Microsoft Moves Toward Open XML for MS Office
Microsoft has decided to submit its Open XML document schema to the EMCA global standards body in a bid to get it ratified as a standardized document format. Open XML is the document format that Microsoft’s next release of MS Office, called Office 12, will use.
Depending on how you look at it, this is either good news for anyone who was thinking about ditching Microsoft in favor of an open source office environment, or simply good news for Microsoft’s credibility meter.
Under the current, closed document format, staying with MS Office meant that an organization would essentially be forcing itself to use Microsoft products until the end of time. Some applications, like OpenOffice and Word Perfect, can read and write MS Office documents, but, because Microsoft isn’t using an open standard, the developers of those applications don’t have any say in updates and changes to the document format. Essentially, it’s a closed-source standard, and everyone will have to keep playing catch up whenever Microsoft decides to change the standard.
So, Microsoft’s move towards an open standard is being viewed as good news. But it’s more like half-good news. Berlind at ZDNet has some excellent commentary posted on his Between the Lines blog.
If Microsoft wants to spearhead a truly open standard, they would release Open XML into the open source development community. But that’s highly unlikely. More likely is that Microsoft will simply let everyone know what changes they are making to their standard in order to ensure compatibility across applications in the future. And that’s hardly open source.
I guess we’ll see which direction the company goes. Either way, it’s good to know that, if the standard is approved, I’ll be able to use StarOffice to edit MS Word documents in the year 2112.
