Deep Thoughts by someone else:

Yesterday it worked. Today it is not working. Windows is like that.

Once again, the 2000 pound gorilla, Microsoft, has pushed, shoved, cajoled, persuaded, and possibly paid its way to acceptance of another format as standard.

International Standards Organization Draft International Standard 29500 has passed with some attached problems to be worked out. (Not so) OpenXML has achieved standard status, meaning that Microsoft has forced another of its ideas upon the world.

Whether this will prove to be workable is highly dependent upon how the attachments are handled.

The vote, held August 23rd, was 12 to approve, 3 against, and the original dissenter, the IEEE, abstaining. The nay votes came from Oracle, IBM, and standards consulting body Farance, Inc. Noteworthy is the approval by the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security, showing that being consistently out of touch with reality is the order of the day.

The major complaint of those voting in the negative is incomplete review of the over 6000 page declaration that is the proposed standard.

Last week, the German DIN standards body voted to approve the OpenXML standard - no surprise as many of the voting members there have close ties with Microsoft.

Perhaps the adoption worldwide is going to face stiffer problems, as the Bureau of Indian Standards has voted to reject the Microsoft proposal. It remains to be seen what weight that decision will carry.

It is truly odd that Microsoft has not presented any explanation of why it cannot simply use an open standard file format, and let the quality of Office stand on its own, without being propped up by a proprietary file format.

Tags: microsoft, ooxml, open office, iso, dis29500, bureau of indian standards, dod, dhs, din