Dueling XML-Based Standards Aim To Replace Proprietary Office File Formats

Openness and standardization are hallmarks of the Internet age, having rightly achieved exalted status among IT leaders. The Web wouldn’t exist without such standards and the open, democratic process under which they are created. Yet many enterprises have a substantial amount of their intellectual property tied up in files using proprietary, binary Microsoft Office formats. Some organizations, particularly government agencies, are concerned about the long-term viability of proprietary formats. As a result, efforts are underway to establish and promote open-standard document formats freely available to all office applications.

 Standardization Status

As technology pundits frequently observe, the trouble with standards is there are so many to choose from, and the battle over office file formats proves the adage. The OpenDocument Format, or ODF, was the first entrant into the standards arena, initially proposed in 2002 and ratified by the OASIS consortium in 2005. ODF was developed outside of Microsoft’s influence and ignored in the company’s products. When some organizations, most notably the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, proposed adopting ODF, Andrew Updegrove, a partner at Gesmer Updegrove and expert on the standards process, says Microsoft perceived a threat to its dominant position in productivity software and attempted to undermine it.

Updegrove says Microsoft undertook an extensive lobbying campaign to reverse the Massachusetts decision while simultaneously developing its own competing XML-based document format, Office Open XML, or OOXML—subsequently introduced in Office 2007. The path to standardization began when Microsoft submitted OOXML to Ecma in 2006. In the end, Ecma approved OOXML, and after a relentless campaign, ISO joined suit last year. With ODF having already achieved ISO standardization, the industry now must contend with two competing XML-based document formats.

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