‘Microsoft never opposed ODF’

Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, has won the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) vote for Open XML (OOXML), an international standard for representing electronic documents such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents. Vivek Seal caught up with  Microsoft India’s national technology officer  Vijay Kapur to get his views about the format.

Congratulations on winning the ISO vote for OOXML. How tough was it to get the final approval?
To be quite frank, the way standardisation of open XML has been opposed is unique in the standards world. So, in lot of ways new ground has been broken in terms of the acrimony etc.

It is almost impossible to resolve 100% of issues, as you are resolving some issues which you have identified like software codes, someone would come with 2-3 new issues.

And that is why standards go into maintenance, and maintenance is of two kinds - to fix any flaws that had been identified or may get identified or to add any new capabilities to the standard. If there are issues that could be resolved later on, then members take this to the standards body as it was out of the hands of the Microsoft. So, this vote kind of reflects that sentiment.

Why there was so much opposition by the ODF community over the standardisation of OOXML? Is interoperability an issue? Which format is better?
There is an interesting post in the media which says that when open document format (ODF) was standardised, there were comments against it …people voted yes… but there were comments… and no Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) ever took place, yet it became a standard with those comments never been addressed.

You should know one interesting fact that Microsoft has never voted against ODF anywhere, so obviously sauce for the goose is not sauce for the gander.  Two years after the approval of ODF in ISO, its maintenance is outside of ISO, it’s done in OASIS and you still have outstanding comments against it.

(A technical committee under the Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) consortium developed the Open Document standard.)
So there is double standards coming into play, you are making such a hullabaloo here, guess what, why don’t you guys (ODF community) fix your own house.

When ODF went through, it went through with inadequate scrutiny and now lot of issues are coming back to haunt it.
The interoperability between ODF and OOXML is not 100% but the fact is both are ISO standards… people at the ISO committee are now going to work to define the differencessimilarities between the two formats and then how the mapping should work for interoperability.

At this point of time, OOXML has many more features than ODF. Like ODF has no specifications for the spreadsheet formulae, it is described trivially in like four pages, open XML has got like 600 pages of specifications on that.

One more example I can give you is that, tables, you have tables in documents, spreadsheets, and PowerPoint slides. Purpose of all these three tables is different, now ODF has a similar table model, which it applies to all three types in a same way. 
Now, table model in OOXML is different for each of these three and optimised for the
purpose.

For standards, perfect interoperability is never a criterion for it to become a standard. Also interoperability, in any case, is working in most of the cases.

Can it be better? Yes, it can be.
So if there were and are issues with ODF, why Microsoft has not opposed the format?
No, we have been not vocal about it and the reason is that it is not our job to trash ODF, we are not out there trashing ODF.

We never opposed ODF at American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Microsoft was promoting the standardisation of OOXML, but it was not promoting the destruction of ODF.

There is a big difference in that; there is an alliance, the ODF alliance, whose sole job is to have only one standard in the world.

For a long time, the very same people who were fighting against the standardisation of OOXML went to governments, went to others and said do not use Microsoft products because they use a proprietary file format.

Microsoft heard the voices; it submitted its XML file formats for standardisation. Now the same people were going back and saying that do not let OOXML become a standard … so there is a bit of circular logic over here.

The thing is, the minute it (OOXML) becomes a standard, Microsoft looses control over Open XML, and I cannot now make any arbitrary choices to this to my own fancy.

There is a criticism in the market that may be Microsoft has some patents on open XML and that could be trouble for the customers. What is your view on that?
Microsoft is a nice target.

Ask these guys to specify what patents are there on OOXML, so the critics will always say that may be they might do this, may be they might do that. In the future we cannot insert anything into this unless ISO approves it.

ISO has a set of rules that cover patent disclosure, I need to make a disclosure of my patents in the format that I need to identify, and I have to agree to license them as per the terms defined by ISO which are reasonable and non-discriminatory.

If some one is not agreeing with the ISO policy, then go with the ISO and not us and tell them to change the policy.

 What is a major issue with the ODF community, do they stand to loose market share over this?
Actual fact of the matter is how much of the market they have, so this to my mind was their competitive strategy to gain market share by using standards as a competitive strategy to unlevel the playing field.

Now guys, both of us have standards, now compete on the quality of your technology, but why are you going to governments and saying use only this and nothing but this?
vivek_s@dnaindia.net