it’s forcing or paying off its customers to flood ISO meetings with favorable votes), the file format problem has no hope of going away in the forseeable future, and in fact it will get worse as time goes on. Making Office Open XML (OOXML) the official ISO document format will encourage government agencies, corporations, and schools to standardize on it, which will more or less force them to buy MS Office 2007. The worst part, though, is that if these things come to pass, you too will be required to buy Office in order to exchange documents with these entities. In effect, the problem will be a lot more severe, because OOXML files created in one program could display differently in other programs.
The big problem with OOXML is that it is impossible to uniformly implement. Microsoft did not publish the entire standard — only the “required features” of the standard — so it’s not only possible, but according to history it is an absolute certainty that OOXML documents created by OpenOffice.org or WordPerfect will not work properly in Word, and vice-versa, because Microsoft will implement hidden portions of the standard. Secondly, much of the OOXML standard is left to application-specific rules and procedures. This means that similar features in different programs can write their OOXML files in different ways, essentially making them incompatible. Tactics like these are old hat for Microsoft; it is not the first time it has released specifications in the outward interest of compatibility with competing software, only to turn around and make its own products the only ones that work properly by taking advantage of hidden or undocumented and secretly required features. If you’re at all like me, right now you’re wondering how in the hell something this non-specific and nebulous can possibly be considered a “standard.” Standards are supposed to be static, thoroughly documented, and well-understood by everyone who needs to implement them. OOXML cannot be considered static, only part of it is documented, and it is impossible to understand it completely when parts of it are secret.
We already have an industry-accepted ISO standard document file format that is completely open and free to fully implement — OpenDocument. Microsoft’s effort to push OOXML through is nothing more than a ploy to force more people to buy Microsoft Office (and by extension, Windows Vista).
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Copyright 2007 JEM Electronic Media, Inc. No reprints without written permission.