Microsoft interoperability? The OOXML standards fight offers clues

There are two ways to look at Microsoft's interoperability pledge-- as an olive branch held out to the Open Source community, or as one more empty promise to ward off tenacious European Union antitrust officials. Which is it? The decision process of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) on OOXML may tell the tale.

Both Microsoft's apologists and its detractors agree on one thing: we've heard these kinds of pronouncements from Microsoft before, but this time around things are really different, because this time Microsoft really needs to make some friends.

My colleague Preston Gralla thinks it's the competition from Google that has finally convinced Microsoft it can't can't succeed as an island, no matter how big that island may be and is forcing it into a more cooperative place.

Others, like the writer of Groklaw, are more suspicious. They think Microsoft's four interoperability promises are a cynical move to deflect continuing antitrust investigations by the European Commission, and overcome the ISO's resistance to rubber-stamping Office Open XML as an international document standard that are, which would cost the software giant government contracts. Groklaw even cites ten previous Microsoft statements promising interoperability.

Of course, the devil is in the details, and if you'd like to consider some, there's a particularly pointed list of questions for Microsoft on Open Source advocate Russell Ossendryver's blog headlined "OOXML Questions Microsoft Cannot Answer in Geneva."

In Geneva, right now through February 29, the ISO is holding a Ballot Resolution Meeting on the draft international standard ISO/IEC DIS 29500 -- the official name for OOXML. No ballot will actually be taken, so there won't be an immediate outcome. But this week delegations from national standards bodies will review and seek consensus on more than a thousand questions raised after the proposed standard failed to win adoption last September and potentially thousands of changes to the standard proposed in response. After the meeting ends Friday the 87 national member bodies will have until March 29 to reconsider their September votes. (The whole process is spelled out in a press release on the ISO Web site.)

Another document on the ISO site that Ossendryver points to makes even more interesting reading. This week's Geneva meeting was organized by ISO subcommittee SC 34, Document description and processing languages, of the joint technical committee JTC 1, Information technology. ("JTC 1 is one of the most experienced and productive of ISO and IEC technical committees," notes the ISO release, "having developed some 2,150 widely and globally used international standards and related documents.")

The convener of SC 34's Working Group 1, Martin Bryan, reported to his superiors on his group's activities during the second half of last year – or lack of activity. It seemed that an influx of members "whose only interest is the fast-tracking of ECMA 376 as ISO 29500" had disrupted the group's balloting process by failing to meet their commitment to vote on issues before the group. "The days of open standards development are fast disappearing," he concludes. "Instead we are getting 'standardization by corporation,' something I have been fighting against for the 20 years I have served on ISO committees. I am glad to be retiring before the situation becomes impossible. I wish my colleagues every success for their future efforts, which I sincerely hope will not prove to be as wasted as I fear they could be."

If this is an example of a Microsoft push for interoperability reaching out win hearts and minds, it doesn't look like it's going to get very far.