OOXML strikes back… continued
A year or so after the dispute between ODF and OOXML seemed to be settled, the situation is getting more and more confused.
OOXML was fast-tracked as an ISO standard in April 2008 through a questionable procedure, but a few months later Microsoft admitted that “ODF had clearly won” the Document Format Standard war, almost a year ago. However, Microsoft increased its participation in ODF Standards bodies participation, to the point that some open source advocates feared they might take control over the ODF Standards.
After a number of other episodes, the strategy delivers - Microsoft’s OOXML standard implementation is back on the list of recommended formats for government organizations, including France’s RGI (Référentiel général d’interopérabilité). Open Source advocates argue that a second Document Format is useless since ODF has been around for a few years now, and that even Microsoft products do not support the OOXML ISO implementation yet (support for the ISO version of OOXML Microsoft Office in Microsoft Office version is slated for next year). Microsoft counters that OOXML is not their software anymore, since anyone can implement OOXML compliance (after reading the 6000 pages spec of course).
And us, document users, are sitting in the middle, worried that we might not have a single, universal open document format after all, which was the whole point in that ODF-OOXML decision…
