Dumbing Down OpenXML Quandry

Unless you’ve been under a rock you are aware of Microsoft’s attempts to certify their Open XML implementation as an ISO standard. On the face of it, its hard to understand why this issue could raise so many conversations and threads over the web so allow me to dumb down the case for you and explain what all the acronyms stand for.

Most people know what BBB in USA is and what it claims to be. BBB or Better Business Bureau claims to be an organization that rewards and punishes businesses based on their customer service track record. How noble of them. Behind the curtain though, BBB is a business-financed organization (it makes money from businesses paying for membership) so I’ll leave you to guess whose best interest they have in mind.

ISO, in a similar fashion, is a standards organization of companies… Why, who would sit on that committee. Oh yes, the very companies that design, support and implement the protocols that ISO certifies. They basically get together in Switzerland and come up with a way to keep a lid on things so they compete effectively. The idea is, the companies that participate can freely use the approved standard without fearing the original innovator would come after them and sue them for their implementation and try to collect royalties for it. To further simplify, imagine your ten closest competitors. Get together with them and say “Hey, we all do this exact same stuff and we all have our own value-add. Let’s come up with a way to agree on what those basics are so we can make the customer have some basic set of expectations. This way we can all claim that our stuff plays along with all the other stuff so the customer has no trepidation when making a purchase.”

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Every now and then one of the standards body designers decides to slip out, patent the discussed standard, and sue the crap out of every competitior in the area. Google Rambus for an example of such behavior.

Now, we already have a ton of standards like PDF and OpenDoc, so why the heck is there so much interest in a Microsoft-backed standard? Well, turns out that the way to get people to vote for your standard they have to get together in Switzerland. Quick, think of a cash-rich company that can send a bunch of free tickets and vacations to delegates and stick them in a room in Switzerland just so it can shed its years of anticompetitive behavior and antitrust lawsuits by appearing to support an open standard.

So what’s the problem?

Reputation.

If you are an ass, it takes a lot of selfless acts to shake that reputation off. If you happen to be a company that is churning out patent applications faster than a Chinese assembly plant churns out iPods, you get held to a higher degree of scrutiny. If you’ve abused your monopoly powers, gave your products for free to crush competitors and had a banner across your headquarters entrance that says “We will compete with everyone at everything” your competitors may think twice about your sudden change of heart you bringing your philanthropic standard to them for consideration.

What is even worse is, let’s say you previously published and offered software and implementations in an open and easy to license way, just to later flip it to a closed, Microsoft-only way. That bait & switch behavior tends to follow you.

And today, as Microsoft is looking at losing its bid to make OpenXML a standard, it’s track record combined with a poorly spec’ed out ISO application with well over a thousand technical objections by its industry partners.. well, it gets tougher to get that sort of thing passed. What’s the problem you say? Well, it is believed that Microsoft has brought in a specification with so many holes on both the standard and the updates that it can effectively change the rules of the game at any point, making Microsoft’s OpenXML implementation not play along with all the other OpenXML implementations. Instead of keeping the standard from release to release, they could build up the features on top of the standard and effectively say “Only Microsoft OpenXML can do XYZ”

This is where corporate consistency makes a difference and unfortunately for Microsoft it just doesn’t have a positive one.

Off-topic: Vlad Hates Microsoft, Vlad Loves Microsoft

This is where my Microsoftie friends think I suffer from severe schizophrenia. Do you love us or hate us? And as you read the above post you’re probably thinking “Man, Vlad is beating down Microsoft again” wonder what someone must have said to him.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again – Microsoft makes phenomenal products, in many categories probably the best ones out there. But, Microsoft is a huge company and the guys that designed the Vista real-time indexing and search may not be the same guys that designed WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) or came up with a way to license it so brilliantly. They do a lot of great things, they do a lot of incredibly stupid things.

It is Microsoft’s decision to make on whether it is the company that is seen as the de-facto designer of best business tools, a global conglomerate asshole crushing each segment it enters, most open and complete server solution, bleeding failure in every segment of digital entertainment or the most inter-operable software and hardware designed across the digital life and work. It’s their decision to make and stick with it. There are people out there that are constantly beating down Microsoft and only choose to focus on the negatives. Then there are people that love Microsoft regardless of the issues. 

My supposed schizophrenia stems from my attempt to be fair when it comes to Microsoft. We sell a lot of Microsoft software, we use a lot of Microsoft software (so far so good) but we also support a lot of Microsoft software (ah, crap) and we also design a lot of software for the Microsoft platform (oh god, strike me now) so depending on how badly or how well Microsoft happens to be doing in the area that I am focusing on at the moment is how good they come out on this blog.

In the end, its Microsoft’s decision. I assure you that my tiny bit of MSFT shares and the annual proxy vote really don’t count for anything. The extent of my Microsoft influence includes the hope that one day, in a galaxy far far away, you may actually use your Outlook client with your Exchange mailbox and select which SMTP address gets printed on the outgoing email on-demand.