OOXML Wins ISO Nod
by Colin Dodd
Alas! Community Loses, OOXML Wins ISO Nod
Monday, August 18, 2008: The two ISO and IEC technical boards have given the go-ahead to publish ISO/IEC DIS 29500, Information technology – Office Open XML formats, as an ISO/IEC International Standard after appeals by four national standards bodies against the approval of the document failed to garner sufficient support.
None of the appeals from Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela received the support for further processing of two-thirds of the members of the ISO Technical Management Board and IEC Standardisation Management Board, as required by ISO/IEC rules governing the work of their joint technical committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology.
If there is, in fact, a silver lining to this, it is that people are paying more attention to open standards.
August 22nd, 2008 at 8:42 am
First, there should be a lawsuit to make Microsoft change the name “Office Open XML” to something else. I have to stop and think every time I read the words to make sure we’re not talking about “Open Office.” Besides, “Office Open” is a very convoluted use of the English language (i.e. putting the “adjective” after the noun). It’s a really dumb name. Can Microsoft really avoid trademark infringement simply by changing word order? Sue them for a half billion.
That said, Microsoft Word 2007 finally got it right by fixing the menu organization. And Word’s editing notation capabilities are unparalleled. Like it or not, Windows and Office are going to be around a long time. If open Office Open formats will make Microsoft’s programs more accessible to open source programmers, then ISO recognition can be a good thing.
September 10th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
The recognition of the format does not completely relinquish their rights to its use, or immediately make them more accessible to open source. Unfortunately, I think that should be implied, but as I understand its not at all.
I completely agree on the naming similarity, and potential trademark infringement though… There is no way Microsoft would allow anyone to get away with creating a file format named ‘XML Word’. It is absurd that Office Open XML is a valid name, considering its similarity to both Open Office as a program name and to OpenOffice.org XML as a file format.