DocumentID: OI CFP-F29500:2007 ShortTitle: Review of OOXML LongTitle: OpenISO.org Review of OOXML (ECMA-376): Call For Participation Date: 2007-12-06 Working-Group: discuss@OpenISO.org Editor: Norbert Bollow About: ECMA-376 OpenISO.org Review of OOXML Call For Participation What is OOXML (ECMA-376)? Via ECMA, Microsoft has submitted documentation for the XML-based file formats used by the company's "Excel 2007", "PowerPoint 2007" and "Word 2007" products for "fast track" approval as an "international standard". Why is this so controversial? There is already an international standard for XML-based file formats for office documents, known as the "OpenDocument Format" (ODF; standardized as ISO/IEC 29300). Nobody denies Microsoft's right to freely decide that the company does not want to support this international standard in their products, and nobody denies that computer users have the freedom to choose office software which supports this standard, such as e.g. OpenOffice, KOffice or Google Docs. However many people feel that Microsoft's initiative to get their file formats also recognized as an "international standard" is an abuse of the system of international standardization and should in fact be seen as an anti-competitive attack against the company's competitors, especially against Free Software like OpenOffice. In fact when Microsoft chose the name "Office Open XML" for their file formats, they must have been aware that choosing this name must necessarily create confusion with "OpenOffice", the name of the leading competing software package which has been using an open XML-based office documents format since long before Microsoft started pushing "Office Open XML". What has happened? Microsoft has intensively lobbied the various national member organizations of ISO/IEC and encouraged a large number of economically dependent partner companies to acquire voting rights in the concerned national decision-making committees. Nevertheless, in the international vote, the required qualified majority for approval of the OOXML specification as an "international standard" has not been reached. What happens next? There will be a "Ballot Resolution Meeting" in Geneva on February 25-29, 2008, with the goal of deciding changes to the OOXML specification which could make it acceptable in the eyes of the national ISO/IEC member organizations that have voted against approval of OOXML as an international standard. If (as can be expected) some changes are adopted at the "Ballot Resolution Meeting", the national member bodies will have 30 days time to review the changes and decide whether to change their vote, e.g. from "APPROVE" to "DISAPPROVE" or vice versa. The national standardization organizations can at that stage change their vote for any reason, and they are not required to provide a justification for changing their vote. What is OpenISO.org's role? Since it is clear from preliminary discussions that OOXML does not fulfil OpenISO.org's criteria for an open standard, OpenISO.org will prepare a "problem report" document explaining the main problems why from the perspective of OpenISO.org's criteria, OOXML cannot be accepted as an open standard, and should not be approved as an "international standard". This "problem report" document should be ready by mid-February 2008 so that it can help guide the discussions at the "Ballot Resolution Meeting" to focusing on the most important questions, and so that after "Ballot Resolution Meeting" the "problem report" can assist the national standardization organizations in evaluating whether or not the important issues have been appropriately resolved. Who can participate in the OpenISO.org Review of OOXML? Everyone is welcome to participate who is able to participate in a constructive manner in a fact-oriented discussion that is conducted via email, in the English language. (Unfortunately currently no resources are available for facilitating participation in other languages.) Participation by people with disabilities and other accessibility experts is especially requested, since the evaluation of information technology standards with regard to their effect of people with disabilities is of the utmost moral importance! How to participate: Subscribe to the OpenISO.org "discuss" mailing list where the OpenISO.org Review of OOXML will be conducted: http://www.openiso.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss Please join in and contribute! Norbert Bollow Founder of OpenISO.org P.S. Here are some further links: OOXML specification in HTML format: http://OpenISO.org/Ecma/376/ OpenISO.org Core Guidelines http://OpenISO.org/OI/A200