Walter Watts
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Panel Rejects Microsoft’s Open Format
« on: 2007-09-04 23:27:34 » |
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The little ones and zeros just wanna be FREE!!!
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--Walter
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The New York Times
September 5, 2007
Panel Rejects Microsoft’s Open Format
By KEVIN J. O’BRIEN
A panel of software experts yesterday unexpectedly rebuffed Microsoft’s bid to have its open document format, Office Open XML, recognized as an international standard. The decision complicates the company’s effort to extend its dominance to the emerging field of open documents.
After five months of electronic balloting, Microsoft failed to meet the two voting criteria to win a designation as an approved standard from the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization, or the I.S.O., and the International Electrotechnical Commission, or I.E.C.
The fight over the standard, while technically arcane, is commercially important because more governments are demanding interchangeable open document formats for their vast amounts of records, instead of proprietary formats tied to one company’s software. The only standardized format now available to government buyers is OpenDocument Format, developed by a consortium led by I.B.M., which the I.S.O. approved in May 2006.
The timing of the decision may be inopportune for Microsoft, coming two weeks before the European Court of First Instance is to rule on its appeal of the European Commission’s 2004 antitrust decision against the company.
Of the 87 countries that participated, 26 percent opposed Microsoft’s bid. Under the rules for approval, no more than 25 percent of the countries could oppose the bid. Microsoft also failed to win the vote of 66 percent of 41 countries on another panel of I.S.O. and I.E.C. members.
The tug of war up to the vote was reminiscent of the company’s squabbles with rivals. The critics of the company say that Microsoft’s dominance of personal computer software gives it an unfair advantage, while the company maintains that its innovations and technical expertise make for superior products.
More than 90 percent of all digital text documents in the world are in Microsoft formats, according to the consulting firm Gartner. Many national and local governments in Europe and some in the United States are requiring open formats to reduce their reliance on Microsoft. In an open format, the computer code is public, which allows developers to create new products that use it without paying royalties.
Tom Robertson, Microsoft’s general manager for interoperability and standards, predicted that Microsoft’s format would be eventually adopted.
“Open XML is already widely available and is being used by Apple and Novell,” he said. “It is in the Palm operating system, and in the Java and Linux operating environments.”
Some critics of Microsoft blamed the company’s own aggressive lobbying for its defeat.
A member of an advisory panel that voted on the standards issue in Malaysia, who declined to be identified, said Microsoft’s lobbying in the country had reached into high levels of government.
The Industry Standards Committee on Information Technology of Malaysia decided to vote against Microsoft’s format, but the Malaysian government abstained in the end.
Mr. Robertson said Microsoft had sought to persuade voters of the merits of Office Open XML, just as I.B.M. had lobbied against it. “Many countries have taken part in this vote, including countries that supported us,” he said.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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