ntouk.com - Jerry Fishenden's technology policy blog

There continues to be a lot of overly-emotional debate and confusion about Open XML, the office file formats currently under consideration to become an international open standard. The main assertion seems to be that since there is already an ISO/IEC document format - ODF, the Open Document Format - that another one is not needed.

The standards process has never been about having single standards in any particular area - it's about ensuring that any standards that do exist, and which are adopted by ISO/IEC, are documented to a high level of consistency and integrity, and maintained in an open, inclusive way. And the BSI technical panel here in the UK has been doing precisely that: looking in detail at the specification and identifying editorial and other issues that need to be improved if Open XML is to be a worthy ISO/IEC standard.

The idea that ISO/IEC should allow only one standard in each particular area would seem to me to be the equivalent of the process around software patents - whereby the first one to achieve recognition would effectively prevent competition in that area from anyone else. This would be a major distortion of the standards process: the first through the door at ISO/IEC would lock out any other alternative standards that might tackle the topic area either better, or in a way that differs but which is equally valid. That seems such an undesirable model on so many levels that I cannot believe that the vocal opponents of Open XML really believe it. That kind of implied exclusive lock-out seems to me to run counter to many of the core tenets of being "open" and the need to support innovation and competition in the market.

Now where does Open XML fit in all of this? And why is it needed as well as ODF?

Well, Open XML exists to represent (and align with) existing and historical Microsoft Office formats. It hence has a very different purpose to ODF, which was broadly designed to represent the file formats used by Open Office and Star Office. It has been produced in response to customer and government demands to "open up" the Microsoft Office file formats and move them away from proprietary ownership to independent, open standards ownership and maintenance.

There's an easy question to consider here: would you prefer the Microsoft file formats to continue to be proprietary and under Microsoft's exclusive control? Or would you prefer them to be under the control and maintenance of an independent, open standards organisation? I think for most users, customers and partners that's a pretty easy question to answer: they'd prefer control and maintenance to be independent of Microsoft. And the good news is that the Open XML file formats are already precisely that: currently under the control of Ecma International (as Ecma-376) and, if the current voting process is positive, eventually under the control of ISO/IEC. Many major and significant UK organisations have already made clear that they support this move for Open XML to become an ISO/IEC standard.

There is recognition too of the reality of multiple file formats and standards from bodies such as the European Union. The recent "Conclusions of the Presidency" from the European Union for example says:

"For all parties involved, the exchange of documents between authorities, businesses and citizens must be possible without technical barriers. The public administration must not exclude anyone from participating in an electronic procedure owing to the use of a specific product. The Member States are agreed that in the future electronic documents should be exchanged fully on the basis of open document exchange formats." [bold and plural in original]

Various questions have been raised about the Open XML specification along the lines of "why not change X to Y?", "why not use Z instead?". But this fundamentally misunderstands the entire rationale of Open XML. Open XML is structured the way it is and makes use of the technical elements it does precisely to ensure it can represent the existing binary format documents and enable them to be migrated seamlessly to XML. This is because it has a very different purpose to ODF: ODF was never designed to provide backwards compatibility with Microsoft Office. Arbitrary changes to the Open XML specification, using elements or technologies that break its design purpose and backwards compatibility and the many third-party applications that rely on those behaviours and technologies, are hence missing the entire rationale for its existence.

So Open XML and the Open Document Format (ODF) exist for different purposes. In many areas (programming languages, graphics, CDs, DVDs, etc) multiple standards exist: and they interoperate where required, although clearly moving a graphic for example from JPEG to PNG requires the user to understand what may be lost and what impact will arise in terms of future editing. Users need to be aware of similar issues when deciding which office file formats to use.

As to whether Open XML is really "open", well the document submitted for ISO/IEC approval as Draft International Standard (DIS) 29500 is an Ecma standard developed by, approved by, and published by Ecma as ECMA-376. Many companies contributed to it during development following Ecma procedures - in the process of which they took it from some 2,000 pages to some 6,000 pages to ensure it was clearer and easier to use. ECMA-376 is already a valid open international standard under Ecma control, not Microsoft control.

And should the current ISO/IEC approval process be successful for Open XML, the maintenance of the resulting IS29500 standard will follow JTC rules. This will provide the many users, customers and partners with what they have asked for: for the Office file formats to be an open standard under the control of ISO.

So if anyone has doubts about whether Open XML is really "open" and independent of Microsoft control, my simple suggestion is that they should support it as part of the ISO/IEC process: that way they can be sure that it becomes an ISO/IEC standard and hence that ISO/IEC will have control over its development and maintenance. Letting ISO/IEC be in charge of Open XML seems to me the best way to put an end to the fear uncertainty and doubt being stirred up in some quarters once and for all.

Technorati tags: XML standards Open XML ODF interoperability Microsoft technology policy