The Future of Documents

Thought we were all set, with Open Document Format (ODF) being the standard for Future of Office Document formats? The war might not be over just yet.The OOXML fast-track through ECMA is still having some ripple effects.

 A few days ago, IBM announced that it would reconsider its membership in the hundreds of open bodies that create global standards - namely ISO. This is a direct consequence of Microsoft’s Open XML standardization, which IBM judged unethical. IBM claims that OOXML was only accepted because it was fast-tracked, and  through political pressure.

“Common, open and consensus-based technology standards from reputable standards bodies help ensure that each of us can easily purchase and interchangeably use computing technology from multiple vendors,” said Bob Sutor, IBM vice president of open source and standards. “The ways in which they are created and adopted provide reasonable assurances that disparate products will work with one another, and withstand the test of time.”

In the last few weeks, a number of flags have been raised as to whether the ODF standard (which Microsoft admitted had won against OOXML) could actually be taken over by Microsoft. Indeed, it seems that over half of the active participants of SC 34 are actually directly employed or strongly related to Microsoft.

I am still hoping this could be good news for the Future of Documents by getting ODF convergence and ’synchronized maintenance’ with OOXML. But I have to admit I have to agree with the many that see this as a risk of ODF being mostly controlled by Microsoft and taken into directions that might not be in line with its original spirit…