Adoption of Microsoft OXML Standard in SEE Lacks Transparency

25 March 2008

In the ultimate battle for control over global IT standard for documents - between Microsoft-promoted OXML and Sun and IBM-backed Open Document Format (ODF), India took the side of existing ODF.

The standards committee of the Bureau of Indian Standards decided to vote against Microsoft\'s OXML being adopted as a standard, along with existing ODF, by the Geneva-based international standards body, ISO, where representatives of member countries are slated to decide on the matter by March 29.

Ironically, all major representatives of Indian IT industry - Infosys, Wipro, TCS and Nasscomm - voted, at Thursday\'s meeting of the standards committee, to adopt OXML as a standard only to be overruled in the 22 member committee, dominated by academia, government bodies and Microsoft`s global rivals, Red Hat, Sun and IBM.

Microsoft understandably expressed its disappointment, but noted they were `encouraged by the support from NASSCOM, TCS, Wipro and Infosys who voted in favor of Open XML. We are committed to working towards what is best for the Indian IT industry`.

We should note that the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has presented all national standardization bodies with six questions referring to application independence; support for pre-existing open standards; backward compatibility; proprietary extensions; existence of dual standards; and legal safety?

FSFE believes that, unless they can give conclusive answers to the six questions, the national bodies should vote no in IEC/ISO and request that Microsoft incorporate its work on MS-OOXML into ISO/IEC 26300:2006 (Open Document Format).

Linux World reports that in the region of SEE, OOXML got the support and has been adopted, in fact, as standard by Bulgaria, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia. Linux World notes the many complaints by free software movements and activists in Croatia and Serbia, regarding the lack of transparency and public debate on the process, in spite of the fact that local standardisation bodies are public, non-profit institutions.

No OOXML initiative has organized an online petition in opposition to the proposed adoption of MS Office Format as ISO Standard.