NoOOXML

Standards are contracts that underpin communities. A good standard is fair and does not discriminate between different participants in that community. Like any contract, those who write the text always try to get their special clauses in. No business is inherently fair to others, it's more profitable to try to tilt the table, and everyone does this.

However installing a tilted playing field is not what international standards are about. The playing field has to be level. And this means that the text of the standard, that contract, must be the result of real consensus between all affected parties.

Microsoft is not a global monopolist for nothing. It is extremely good at capturing markets, killing off competitors, and convincing the press that all is sunshine and roses. The history of the software sector is one long trail of dead bodies, with Microsoft smiling and trying to hide the bloody knife.

Even a normal non-psychopathic business would be wrong to try to force its own terms on the rest of the world. Microsoft, with their history of, let's be frank, lying and cheating, does not have any credit to work from.

The OOXML battle has been presented by the Microturfs as being a fight between IBM and Microsoft, as being about ODF vs OOXML, as being about people vindictively trying to stop an honest attempt to open up, about killing a precious cow out of sheer spite.

It's rather sad to hear this firm defend itself by playing the victim. Microsoft is the victim? I really can't believe anyone swallows this, but if it's what the Microturfers are saying, presumably the message has been tested and approved by Redmond.

Let's look again at what's wrong with OOXML.

• First, the format itself. It's horrid, a legacy dump superficially wrapped in XML and sold as “Open XML”, presumably an attempt at irony. But technical faults as such are not really a problem, if the format can be cleaned up.

• So, second, the process. Fast tracking OOXML is absurd, insulting, and arrogant. The fast track is for specifications that are ready. And “ready” means they've gone through enough consensus building to already be “fair” contracts for that community. OOXML is raw, filled with bugs, and much too large to be digested and fixed during a fast track process.

• Third, the corruption of ISO. Why did ISO accept to fast track OOXML? Why were the JTC1 rules for fast tracking ammended three days after OOXML was started on the fast track, specifically to change the fast track process for OOXML? Why were the same ECMA people responsible for OOXML and for the JTC1 rules for fast tracking?

• Forth, the bullying and buying of national boards. Why did Microsoft stuff every committee it could? Why did it lobby at ministerial level when it could not stuff the committees? Why did it seek to hold the chair of committees, and then fix the rules to exclude participation? Why did countries that never discussed IT standards before suddenly become P voting members for OOXML?

• Fifth, the illusion of process. Why did the BRM attempt to handle almost 1,000 comments in 5 days? Why was the discussion cut short and why did the convenor push delegates to vote on ECMA changes in bulk, without further discussion? Why were O members allowed to vote at the BRM? Why were the rules that covered the BRM never explained to anyone? Why were delegates asked to come to Geneva if they finally had to choose between accepting the existing ECMA text, or the proposed ECMA changes?

• Sixth, the lies and propaganda. Why does Microsoft insist that the EU Commission demanded that OOXML become an ISO standard? Why does Microsoft claim that two standards mean “more choice”, when multiple standards is a well-known way to split and divide communities? Why does Microsoft spend so much on blogging and Wikipedia hacking?

• Seventh, the patents. Estimates of the number of Microsoft patents around OOXML range from 200-300. Why does Microsoft not explain its OOXML and ODF patents clearly? Why does it obfusticate its patent license terms, and pretend to be friendly to free and open source, when it clearly does not want to allow GPL or for-profit FOSS competitors to be able to interoperate?

• Eight, the ownership. Microsoft claims that it wants to hand-over the maintenance of OOXML to an ISO committee. But this ISO committee seems to consist of Microsoft friends. Where is the consensus-building? Where is the process that will take those many suggestions made by national bodies and incoporate them into OOXML?

• Ninth, the smoke and mirrors. OOXML is not even the same format as used by MS Office. The entire “standardisation process” is a fraud, it concerns a format that Microsoft does not and will not implement as formalized. Any application trying to interoperate with MS Office will need to discover and use undocumented extensions, and Microsoft can change the format it actually uses at will, while pretending to be ISO compatible.

• Lastly, the damage to ISO. Sending business partners en-masse into meetings to vote may be common sense from Microsoft's point of view, but it's offensive to all those who take the standards process seriously. National bodies strive to turn complex technological debates into clear usable standards, contracts that work. Forcing a vote without discussion is to demean the national body, and to insult all those who have spent decades in the process.

To conclude, Microsoft have, with OOXML, shot themselves in both feet, then put the bloody stumps into their big mouth and chewed, hard and long. They created a fradulent process by corrupting ISO at a high level. They engaged national bodies in this process, then bought and bullied those bodies into voting “properly”. And when the committees refused to be intimidated, they went to ministers and tried to bribe them. They used their press and astroturfing budgets to sell this as a fair and necessary process. They pretended that they were the victim, of an autocratic ODF and a manipulative IBM.

Microsoft hopes that buying the rubber-stamp approval of ISO will magically make OOXML an acceptable standard. It hopes people will be convinced that OOXML is a fair contract after all, and will accept it on equal terms with other ISO standards.

It won't work. Every conflict creates change, and what Microsoft have done is to unleash a global fury, that is organizing itself and finding allies and friends in government, in those national bodies, in the standards community, and in business.

Only one thing can beat a monopolist with unlimited funds to buy and influence people, and that is the anger and strength of a community. This community exists, is huge, and is angry as hell.

This fight won't end on March 31st.