Open Malaysia

Despite Standards Vote, OOXML Still Has a Shot

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) last week said the draft Office Open XML (OOXML) file formats by Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) have not achieved the required number of votes for approval by the organization and the International Electrotechnical Commission as an ISO/IEC DIS 29500 international standard.

At least 66.7 percent of the 104 votes need to be positive, and no more than 25 percent of the votes to be negative. OOXML achieved neither, pulling in 53 percent positive votes and 26 percent negative.

The ISO ballot process took over five months and ended on Sept 2.

International Vote

It was open to IEC and ISO national member bodies, including the 41 participating members of the joint ISO/IEC technical committee JTC 1. Malaysia decided to abstain in the voting process.

For Malaysia, the reviewing of the technical standards is done by the Industry Standards Committee Group under Sirim Berhad. It is a vendor-neutral committee comprising the Association of Consulting Engineers Malaysia, Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, Association of the Computer and Multimedia Industry Malaysia (Pikom), Department of Standards, Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers, Malaysian Administrative Modernization and Management Planning Unit, Sirim and the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry.

Down, Not Out

While the outcome of the voting was a setback for OOXML, it is by no means the end of the road for the format.

"A further meeting by the ISO in February in Geneva, Switzerland, next year will discuss the comments accompanying the votes, and voting members can withdraw their votes of rejection," said Pikom's chairman, David Wong.

On the impact of the outcome to the information and communications technology (ICT) industry, he pointed out that the approval of any document format is a nonbinding endorsement.

"It certainly will not be a mandatory standard for either public or private use.

"The vote on the draft standard has minimal impact on our fast-evolving ICT industry. Procurement decisions are made based on many factors, and not solely based on document formats alone," Wong said, adding that Pikom welcomes international standards, be it Open Document Format (ODF) or OOXML.

The Case for Standards

"International standards are meant to improve the ICT ecosystem and increase its ease of use, creating a sustainable and commercially rewarding market," Wong said.

"They will allow the export of local ICT technology to foreign countries easily, quickly and with little need for costly adaptations. They are good for our economy," he said.

"The governments, industries and consumers can decide to accept OOXML after it satisfactorily addresses their concerns, be it from a technical or business perspective. And if the adoption of international standards can contribute towards Malaysia's progress as a net exporter of ICT and create a vibrant ICT society, then we should graft such international standards to suit Malaysia's purpose," Wong said.

What Others Say

Oliver Bell, regional technology officer, Microsoft:

The ISO has not rejected OOXML, which was submitted for ratification by Ecma International. In fact, the large number of countries (51) that voted in favor of the standard shows that there is strong momentum under way.

The next stage of the ISO process now begins, where comments that were raised by the national bodies will be addressed and the specification refined. The national bodies will then have an opportunity to reconsider their positions next February, and we are optimistic that they will approve the ISO ratification of OOXML.

Laurent Lachal, senior analyst, Ovum:

The fight to turn OOXML, or not, into an ISO standard has steadily become more heated and less gentlemanly in the past few weeks, with many reporting efforts to pressure the national bodies that cast the deciding votes and to manipulate the voting process internal to these bodies as well as the voting process of the ISO itself.

At the end of the day, does it matter that OOXML becomes a de jure standard, considering that it is already a de facto one? Yes, but not nearly to the extent that the anti-OOXML camp believes it to be.

The competitive landscape of office productivity suites shifted away from document standards years ago. People do not buy Microsoft Office because of the formats it supports, but because of its connection with back-end services.

The problem for Microsoft is, the fight has turned into a symbolic one. Regardless of the actual impact, or lack thereof, on its product sales, a rejection by the ISO will have quite a negative impact on Microsoft's image. As part of its efforts to try and win over more national bodies to its side, the company is likely to make more concessions that will lead to a better specification, good enough for it to eventually scrape through as an ISO standard.

Lee Nam Phin, Open Source Special Interest Group spokesperson, Malaysian National Computer Confederation:

From the pattern of the voting and various postings, we can see how much commercial interest has been invested into the process. The time and resources, including taxpayers' money, perhaps can be channeled more productively to other areas such as the harmonization of ODF, which is already an open standard for document supported by the ISO and various vendors.

Teh Tiong Keen, president, International Association of Software Architects:

The industry should not just rely on one standard for doing business. It should be open to as many standards as possible, as it will make users and businesses collaborate with each other. Users should be given the freedom to choose whatever standard that suits them.

Nazrin Hassan, executive director, Technopreneurs Association of Malaysia:

The industry is not dropping OOXML. The setback for OOXML is actually its fast-track approval process. Microsoft still has a chance to address some of the concerns raised by the countries that voted against it before a final vote is taken in February next year.

There is all likelihood that OOXML might become a de facto standard in the short term due to Microsoft Office's apparent monopoly in the market, as can be seen in the current adoption of the Office formats prior to OOXML.

In the meantime, though, there has already been a move in some governments to recommend or adopt the rival ODF format as the standard for document exchange. Here in Malaysia, we can see what is actually at stake, as the intense lobbying has caused Sirim to postpone a decision on document format standards indefinitely.

So, in the very near term, we may see Microsoft losing out on some government contracts, and this may reduce Microsoft's stronghold in the office productivity market with the increasing adoption of Office alternatives like the open source OpenOffice. But we might not see such a big impact in the private sector, where Office looks to remain dominant in the near future at least.

At the end of the day, the most important thing is: There must be a choice.