IEC 26300:2006. Developers - Free Standards Group. There They Go Again: It's Time to Just Say No to Microsoft and Ecma. Should ISO/IEC JTC1 approve OOXML, and if so, why not? This morning's news provides the best evidence for why the answer should be "no. " Whether Microsoft's OOXML (now Ecma 376) should receive the thumbs up is a question most recently posed to me by a reporter last week.
It's also one that I've been struggling with for the past 18 months in an effort to be open minded on the subject. Despite the fact that we would all be better off (in my view) with a single document format that works well enough for all vendors and all end users, the submission by Microsoft of OOXML to Ecma certainly benefits Microsoft's many customers and partners.. So why shouldn't ISO/IEC approve it as a standard as well, despite the prior approval of ODF as a global standard? An email with a blog link I just received from IBM's Bob Sutor clued me in to the best example of why approving Ecma 376 would be a bad idea.
Why does this latest submission matter? Update: TC46 - XML Paper Specification (XPS) Scope: 2. 3. 4. 5. OASIS Approves New Web Services Security Standards.