OOXML format: LibreOffice makes serious allegations against Microsoft
The makers of LibreOffice are once again attacking Microsoft harshly. They accuse the Redmond software giant of manipulating committees and votes as part of the establishment of the OOXML format. The consequences would still cause incompatibilities today.
Battle for document standards
As the developer of LibreOffice, The Document Foundation (TDF) is known for lashing out violently against Microsoft and other competitors in the open source sector. Now TDF is once again railing against what it sees as the pseudo-open file format OOXML and is accusing Microsoft of manipulating committees and votes during its introduction.
When the US state of Massachusetts announced in 2006 that it would use the Open Document Format for public documents, Ecma International, whose committee was led by two Microsoft employees, responded by submitting a 6,000-page specification for OOXML to ISO/IEC for approval in December. Surprisingly, an accelerated process was used that was actually only intended for formats that had already been tried and tested. The first attempt to establish OOXML failed in September 2007 because countries such as Brazil, India and France reported technical concerns.
Questionable votes
Like Italo Vignoli from The Document Foundation in one current blog post As he explains, there were further irregularities as a result, which he openly describes as manipulation. National standardization committees suddenly recorded an enormous influx of new members. In Italy, the number of members grew rapidly from five to over 80, including a PR agency and a law firm working for Microsoft. In Portugal, too, numerous Microsoft business partners joined the relevant committees. According to Martin Bryan, coordinator of the ISO working group, the new members were only interested in speeding up the approval of OOXML.
Ultimately, the standard was adopted in April 2008 with a narrow majority of supporters. The number of Microsoft employees and “partners” on the boards outnumbered representatives from all other organizations by a ratio of about ten to one, according to Vignoli. Objections from several states were unsuccessful.
Consequences for current users
According to The Document Foundation, users are still feeling the far-reaching consequences of this approach today. Microsoft did not implement the strict version of OOXML officially approved by the standards organization in Office 2010. Instead, a version that was only intended as a temporary solution was used and was not approved. This still leads to compatibility problems when exchanging documents with alternative programs such as LibreOffice, says Vignoli.
Microsoft was never held accountable for this. According to TDF, instead of working together on a cross-platform format based on the Open Document Format, Microsoft would have focused on purely financial competition at the time, according to TDF. Ultimately, this happened to the detriment of the digital sovereignty of the users because, according to the organization, the interests of the users were completely ignored.
Amit Gohar is Technical writer at ResearchSnipers.com, he is well versed Technology News writer, he has completed is MS computer Science in 2020. He can be reached at amit.g@researchsnipers.com
