Open XML approved by ECMA
Today marks a very important day on interoperability for Microsoft. Following a series of events that include the Open Specification Promise, the Interoperability Executive Customer Council, the Interoperability Vendor Alliance, and of course our partnership with Novell, ECMA (European association for standardizing information and communication systems - phew!) approved Microsoft's Open XML file format specification as an international standard.
The news of standardization is a welcome milestone after many months of work to develop (and document) the new file format. Leveraging an XML core, the format is not only backward compatible with billions of existing Microsoft Office documents, but is also future-proofed by complete openness and extensibility. Companies like Corel and Novell are already adopting the specification (all 6000 pages), which suggests a strong demand for the rich features that the file format will offer.
After hearing the news, I took a scan of the blogosphere to see what folks were saying. I have to admit there were some pretty serious crits out there, and I am floored that anyone can see this as a bad thing. The fact that Microsoft finally unlocked its files is a huge milestone! The fact that the specification is being adopted by other vendors so quickly is great. The fact that Open XML and other file formats (namely ODF) can co-exist - and that a translator has already been developed to go from one to the other - demonstrates tremendous value for the market! All goodness!
For those who are curious, Open XML is a very necessary effort. One file format specification will not work for all document authoring tools as the Open Document format has readily demonstrated. While the ODF became an ISO standard nearly seven months ago, its authors chose "right now" over "right," in terms of features. The specification is largely incomplete - lacking support for such things as accessibility and formulas (currently being addressed), which are key elements needed for effective usability (More on that at McGibbon's blog).
In terms of Microsoft's decision to evolve the file format, we realized that new technologies afforded us the opportunity to make our files more flexible for customers. Years ago, when the binary formats were developed, the technical ecosystem was a much different space. Today, formats and protocols allow us to link virtually any technology to another, suggesting that the nature of documents would, could, and should evolve. Today, we see a distinct seperation of content from presentation or formatting. What sits between the two is metadata providing a description for what the document's content contains. This has become a best practice for web development, and is now happening for documents as well. In the end, documents and their content become much more fluid in terms of how they are used, accessed, and managed. The great news for Microsoft Office users is that they have much greater access to, and control over, their data through this open file format.
OpenOffice, incidentally, is free to implement the specification just as Novell and Corel have done...
As a final thought, I think its very telling that IBM was the only ECMA participant to vote against the standardization of Open XML. For a company who's Vice President of Standards pitches openness, choice, and innovation, it seems odd that they would not support the standardization of a file format that was so valuable to so many of IBM's current customers!
Self serving? Makes me wonder. More thoughts on that in a previous post...
