Microsoft takes file formats to Ecma - but what about the ultimate beneficiaries?
Microsoft today announced, together with an assortment of other vendors and its own customers, the establishment of an
Ecma International technical committee to standardise the Microsoft Office Open XML Formats, which the company introduced as the
new default file formats for Office "12" in June this year. This is not the first time Microsoft has turned to the 44 year old, Swiss-based standards organisation. It was
5 years ago, together with HP and Intel, that the company co-sponsored the submission of its Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) and C# programming language to Ecma, which were ratified as standards ECMA-335 and ECMA-334 respectively within 18 months.
The company also announced significant changes to the licensing terms associated with file formats and a commitment, emulating that made by Sun in September around the
OASIS Open Document Format standard (described
here by the company's open source czar Simon Phipps), not to enforce relevant patents, which the company claims will remove the obstacles (nicely summarised
here by
David Berlind over at ZDNet) that prevent their implementation in open source software (including that licensed under the GPL).
In our discussions with Jean Paoli, Microsoft's
cup-winning XML architect who is credited as one of the driving forces behind his employers embrace of XML since joining the company in 1996, he was at pains to point out that these moves are a continuation of Microsoft's 7-year effort to promote interoperability and foster a broader development community around Office that's been going on since the (albeit limited) support of XML file properties in Office 2000 - and not a response to the much-discussed, politically-charged file format debate raging in Massachussetts (plaudits to David Berlind once again for some excellent reporting
here and
here). Jean claimed that the timing of the announcement is coincidental and a result of the need to wait for the file format to become sufficiently stable, heralded by the
first beta release of Office "12".
Frankly, I don't buy this. There is a long way to go before Office "12" is released and the file format could change as a result of beta testing. Microsoft could have announced its intention (and would have benefited from a PR perspective) to standardise the file format back in June - and anyway, stability of the file format has very little to do with the ability to make technology licensing changes.
There's little doubt in my mind that Microsoft is feeling the competitive heat from ODF (and the wrangling in Massachussetts has only served to raise the temperature gauge a few notches) and these announcements are an attempt to cool things down. So, how effective will they be?
By opening up its previously closely-guarded file formats, Microsoft had already been moving in the right direction to address concerns about vendor lock-in. However, opponents could justifiably claim that the company had not gone far enough, since future development of the file format remained a Redmond responsibility, giving Microsoft too much control and stifling innovation. With the Office XML formats now under the control of an Ecma committee, such criticisms seem more difficult to justify.
There are a couple of other noteworthy aspects to the Ecma standardisation effort. First, Ecma has an agreement with the International Standards Organisation (ISO) through which it is able to submit its specifications to ISO's Fast-Track process (both C# and the CLI became ISO standards within 18 months of becoming Ecma standards). Assuming Ecma takes the same path with the XML file format, it will become an official standard. ODF, whilst undoubtedly an open standard is, as David Berlind points out
'on it's (sic) way to being a de facto standard' since
'OASIS officially isn't a standards organization like the American National Standards Institute or the International Organization of Standardization (ISO) are'. Second, Microsoft will point out that is addressing the needs of the ultimate beneficiaries of standardisation through the participation of organisations such as Barclays Capital and the British Library in its submission to Ecma, and will contrast that with the makeup of the
OASIS Open Document Format technical committee, which (with the exception of 3 individual members) is populated exclusively by vendors, comprising members from Adobe, IBM, Intel (interestingly participating in both standardisation efforts), Novell and Sun Microsystems.
The changes to the licensing terms, coupled with patent amnesty, appear (
Disclaimer: I am neither a lawyer nor an expert in open source licensing) to address the concerns of the open source community. No doubt, this will be subject to much debate and scrutiny in the coming days and weeks.
By my reckoning, this announcement certainly furthers Microsoft's stated aims of promoting interoperability and fostering a third party development community around Office. At the same time, whether it's Microsoft's stated objective or not, it also serves to help level the playing field with ODF.
Ultimately though, it's important not to lose sight, amidst all the politicking and vendor positioning, of the reasons for this debate in the first place. Organisations, especially those in the public sector, need standards to faciliate interoperability and ensure that their employees, customers, partners and citizens, are able to access information now and in the future without being beholden to particular vendors and technologies. As long as there are competing standards, they are left in an invidious position. If they opt for ODF, will they have access to all of their legacy documents? If they opt for the Office Open XML Formats (or whatever ECMA-XXX standard it becomes), will there be alternative suppliers offering equivalent functionality or will they remain beholden to Microsoft?
This beggars the obvious question. If Microsoft, as it claims, has the interest of these organisations at heart, why not support ODF rather than promoting an alternative standard? Ray Ozzie is
reported as claiming this is down to resourcing issues, but the company has shown it can marshall its resources in response to customer requests. The recently announced
support for PDF is a case in point, with Senior VP Steven Sinofsky stating
'The Save As PDF technology represents a direct response to our customers, ... Requests for PDF functionality in Office represent the #2 request when customers interact with our worldwide support organization. Every month we receive over 120,000 queries worldwide for “PDF” through Microsoft Office Online.' Couldn't Microsoft do the same with ODF?
I doubt it - Microsoft would almost certainly point to concerns about backward compatibility, which is definitely a concern to customers. Claims about backward compatibility are more difficult to refute, without access to the closed formats. However if ODF-based solutions can demonstrate complete backward compatibility with Office formats then Microsoft won't have a case. So what then?
Well, there would be a follow-up argument about "loss of fidelity". Microsoft would claim that the ODF format is insufficient to support all of the functionality which Office provides. The ongoing
debate (thanks once again Mr Berlind) in Massachusets around access for the disabled highlights the complexity here. How much of the accessibility functionality is down to the file format versus the application? As David points out:
'If the lion's share of a document's accessibility to the disabled is largely independent of its file format, then many of Microsoft Office's accessibility features that are accessibile to documents stored in Microsoft's formats become would be accessible to documents stored in ODF. If this is the case, the dispute about ODF vs. the Office XML Reference Schema must yield the spotlight to bigger question of whether or not it's the state's decision to standardize on ODF that's allegedly intefering with document access for the disabled, or is it Microsoft's refusal to support ODF with its "accessibility tool" (Microsoft Office) that's getting in the way'So, where does that leave things. Microsoft, whether pushed to or not, has taken a further step in opening up its file formats and seemingly relinquished control of their ongoing development. At the same time, the company appears to have put the Office Open XML Formats on a level footing with ODF. But the situation for organisations needing to exploit files based on those formats is no clearer. We certainly haven't heard the last of this debate.
