Microsoft wins latest round in OpenDocument battle
Published: 13 Dec 2005 17:15 GMT
...the Office Open XML Formats — means customers and the industry are one step closer to preserved interoperability," Yates said in a statement.
In tandem with the creation of the Ecma committee, Microsoft revealed further details on the legal framework it has established around the Office Open XML formats.
In an FAQ, the company said it will grant royalty-free access to third parties that want to use the file formats and that it will not sue any other party for using patented Office technology.
In answer to a lingering question following the company's announced plans, Microsoft said its licensing scheme will allow for creation of open source products.
"Because the [open source] GPL is not universally interpreted the same way by everyone, we can't give anyone a legal opinion about how our language relates to the GPL or other OSS licences, but we believe we have removed the principal objections that people found with our prior licence in a very simple and clear way," the Microsoft FAQ stated.
Microsoft enlisted other companies to sponsor the Ecma proposal, including Apple, Barclays Capital, BP, the British Library, Essilor, Intel, NextPage, Statoil and Toshiba.
OpenDocument backers have resisted several aspects of the Ecma effort. For example, IBM voted against the creation of the Office Open XML committee on Thursday and HP abstained, according to an IBM representative.
"Questions raised previously about development, access and implementation remain unresolved today," an IBM representative said Thursday. He added that it is still unclear whether proprietary extensions to the standard will be permitted.
Andy Updegrove, partner at Boston law firm Gesmer Updegrove, called Microsoft's Ecma submission "a naked request to rubber stamp a vendor-specific solution". Updegrove is an attorney for OASIS, the standards body developing the OpenDocument standard, which was ratified in May.
The state of Massachusetts, by contrast, reacted positively to Microsoft's Office standard plan. If approved as a standard, Open Office XML could allow Microsoft to compete for contracts in state government agencies, according to a representative from the office of Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
Microsoft had been effectively shut out of the desktop software procurement process because it does not intend to support the OpenDocument format natively. Instead, it said it intends to rely on third-party products.
The Office Open XML committee at Ecma, meanwhile, has chosen to prioritise compatibility with existing Microsoft Office document formats.
"The benefit of backward compatibility that this effort will provide is evident from the broad spectrum of sponsors that will work together under the formal Ecma standardisation process," Ecma secretary general Jan van den Beld, said in a statement. A standard format will allow billions of existing Office documents to be converted with no loss of data or formatting, Ecma said.
As the technical committee prepares for its first meeting, expected later this month, Microsoft rivals and desktop software industry observers will be monitoring how open the process is to outside companies.
Gartner's Silver noted that it would be difficult for Microsoft to support the Office Open XML file formats in Office 12, which is due next year, if any substantial changes to the specification are made.
"It's fairly obvious that the specification that they have is very Microsoft Office-centric, whereas you would expect that something that they're trying to make open would be more generic," Silver said. "It's difficult to divorce the file format from the product."
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3 comments
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If this is any victory for Microsoft at all, it is... Yevgeny Zamyatin -
Now that it seems to be clear for some people that... Anonymous
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Let's see if we have this correctly.
We have OpenD... Rex Ballard
