Lost in the OOXML Fog

There’s been a lot of reporting about the ISO fiasco with OOXML. You can read writeups from people much more tuned in to the process than me. You can start here, here and here (the last is a highly recommended roundup from Andy Updegrove).

But somewhere in this process, much of the coverage of this event grew into a horse race spectacle: will OOXML pass? Will developing countries vote no? How will the US vote? And for perfectly understandable reasons - it *was* a spectacle, and many were interested.

The purpose of this post is an attempt to bring the discussion back to why we care about standards in the first place. There are plenty of good, common-sense IT business reasons to do so. But, as this organization is dedicated to advocating for information rights, I’d like to point out that the standardization process will have an effect on real people in their daily lives, as standards efforts will impact their ability to participate in the information economy. Basically, do we want to hand over to the world the keys to massive IT innovation? Unparalleled ability to participate in a global culture and economy?

I haven’t read enough of the OOXML spec to know if it meets my definition of “open”, but I have read enough commentary to feel uneasy about its adoption. In fact, we still don’t know how much the MS Office implementation will differ from the OOXML spec. Nor do we know if it’s possible to create an open ecosystem around the standard. All of these things will impact the ability to view, edit and collaborate and thus will determine how much of a disadvantage the world’s poor will face. This is the central question.

The questions surrounding the ISO processes are no doubt important, and I’m very glad that some reporters are devoting significant time to them. However, as we go through the tug-of-war between OOXML supporters and detractors, let’s not forget the central reason for why we care about this stuff in the first place: its impact on people.

Tags:News