If there’s one thing Microsoft’s good at doing, it’s stirring controversy. Instead of waiting for the ISO to vote on recognising its proposed Office Open XML or OOXML standard in February, Microsoft is actively pushing for it to be ratified before then.

What’s the big deal about OOXML? And what’s wrong with having another standard anyway? The problem is there already is an existing standard for office documents – ODF or Open Document Format. John Leyden of The Register’s piece on the issue highlights critic’s concerns that Microsoft’s promises to make OOXML ‘open’ is just smoke and mirrors. The buzz is that Microsoft plans to exert indirect control on the standard through Ecma International, the group involved in OOXML’s standardisation.

The Open Source community does have reason to be wary – they’re not likely to forget what happened in Sweden. Earlier this year, Microsoft’s partners were given ‘marketing incentives’ to join the standards voting board. Microsoft claimed that the action wasn’t officially approved mandate but the work of an overzealous employee.

What is the rationale behind Microsoft’s insistence in pushing the standard? The simplest reason would be to ensure Microsoft’s dominance in the office document space. Instead of making sure Office conforms to open standards, why not make it so other office suites like Open Office have to conform to Microsoft’s? And with Microsoft’s track record of tampering with ‘open’ standards like what they did with Java, there’s little wonder that the Open Source community is reacting to OOXML with severe mistrust.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 at 1:15 pm under Microsoft.

Read more entries by Erna Mahyuni.
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