The ISO SC 34 meeting here in Korea has been sweetness and light so far. Contrary to Groklaw’s claims, Microsoft has not attempted to prevent ODF by underhand methods AFAICS. Contrary to Gartner, it looks like Open XML will proceed through ISO fast tracking to national vote without incident too AFAICS. ODF has gained a lot in reputation by its ISO standardization and raised the bar. Open XML will similarly gain a lot by reaching or surmounting the same bar. Everyone’s a winner, like the Hot Chocolate song. (I am sure Sun/Microsoft/IBM hate having to go through the mechanics and uncertainties of standardization; I am sure many in SC34 don’t like standardizing schemas at the SC34 level, contrary to long-running policy, especially with the low-review, fast-tracking and PAS loopholes. But it is good for us.)
A nice phrase came up yesterday: ISO standardization of an existing standard represents a second round of openness.
I wish it were always true. Unfortunately, the ISO PAS and Fast-tracking procedures don’t really require much in the way of substantive feedback. ODF, for example, will change in no substantive way in its ISO adoption. National body comments will be added to requests or requirements for future versions. The Ecma Open XML people, so far, are being far more concilliatory in this regard: they know that a Microsoft technology doesn’t have the presumption of innocence that a Sun format does, in the minds of many.
If Microsoft/Ecma/et al manage to demonstrate to the ISO member voters that Open XML had even a first round of openness at Ecma, that it has some different use from ODF, if it supports SC34 specs like RELAX NG, and is scrupulous in its partitioning of Windows-specific hooks to another layer or namespace, I don’t see any national body rejecting Open XML, frankly. Microsoft and Ecma still have work to do in this regard, but it is just the standard kind of technical-level education/discussion/wordsmithing/re-alignment that any specification should have.
ODF and Open XML standardization is an important issue because of the Mass. policy on standardization. More power to Mass! If they push everyone to commit to exposing their file formats, that is great. I am sure Microsoft knows that they have a great business opportunity in making office documents a rich media that integrates into media/information systems.
What should procurement officers do? Well, for a start, remember that ODF is not an ISO standard yet. The final text, rearranged for ISO requirements, will take until August or so to get through the ISO machine. Open XML will presumably start its way into the ISO machinery later this year. ODF still has extra parts to be added, but its main part has been finalized; Open XML is broadly complete but not submitted yet. So even though ODF is first through the gate, if they both might be completed and standardized at around the same time. There is even a possibility, I suppose of ODF adopting Open XML formulas for spreadsheets. ODF currently uses SMIL, a Microsoft-associated technology, which Open XML does not. Funny old world.
I’ve been distracted. What should procurement officers/information architects do for policy in this regard? Well, for a start, mandating that organizations move to an XML or XML-in-ZIP file interchange./archiving policy sooner rather than later. Most importantly, create additional standards (with checking validators) to make sure that everything is not subverted by the use of platform-specific binary formats, embedded objects, macros, and so on. Simply saying only ODF or only Open XML or only ODF and Open XML is not enough, though it is a start. Second, clearly distinguish your different needs: sometimes you need page fidelity (such as for the electronic versions of documents whose paper version has legal status), sometimes you need interchangeability where it you want to guarantee that no platform-specific features are used. It may well be that ODF is appropriate in one situation while Open XML is useful in another, in the same way that HTML is useful precisely because it can be (badly) formatted on lots of different media.
Whatever you do, take statements like “ODF is slow” with a grain of salt. First, you might ask “I thought the MS EULA didn’t allow published benchmarks without permission?” How can I trust any benchmark if I we cannot find out about one-sided results? Then you might say “Surely it is applications that are fast or slow, not files, especially in the early days of a format?”
Remember that for large scale workflows and information systems, the more that information is labelled with computer (and human) accessible names and metadata, the more useful it becomes. ODF and Open XML don’t provide this kind of information. In a spreadsheet, you have to look up elsehwere the information to know what a cell value’s label is: that indirection adds inconvenience to using the information. So ODF and Open XML are progress, but progress in the area of how to make boring, unlabelled information more accessible: easier to access but not to a semantic treasure trove.
Though ODF and OpenXML are both trying to get similar ISO approvals, my understanding was that the "standard" process does not govern whether or not the resulting standard format is burdened by licensing, royalties, etc. Is OpenXML headed for true openness where Microsoft would hold no right to require a license agreement, royalty, etc. for its use? That would seem to be very good and might even attract the OpenOffice.org community to consider OpenXML instead of ODF. Without such freedom in OpenXML, ODF would seem to be absolutely needed.
Am I confused or are licensing and royalties, not the establishment as a standard, the real debate?
There is a requirement at ISO (or JTC1) for technologies in International Standards to be licensed at least under RAND term.
SC 34 (the committee on Document and Office Languages) has a long standing policy of not standardizing anything that is not free. Indeed, it also has a long running policy not to standardize any final (rather than "enabling") schemas itself: ISO HTML is the only exception I am aware of (but ISO HTML was made to allow certain governments and organization to specify HTML in contracts, not to become an alternative source to W3C.)
ODF and Open XML (assuming it is offered and accepted) are both technologies developed, proposed and driven from the outside. They are not SC34 products, nor does SC34 actually vote to accept them.
So if you are concerned about any intellectual property issues, please contact or lobby your national standards body: for US people, ANSI (INCITS) is the one. If you feel strongly, find out how to participate in your standards group. I am just a private citizen, paid by my company; it is a feature of SC34 that there are almost no professional advocates involved; people there actually uses the standards they maintain daily, and they work on the standards because the technology provides their bread and butter.
On the IP issue, I overheard one national body representative mention that he wanted clarification of this for the Open XML proposal, so I think you are on the same page as some people! I completely agree that IP issues are very important here: they certainly could constitute grounds which some organization might use to decide (if they must) between ODF and Open XML.
Actually, I asked sources close to the top of the XML tree at a large company with more than three letters last week. The answer that came back was that MS' license concerns is based on preventing someone from cloning MS Office from the user interface back. I suppose they see it like their programming APIs: they want (and in fact need to, for growth or maintenance of their business) to encourage Microsoft developers to use it.
We mustn't let the ODF sideshow obscure the probability that Open XML was not designed as a response to ODF; possibly going to ECMA and developing a community were (does it matter?), and certainly going to ISO was. But the central reason MS needs a properly documented publically-available XML format is to support all the third party Microsoft Developers. Document formats are easier to integrate with than APIs, in many cases. Forget WS-*, forget Windows Live, and even forget .NET; Microsoft really wants to put Office at the core of workflow systems, and Open XML is their strategy.