Microsoft awarded “Best campaigner AGAINST its own new office format (OOXML)”

The pitfalls and not-so-openness of OOXML (Office “Open” XML), Microsoft’s new office format, has already been hotly debated, with several solid reasons why OOXML should be refused ISO standards certification. Even South Africa voted against OOXML gaining ISO status. With Microsoft strong arming countries left and right in their push for standardization (including several cases of corruption and bribing standards board members) the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure decided to put up an official, 2500 Euro prize, in the fight against Microsoft Office standardization.

Benjamin Henrion, founder of noOOXML.org site, explains: “Microsoft is spending millions on rent-a-crowd support for international certification for its proprietary Office format, OOXML. But we already have an ISO standard for word processing, called ODF (Open Document Format). OOXML is Microsoft’s attempt to subvert this existing standard, to keep its strangle-hold on the world of documents. It’s time for activists across the world to stand up, to reach out to their national ISO bodies, and to explain why Microsoft’s format is not open, not a standard, and not XML.”

Surprisingly, Microsoft itself was announced as the winner of the FFII’s “Kayak Prize 2007″ yesterday. The software monopolist was declared the “Best Campaigner against OOXML Standardization”.
FFII president Pieter Hintjens explains, “we could never have done this by ourselves. By pushing so hard to get OOXML endorsed, even to the point of loading the standards boards in Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Portugal, Italy, and beyond, Microsoft showed to the world how poor their format is. Good standards just don’t need that kind of pressure. All together, countries made over ten thousands technical comments, a new world record for an ISO vote. Microsoft made a heroic — and costly — effort to discredit their own proposal, and we’re sincerely grateful to them.”

There you have it. To summarize: Don’t support closed formats. Don’t support OOXML. If you don’t want to support ODF, at least save your documents in Word 2003 format so other people can read them.

“The FFII has highlighted serious problems with the proposed standard. It relies on undisclosed patents, and undisclosed or incomplete licensing terms that make any independent reimplementation impossible or heavily risky. It obliges implementors to reverse-engineer the behavior of old closed Microsoft applications and formats. It uses non-standard formats for languages and dates, and specifies known bugs, such as treating 1900 as a leap year.”