My last post on the ISO standards body vote in favor of OOXML sparked a few comments, so here goes another. While the headlines of Groklaw generally tell only one side of the story, here’s an interesting blog post from Jan van den Beld, the former Secretary General of Ecma International, the standards body that first approved OOXML as a standard.
If you’re like me and think that standards bodies will play an increasingly important role in the future, you want to see a process with integrity, accountability and transparency.
In his post, Jan van den Beld says that groups opposed to ratification are now trying to blame the messenger (standards bodies), in addition to the message (the standard):
They have resorted to making accusations of impropriety on the part of national standards bodies where they were unhappy that their negative views on this issue didn’t carry the day – notably on blogs such as noooxml.org and Groklaw. They would have you believe that no one could possibly favor ratification without being bribed or manipulated. Indeed, it appears that they find it impossible to believe that anyone could possibly disagree with their views, despite the overwhelming number who do in fact disagree with this position. These direct attacks on the integrity or national standards bodies are without merit.
The OOXML issue is an incredibly geeky, but fascinating, story from a public policy advocacy / PR spin point of view. Essentially we have two goliaths going at it – IBM vs. Microsoft. IBM has been very good at playing the role of the underdog, even though it’s a very large company that is acting in its own self interest. Microsoft is an easy target, on the defensive from antitrust lawsuits and regulatory and market developments toward “openness.”
Regardless of the way the process went down, it’s not a government body, so the market can still choose which standard will ultimately succeed. But I have a feeling that IBM is so upset precisely because this does relate to government. – ie. procurement preferences for open standards – and potentially creating new competition for ODF.
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