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Microsoft's Office Open XML document file format is currently Ecma International standard 376, approved on 7 December 2006. Ecma International submitted the specification to ISO/IEC's Joint Technical Committee 1. Controversially, it is currently undergoing fast-track standardization as DIS 29500 (Draft International Standard 29500).[1]

In a round of voting by ISO/IEC national body members in September 2007, the draft text was not approved. A ballot resolution process has amended the text.[2] On 2 April 2008, ISO announced that the Office Open XML format has reached the necessary votes to be approved for acceptance as an ISO/IEC International Standard.[3] As a result, Office Open XML may become an ISO/IEC international standard (IS 29500) later this year.

There have been allegations that the ISO ballot process for Office Open XML was marred with voting irregularities and heavy-handed tactics by some stakeholders.[4][5][6]

Contents

Standardization within Ecma International

More than a year after being asked by the European Union to standardize their Office 2003 XML formatscitation needed, Microsoft submitted Office Open XML to the Ecma International standardization process to make it an open standard. Ecma formed a technical committee (TC45) in order to produce and maintain a "formal standard for office productivity applications that is fully compatible with the Office Open XML Formats, submitted by Microsoft".[7] The technical committee is chaired by Microsoft[8] and includes members from Apple, Canon, Intel, NextPage, Novell, Pioneer, Statoil ASA, Toshiba, The United States Library of Congress, The British Library and the Gnome Foundation.[9]

Ecma International approved Office Open XML as an Ecma standard (Ecma-376) on 7 December 2006[10] and submitted the approved submission for fasttracking standardization to ISO/IEC JTC 1.

The Office Open XML File Formats standard, Ecma-376, can be freely downloaded from Ecma International.[11]

Submission to ISO and IEC

As an ISO/IEC JTC 1 external Category A liaison, Ecma International has submitted Ecma-376 to the JTC 1 fast track standardization process. To meet the requirements of this process,[12] Ecma has submitted the documents "Explanatory report on Office Open XML Standard (Ecma-376) submitted to JTC 1 for fast-track"[13] and "Licensing conditions that Microsoft offers for Office Open XML".[14] ISO and IEC classified the specification as DIS 29500 Information technology – Office Open XML file formats.[15]

The fast track process consists of a contradictions phase, a ballot phase, and a ballot resolution phase.

During the contradictions phase, ISO and IEC members submitted perceived contradictions to JTC 1. During the ballot phase the members voted on the specification as it was submitted by Ecma and submitted editorial and technical comments with their vote. In the ballot resolution phase the submitted comments were addressed and members invited to reconsider their vote.

Ballot result

Main article: Office Open XML Ballot Results

ISO announced in September 2007 that the submitted draft of Office Open XML had not achieved the required number of votes for approval during the ballot phase.[16] Eighty-seven ISO and IEC member countries responded to the ballot. There were 51 votes of "approval", 18 votes of "disapproval" and 18 abstentions. "P-members", who were required to vote, had to approve by 66.67% for the text to be approved. The P-members voted 17 in favor out of 32, below the required threshold for approval. Also, no more than 25% of the total member votes may be negative for the text to be approved, and this requirement was also not met since 26% of the total votes were negative. The standardization process then entered its ballot resolution phase, described below.

Response to the ballot

Ecma produced a draft "Disposition of comments" that addresses the 1,027 distinct "NB comments" (that is, comments by national bodies,) submitted in the letter ballot phase, consisting of some 1,600 pages of commentary and proposed changes. The ISO/IEC members had 6 weeks to review this draft, and had an opportunity to participate in several informal conference call sessions with the Ecma TC to discuss it before the BRM.[17]

Ballot resolution process

A Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) is an integral part of the ballot resolution phase. The outcome of, and period following, this meeting decides whether DIS 29500 succeeds or fails in its bid to become an International Standard. The DIS 29500 BRM took place in late February 2008.

Final outcome

At the BRM, 873 proposed changes to the specification were submitted by Ecma (of their 1,027 responses, 154 proposed no change). Of these only 20% were discussed and modified in meeting sessions, given the 5 day time limit of the meeting. The remaining 80% were not discussed and were subject to a voting mechanism approved by the meeting (see Resolution 37 of the meeting resolutions cited below). Using this voting mechanism NBs could approve, disapprove or abstain on each and every one of these proposed changes. This allowed a set of approved changes to be decided upon without discussion.[18]

With the original submitted draft used as the base, all the agreed upon changes are applied by the Project Editor to create a new document incorporating the changes mandated by the BRM. In parallel with this, NBs have 30 days after the BRM in which to decide whether to amend their votes of 2 September 2007. At the end of March 2008, the ISO voting criteria had been met,[3] meaning the new text would be passed for publication as an ISO/IEC standard (JTC 1 Directives[12] clause 13.9) subject to appeals being resolved.

Appeals

Four ISO members filed appeals by the deadline: the bodies of South Africa,[19][20] Brazil, India[21] and Venezuela.[22] Since the appeals system is designed to find a solution by consensus, it was unlikely that the process would result in ISO/IEC abandoning progress of DIS 29500.[22] The CEOs of ISO and IEC advised the management board that these appeals should no longer be processed any further, saying that the standardization process was correctly done.[23]

The main issue in the appeals was the BRM procedures. The 3 appealing countries did not appeal during the BRM and even all voted approval on the resolution that allowed for voting on each of the resolutions that had not been discussed in the plenary meeting through means of a form..[24] The three countries appealing used that form vote for a disapproval vote of most of the responses (in total only 4 countries did that) but failed to have a significant number of responses disapproved.

The CEOs of ISO and IEC each had one month to examine the appeals and advised to the Technical Management Board (TMB) of ISO and IEC to dimiss the appeals. None of the appeals did get sufficient support eitherof the TMB's and the go-ahead was given to publish ISO/IEC DIS 29500, Information technology – Office Open XML formats, as an ISO/IEC International Standard.[25]

Since the the appeals were dismissed the text goes into the publication process which is expected to take several weeks. It may take additional time for ISO/IEC to make the standard a free publication, if it becomes one.

A further letter of protest was filed by Open Source Leverandørforeningen, a Danish open source vendor association [26] although no appeal has been filed directly by Dansk Standard itself.

Examination of fast track process

Deutsches Institut für Normung (DIN, Germany) voted "yes" on DIS 29500, but considers the fast track process will need amendment for standards of this size in the light of how the standardisation of OOXML proceeded.[27]

Maintenance regime

The precise details of a maintenance regime for Office Open XML (should it become an ISO/IEC Standard) are yet to be determined. Ecma has put forward a maintenance proposal,[28] but JTC 1 has named SC 34 as the designated maintenance body for the Standard (should it be approved).citation needed

Whatever maintenance regime is decided, the JTC 1 Directives stipulate that:

  • Proposals to amend the text, and acceptance of any such amendments, are subject to normal JTC 1 voting processes (JTC 1 Directives[12] clause 15.5)
  • The standard cannot be "stabilised" (no longer subject to periodic maintenance) except through approval in a JTC 1 ballot (JTC 1 Directives,[12] clause 15.6.2).
  • For the standard to be stabilised it must have passed through one review cycle (JTC 1 Directives,[12] clause 15.6.1). In this review cycle the text would have to have been re-written to comply with ISO's formatting and verbal requirements (JTC 1 Directives,[12] clause 13.4).

ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 has decided to use two ad hoc working groups for maintenance of ISO/IEC 29500:[29] a short term workgroup to collect comments on the newly approved standard and a long term maintenance workgroup that will be in full control of the maintenance work on ISO/IEC 29500. Ecma will be invited as a liaison to provide expertise on maintenance of the standard.

Complaints about the national bodies process

Protest against OOXML ISO standardization in Oslo, Norway.
Protest against OOXML ISO standardization in Oslo, Norway.
Office Open XML ISO standardization protest.
Office Open XML ISO standardization protest.

Complaints about the procedures in the national bodies have surfaced during the five-month ballot process.

  • An article on Ars Technica sources Groklaw stating that at Portugal's national body TC meeting, "representatives from Microsoft attempted to argue that Sun Microsystems, the creators and supporters of the competing OpenDocument format (ODF), could not be given a seat at the conference table because there was a lack of chairs."[30]
  • In Sweden, Microsoft notified the Swedish Standards Institute (SIS) that an employee sent a memo to two of its partners, requesting them to join the SIS committee and vote in favor of Office Open XML in return for "marketing contributions."[31] Jason Matusow, a Director in the Corporate Standards Strategy Team at Microsoft, stated that the memo was the action of an individual employee acting outside company policy, and that the memo was retracted as soon as it was discovered.[32] SIS have since changed their voting procedure so that you have to actually participate before you are allowed to vote.[33]
  • Sweden invalidated its vote (80% was for approval) as one company cast more than one vote, which is against SIS policy.[34]
  • In Switzerland, SNV registered a vote of "approval with comments," and there was some criticism about a "conflict of interest" regarding the chairman of the UK 14 sub-committee, who did not allow discussion of licensing, economic and political arguments.[35][36] In addition, the chairman of the relevant SNV parent committee is also the secretary general of Ecma International, which approved OOXML as a standard. Further complaints regarded "committee stuffing", which is however allowed by present SNV rules, and non-adherence to SNV rules by the UK 14 chairman, which resulted in a re-vote with the same result.
  • In India, Open Source Initiative board member Raj Mathur charges that Microsoft supplied a form letter to several non-profit organizations to "bombard the Indian IT Secretary and the Additional Director General of the Bureau of Indian Standards with letters supporting its OOXML proposal."[37]
  • Australia's peak standards body, Standards Australia, was criticized for its handling of the OOXML process by industry figures, including the New Zealand Open Source Society, open source advisory firm Waugh Partners, Australian National University Professor Roger Clarke, standards expert Andrew Updegrove, IBM and Google. Standards Australia sent ISO SC34 member and XML and Schematron specialist Rick Jelliffe to the ISO vote, despite critics alleging that Jelliffe is not independent of Microsoft. Jelliffe was paid by Microsoft to create Relax NG schemas for OOXML through Ecma certification, and had previously been in the news after being paid by Microsoft to improve incorrect Wikipedia articles about Office Open XML. Late in the process, Standards Australia broke a previous public pledge to send two internal employees to the ISO.[38][39]
  • Norway's vote was decided by Standard Norge, the mostly opposing viewpoints of the technical committee were ignored after they were unable to reach consensus. Membership in the technical committee had risen from 6-7 to 30 members; all of the pre-OOXML members argued in favour of a "no" vote.[40][41][42][43]
  • The European Commission's IDABC program runs the "Open Source Observatory" which is "dedicated to Free/Libre/Open Source Software."[44] Via its "Open Source News", it has criticized the standardization process.
    • It states that in Germany, two opponents of Office Open XML, Deutsche Telekom and Google, were not allowed to vote[45] because they tried to join the committee last-minute.[46] Open Source News says, "Participants described the process as ludicrous."
    • It alleges that in the Netherlands, "the chair of the national standardization committee deciding on OOXML, protested that the almost unanimous conditional approval was blocked by Microsoft."[45]
    • It states that Poland's technical committee KT 171 rejected Office Open XML.[47] The vote was invalidated and assigned to KT 182. A member of Poland's Linux community believes this was due to "reorganisation in the Polish standardisation body." KT 182 voted to approve Office Open XML.[48]
    • It alleges that in Spain, Microsoft submitted misinformation to the Spanish standardization committee suggesting that the autonomous region of Andalucía supported the company's Office Open XML-proposal.[49]
    • It states that in Portugal, eleven companies (including OpenDocument supporter IBM) and open source advocacy groups requested that Portugal's ministry of Economy and Innovation investigate Portugal's vote on Office Open XML.[50]

After the specification was officially accepted as an ISO standard, OpenDocument supporters Red Hat, Ubuntu, and IBM claimed the ISO is losing credibility.[51][52] Ubuntu even went so far as to claim that it would not implement OOXML. IBM reiterated its support for ODF.

Investigation of Microsoft by the European Commission

The European Commission has started an antitrust investigation into the interoperability of the Office Open XML format on the request of European Committee for Interoperable Systems, "a coalition of Microsoft's largest competitors".[54][55][56] Anonymous source(s) of the Wall Street Journal claim that this investigation also includes an investigation into the ISO/SEC standardization process.[57] The Financial Times reports that several national organizations in Europe have confirmed receipt of a letter by the European Commission. The letters ask for views on these charges and any supporting details of "alleged irregularities in several countries over the OOXML standardization proposal, and accusations of attempts to influence voting."[58]

Microsoft complaints about competitors

In an open letter, Microsoft attacked IBM's opposition to the Office Open XML standardization process, saying

"On December 7th, Ecma approved the adoption of Open XML as an international open standard. The vote was nearly unanimous; of the 21 members, IBM’s was the sole dissenting vote. IBM again was the lone dissenter when Ecma also agreed to submit Open XML as a standard for ratification by ISO/IEC JTC1."[59]

Nicos Tsilas, Microsoft's senior director of interoperability and intellectual property policy, expressed concern that IBM and the Free Software Foundation have been lobbying governments to mandate the use of the rival OpenDocument format (ODF) to the exclusion of other formats. In his opinion, they are "using government intervention as a way to compete" as they "couldn't compete technically."[60]

"IBM led a global campaign urging national bodies to... not even consider Open XML, because ODF had made it through ISO/IEC JTC1 first."

"IBM have asked governments to have an open-source, exclusive purchasing policy."

But another ZDNet story quotes Tsilas questioning why these accusations are coming forth.[61] The slip of the tongue by Tsilas of open source instead of open standards. Office Open XML is not open source but open standards. "There are good arguments for and against mandating open source in government — protecting business models or profit streams should not be among them" and that Office Open XML is supposed to be an open standard like ODF, "How, then, can adopting the latter "harm Microsoft's profit stream"? And since when has an open standard been "a product"?"

Arguments in support and criticism of Office Open XML standard

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Please see the discussion on the talk page. (February 2008)
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Support

Microsoft has argued for standardization on the Open XML community web site.[62] The Microsoft arguments for Office Open XML include that it is designed to cover most kinds of document data, so that old documents can be converted to Office Open XML with little data loss; that the format is compact, since it is compressed; that it is easy to learn; and that it inherits a lot of benefits from XML, such as document data integration, Unicode, and easy integration of new formats.

To counter this argument, ODF Alliance India published an extensive technical report in 2007 containing concrete issues by members of the association, as well as replies from Microsoft.[63] In December 2007 Ecma International announced that many of reported issues will be taken into account in next edition of the standardisation proposal to ISO.[64]

User base argument

The most widely used office productivity packages currently rely on various proprietary and reverse engineered binary file formats such as doc, ppt and xls. For users of the binary formats there could be an advantage to migrating to an open XML standard that maps the features of previous binary file formats. The Office Open XML standard explicitly states this as a goal, in order to preserve investments in existing files and applications.[65]

Microsoft key benefits arguments

Microsoft makes the following claims about the benefits of Office Open XML as compared to the format currently used with Microsoft software: integration of business information with documents, open and royalty-free specification, compact and robust file format, safer documents, easier integration, transparency and improved information security, and compatibility.[66]

Policy arguments

With regards to the alleged overlap in scope with the OpenDocument format, Ecma has provided the following policy arguments in favor of standardization: overlap in scope of ISO/IEC standards is common and can serve a practical purpose; Office Open XML addresses distinct user requirements; The OpenDocument format and Office Open XML are structured to meet different user requirements; and Office Open XML and Opendocument can serve as duo-standards.[67]

Technical arguments

  • The use of the Open Packaging specification which allows for Indirection, Chunking and Relative indirection.[68]
  • Uses the ZIP format, making ZIP part of the standard. Due to compression, files are smaller than current binary formats.[68]
  • It supports custom data elements for integration of data specific to an application or an organisation that wants to use the format.[68]
  • It defines spreadsheet formulas.[69]
  • Office Open XML contains alternate representations for the XML schemas and extensibility mechanisms using RELAX NG (ISO/IEC 19757-2) and NVDL (ISO/IEC 19757-4.)[68]
  • No restriction on image, audio or video types, Book 1 §14.2.12.[68]
  • Embedded controls can be of any type, such as Java or ActiveX, Book 1 §15.2.8.[68]
  • WordprocessingML font specifications can include font metrics and PANOSE information to assist in finding a substitution font if the original is not available, Book 3 §2.10.5.[68]
  • In the situation where a consuming application might not be capable of interpreting what a producing application wrote, Office Open XML defines an Alternate Content Block which can represent said data in an alternate format, such as an image. Book 3 §2.18.4.[68]
  • Internationalization support. For example date representation: In WordprocessingML (Book 4 §2.18.7) and SpreadsheetML (Book 4 §3.18.5), calendar dates after 1900 CE can be written using Gregorian (three variants), Hebrew, Hijri, Japanese (Emperor Era), Korean (Tangun Era), Saka, Taiwanese, and Thai formats. Also, there are several internationalization related spreadsheet conversion functions.[68]
  • Custom XML schema extensibility allows the addition of features to the format. This can, for instance, facilitate conversion from other formats and future features that are not part of the official specification.[68]
  • The format has features that can be used to enhance performance. For instance, SpreadsheetML has an optional performance feature to track which cells have to be recalculated when spreadsheet data changes.citation needed In spreadsheet formats lacking this feature, all of the used cells in the entire spreadsheet must be verified at least once for recalculations of the spreadsheet.citation needed

Criticism

The standard has been the subject of debate within the software industry. Some of the participants in the approval process are generally supportive of eventual ISO standardization, but are unwilling to support the JTC 1 fast track process.citation needed At over 6,000 pages in length, the specification is difficult to evaluate.[70] Objectors also complain that there could be user confusion regarding the two standards because of the similarity of the "Office Open XML" name to both "OpenDocument" and "OpenOffice".citation needed. Objectors also argue that an ISO standard for documents already exists and there is no need for a second standard.

Sources of opposition

Opposition originates from organizations and individuals including the free software and open source communities, FFII, OpenDocument supporters[71] and technology companies that develop office software around the competing OpenDocument format, which was approved as an ISO standard in 2006, such as Novell[72] and IBM.[73] Office Open XML has been criticized by these organisations on technical and legal grounds.

In addition, the standardization process itself has been questioned, including claims of balloting irregularities by some technical committees, Microsoft representatives and Microsoft partners in trying to get Office Open XML approved.

Afterwards

During a panel discussion on Red Hat Summit in Boston in June 2008 Microsoft's national technology officer Stuart McKee said that "ODF has clearly won". He made also a following statement:[74][75]

“ We found ourselves so far down the path of the standardisation process with no knowledge. We don't have a standards office. We didn't have a standards department in the company. I think the one thing that we would acknowledge and that we were frustrated with is that, by the time we realised what was going on and the competitive environment that was underway, we were late and there was a lot of catch-up. It was very difficult to enter into conversations around the world where the debate had already been framed. ”

In an interview Richard Stallman, head of the Free Software Foundation, said:[76]

“ Microsoft corrupted many members of ISO in order to win approval for its phony 'open' document format, OOXML. This was so governments that keep their documents in a Microsoft-only format can pretend that they are using 'open standards.' The government of South Africa has filed an appeal against the decision, citing the irregularities in the process. ”

See also

References

  1. ^ ISO/IEC DIS 29500, Information technology -- Office Open XML file formats
  2. ^ "Ballot resolution meeting addresses comments on draft ISO/IEC 29500 standard". ISO News and Media (2008-03-05).
  3. ^ a b "ISO/IEC DIS 29500 receives necessary votes for approval as an International Standard". ISO (2008-04-02).
  4. ^ Fiveash, Kelly (2008-03-31). "OOXML approved as international standard?", The Register. Retrieved on 2008-04-01. 
  5. ^ Eric, Lai. "Microsoft admits Swedish employee promised incentives for Open XML support", computerworld.com. Retrieved on 2008-04-06. 
  6. ^ Microsoft accused of rigging OOXML votes - ZDNet.co.uk
  7. ^ "The new open standard safeguards the continued use of billions of existing documents". Ecma International. Retrieved on 2007-01-28.
  8. ^ "TC45 - Office Open XML Formats". Ecma International. Retrieved on 2007-02-08.
  9. ^ "TC45 - Office Open XML Formats". Retrieved on 2007-10-31.
  10. ^ Ecma International (December 7, 2006). "Ecma International approves Office Open XML standard". Press release. Retrieved on 2006-12-08.
  11. ^ Standard ECMA-376
  12. ^ a b c d e f "ISO/IEC JTC 1 Directives, 5th Edition, Version 2.0". iso. Retrieved on 2007-01-28.
  13. ^ Explanatory report on Office Open XML Standard (Ecma-376) submitted to JTC 1 for fast-track
  14. ^ Licensing conditions that Microsoft offers for Office Open XML
  15. ^ ISO/IEC DIS 29500, Information technology – Office Open XML file formats
  16. ^ International Organization for Standardization (September 4, 2007). "Vote closes on draft ISO/IEC DIS 29500 standard". Press release. Retrieved on 2007-09-04.
  17. ^ Tom Ngo (2008-01-14). "Proposed dispositions for National Body comments on DIS 29500 complete – New phase to begin". Ecma International. Retrieved on 2008-01-14.
  18. ^ SC 34. "Resolutions of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 Ballot Resolution Meeting".
  19. ^ Otter, Alastair (2008-05-23). "South Africa appeals against ISO’s OOXML decision". Tectonic.
  20. ^ "Appeal from the South African national body regarding the outcome of the fast-track processing of DIS 29500 Office open XML" (PDF). SABS (South African Bureau of Standards) (2008-05-22). Retrieved on 2008-05-24.
  21. ^ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named IndiaProtest
  22. ^ a b Espiner, Tom (2008-06-02). "Venezuela and India appeal OOXML ratification". ZDNet.co.uk.
  23. ^ Paul, Ryan (2008-07-10). "ISO leadership encourages rejection of OOXML appeal". Ars Technica. Retrieved on 2008-07-10.
  24. ^ http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc34/open/0989.pdf
  25. ^ "ISO and IEC members give go ahead on ISO/IEC DIS 29500". ISO (2008-08-15).
  26. ^ Ryan, Justin (2008-06-02). "Denmark Backs Up the OOXML Outrage". LinuxJournal.
  27. ^ Krempl, Stefan (2008-06-02). "Brazil and India lodge appeal against ISO standardisation of OOXML". Heise Online UK.
  28. ^ http://www.jtc1sc34.org/repository/0885.pdf
  29. ^ "Resolutions of SC 34 Plenary Meeting, 2008-04-05/09, Oslo, Norway". ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC34 Secretariat (2008-04-09).
  30. ^ "Office Open XML ISO certification process grows even murkier for Microsoft". Ars Technica (July 26, 2007).
  31. ^ "Microsoft pressed partners in Sweden to vote for OOXML".
  32. ^ heise online - Swedish Standards Institute declares Open XML vote void
  33. ^ IDG: Sis ändrar reglerna efter formatstriden
  34. ^ Sweden's OOXML vote declared invalid | InfoWorld | News | 2007-08-31 | By Martin Wallström
  35. ^ FSFE formal objection to the UK14 meeting. Free Software Foundation Europe. 2007-08-13.
  36. ^ Appeal to the decision by Swiss Internet User Group. 14 August 2007.
  37. ^ "Microsoft influencing partner NGOs to support OOXML in India". newsforge.net (March 4, 2008).
  38. ^ Gedda, Rodney (2008-02-20). "Microsoft developer joins Aussie OOXML standards delegation", Australia: Computerworld. Retrieved on 2008-03-31. 
  39. ^ Bushell-Embling, Dylan (2008-02-26). "Bias claim on big Office vote", The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved on 2008-04-20. 
  40. ^ "Open letter to ISO". Members of the technical committee (April 7, 2008).
  41. ^ "Orientation on Standards Norway’s handling of the vote on OOXML in ISO.". Standard Norge (April 4, 2008).
  42. ^ "OOXML irregularities in Norway". Tobias Brox (April 6, 2008).
  43. ^ "Standards Norway’s handling of the vote on OOXML in ISO". Standard Norge (2008-04-02).
  44. ^ IDABC - Open Source Observatory
  45. ^ a b "EU: Irregularities reported in OOXML ISO process". IDABC (August 28, 2007).
  46. ^ heise online - Unstimmigkeiten bei DIN-Entscheid zu Microsofts OpenXML beklagt
  47. ^ "PL: 'Poland likely to vote against OOXML'". IDABC (August 21, 2007).
  48. ^ "EU: No fast track approval for OOXML". IDABC (September 6, 2007).
  49. ^ "ES: Andalucía protests distortion in OOXML standardisation committee". IDABC (August 6, 2007).
  50. ^ "PT: Opponents of OOXML file appeal". IDABC (4 September 2007).
  51. ^ Ubuntu’s Shuttleworth blames ISO for OOXML’s win | Open Source | ZDNet.com
  52. ^ OOXML critics: ISO approval demonstrates the need for reform
  53. ^ Ballard, Mark (2008-06-10). "UK unix beardies appeal for $cash", GB: The Inquirer. Retrieved on 2008-06-10. 
  54. ^ "Microsoft runs into EU Vista charges" (2007-01-28). Retrieved on 2008-02-24.
  55. ^ "Press release by EU on Microsoft's antitrust investigation". EU (2008-01-14).
  56. ^ "EU looks into Microsoft's influence on ISO standardization process". heise (08.02.2008).
  57. ^ "Microsoft's Office Push Scrutinized by EU" (February 8, 2008).
  58. ^ "Probe into votes on Microsoft standard". Financial Times (March 5, 2008).
  59. ^ Interoperability, Choice and Open XML
  60. ^ Brett Winterford (2008-01-30). "Microsoft: IBM masterminded OOXML failure". ZDNet Australia.
  61. ^ "Cruel truth surfaces in the OOXML war". ZDNet.co.uk (30 January 2008).
  62. ^ Open XML community. "Hear what Ecma has to say about Open XML (paragraph: Key benefits of Open XML)". OpenXMLcommunity.org.
  63. ^ http://odfalliance.in/files/Response%20to%20Comments%20of%20June%2030th-1.pdf
  64. ^ Ecma International. "New proposed dispositions extend progress in addressing all National Body comments, seek to document and resolve legacy issues – Nearly 2/3 of comments now reviewed". Ecma International.
  65. ^ http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST/Office%20Open%20XML%20Part%201%20(DOCX).zip
  66. ^ "Ecma Office Open XML File Formats overview".
  67. ^ -Response Document- National Body Comments from 30-Day Review of the Fast Track Ballot for ISO/IEC DIS 29500 (ECMA-376) Office Open XML File Formats
  68. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Tom Ngo (December 11, 2006). "Office Open XML Overview" (PDF) 6. Ecma International. Retrieved on 2007-01-23.
  69. ^ "Miguel de Icaza blog post".
  70. ^ "Changes to OOXML draft standard waved through". IDG News Service. Retrieved on 2008-02-29.
  71. ^ ODF Alliance. "Office Open XML factsheet". Retrieved on 2007.
  72. ^ ZDNet.co.uk (2007-09-26). "Killing Microsoft's Clippy with open source". Retrieved on 2007-10-04.
  73. ^ "IBM Comments on INCITS LB 2212 - DIS 29500".
  74. ^ Red Hat Summit panel: Who 'won' OOXML battle?
  75. ^ Microsoft admits to standards ignorance pre-OOXML - ZDNet.co.uk
  76. ^ What do Free and Open Source Software Leaders Think of Microsoft?

External links

  • DIS29500.org , the website containing all technical comments submitted prior to the BRM
  • ISO-Vote.com - Try voting scenarios on OOXML
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