Robertson: Open XML success doesn't hang on a yes vote

Summary:

In a PCPRO article Tom Robertson explains how his company deals with 3500 suggestions for improvements. He also reveals why his company pushes ISO members by all means: to give the standard community a voice and satisfy customer demands.

Robertson: Open XML success doesn't hang on a yes vote

arebenti 09 Nov 2007 23:10

PCPro features a remarkable story about Open XML. Revealed: the true scale of opposition to OOXML. (In newspaper business headlines are usually not made by the resp. authors). The article presents some new spin from Tom Robertson, Microsoft's general manager for corporate interoperability and standards.

[Tom Robertson] "claims the success of OOXML, and by association Office 2007, doesn't hang on a "yes" vote. "OOXML is already an international standard. The question in the ISO context is 'does the global community want a voice in its evolution?'. It's already out there, it's fully specified, it's available for everyone."

I wonder if the International Standardization community fears to "become irrelevant", drift into isolation when it doesn't give its blessing to the format? Now we learn it was already an international standard? Ahem, "ECMA International"¹. So why all the ISO fuzz?

"Our customers are telling us there is a need for an additional standard, there is a need for the things that OOXML was designed to do that weren't part of the design for ODF"

.. but the company refuses to provide a list of these "hi-fidelity" features that cannot be added to the existing international standard.

Footnotes

1. Which reminds me of the claim that ECMA would deal with the comments. Read the PCPro article where Robertson confirms what everybody knows: ECMA is just a proxy.

Last edited on 09 Nov 2007 23:51 by arebenti Show more

Re: Robertson: Open XML success doesn't hang on a yes vote

GNUlancer 12 Nov 2007 18:38

I wonder who are these mystical customers so actively participating in OOXML debugging.. And whether Mr. Robertson understands that 'international' means something involving many countries, not USA only? Seems very much like baseless barking.

BTW, I didn't know of 'ECMA international' existence till this very moment :)

Re: Robertson: Open XML success doesn't hang on a yes vote

podmokle 13 Nov 2007 13:04

Indeed, an incentive problem. What do you think about the idea to discuss these comments and make own suggestions for a change? We cannot process 3500 comments but maybe you can just adopt the comments from your own nation?