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OOX-ODF: Artillery Duels and Document Sleuthing

I read my RSS feeds in reverse chronological order, just like reading through someone’s blog.  That’s how I organize them. 

That’s how Brent Phillips’ post was the first to lead me to the Microsoft open letter on Interoperability, Choice and Open XML .  Today brought many other references to this public letter from General Managers Tom Robertson and Jean Paoli, and I won’t be rehashing those.

{tags: orcmid OOX ODF ISO ECMA OASIS open document standards}

The press coverage I’ve seen simply summarizes the points of the letter and attempts to provide context on the OOX-ODF contest.  As I expected, there are also those who are not amused and even embarrassed.

For my part, I’m not thrilled about the continuous speculations about motives.  I’m also disappointed in the adversarial approach of some prominent ODF boosters, when the energy might be better spent making ODF complete and robust, having multiple implementations that have demonstrably-reliable interchange in interoperability settings.  My greater concern is the credulity with which claims of ill-intent are accepted and repeated.  I’m disappointed by the lack of much effort to fact check and provide objective analysis.

The Microsoft open letter is something to be taken quite seriously.  It is a public, official statement.  My approach to this letter is to ignore the claims about IBM (whether they have any foundation or not) and extract from it Microsoft’s affirmative commitment to interoperability and acceptance of heterogeneity.   I want to see continuing demonstration of that, and I will take this as part of the pledge that is being molded into action at Microsoft.

Adding sauce to the fire fight, I find the IBM Open Client offering and this assertion to be quite perplexing: “Alternative to Vendor Lock-In Includes Lotus Software Running With Linux or Windows and Macintosh”  Since “standards-based” Lotus Software is a sole-source deal, exactly which vendor’s lock-in should we be paying attention to here?  Looking at the official press release, I can see how Forbes writer Daniel Lyons managed to have so much fun with it. This is a discouraging use of “Open” in light of the high-minded “open standards” criteria articulated by IBM’s Bob Sutor. 

In other news: A document purported to be the Australian response to the ISO JTC1 30–day “contradiction” review of ECMA-376 was leaked onto the Internet for a short time on February 14.  The PDF file, created on February 6, appears to replicate a two-page faxed letter from Alistair Tegart, Standards Development Program Manager of Standards Australia.  The letter is addressed to Lisa Rajchel, ISO JTC1 Secretary at ANSI in New York City (though not to the official address).   

The file was deep-linked in an exposed web-site subdirectory of an Open Document Format advocacy organization in Queensland, Australia.  The file was directly linked from a U.S. blog post entitled “Australia’s comments on OOXML during the Contradiction Period” along with a suggestion of OOX’s negative reception based on the concerns expressed in the response.  I found the linked document to be quite even-handed and temperate, although the uproar about contradictions was acknowledged to be a factor in the recommendation being made.

It was startling to encounter this, since the Microsoft open letter was fresh in my mind, along with Martin LaMonica’s observation that Microsoft’s Tom Robertson “declined to offer more details on IBM's activities because the ISO standardization process is closed.” 

The blog post had disappeared from the U.S. site by late afternoon, gmt-0800.  The document PDF disappeared from the Australian site some time thereafter.  My RSS feed outlived the first or I would have missed witnessing the delayed triumph of prudence over righteous indignation.

In researching this incident (mostly to find out who Lisa Rajchel is and who occupies the 13th floor of the former Salmon Tower across 42d Street from the New York City Public Library), I learned a lot about the “ISO/IEC JTC 1 N8455 30–day review ECMA-376|ISO/IEC DIS 29500 Office Open XML File Formats.” 

I learned that ODF advocacy organizations seem to have all of the JTC1 communications concerning ECMA-376, such as those here.  I learned that ECMA-376 is ISO/IEC DIS 29500 and you can track its progress at ISO with the 29500 identifier.  I learned that there was indeed a single-file ECMA-376.pdf that was available for a time from the ECMA site. (I learned that search engine cache pages are a wonderful thing).  I also learned that some ODF advocates knew there was also a five-part set that was easier to handle.

I am relearning that as long as your opponent is held to be evil incarnate, any excess is justifiable. 

I had forgotten that I have been in a standards war or three, and the last time people who supported one specification activity insisted that the other one should not exist, and vice versa.  I couldn’t see the conflict, myself, seeing the efforts as complementary and both welcome.  I worked hard to accomplish one of them (DMA), now I’m engaged in preserving the other (ODMA).