OStatic

Yesterday the official Google Blog announced to the world that β€œToday is Document Freedom Day”. According to Google and the Document Freedom Day website, DFD is about raising awareness about… you guessed it, document freedom.

The timing of document freedom day, just days before the ISO’s final decision on whether to grant Microsoft’s OOXML formal ISO certification, appears to be a not too subtle attempt to influence any undecided ISO voters. Google has been pushing an alternative ISO document standard named ODF. The ISO countries voting on the standard initially rejected Microsoft’s application for OOXML certification, but Microsoft got the chance to change the specification based on feedback and resubmit. Voting countries have until March 29th to submit their final vote.

While the ISO has not identified how countries voted, several delegations have made their views known to the public. Today the Czechs came out in support of OOXML and it looks like Britain has also changed its position and will end up supporting OOXML as well. Cuba and India have recently said they will not support the Microsoft standard. However with only 4 days of balloting left, it seems impossible to predict which way the vote will go.

In an interesting development, Patrick Durusau who is chairing the American delegation to the ISO on this issue has recently come out in favor of ISO certification for OOXML. This is surprising given that Durusau works for OASIS (the Organization for the Advancement for Structured Information Standards), the authors of the competing ODF standard.

In an open letter posted on his blog this week Durusau argues that defeating OOXML at the ISO will hurt the ODF standard as much as Microsoft. This has resulted in the predictable backlash from ODF supporters in the blogosphere this week. However, Durusau makes some valid points.

If OOXML might not be evil specification that Google has made it out to be, it begs the question, why has Google put so much effort into trying to quash OOXML’s acceptance? The entire circus surrounding Document Freedom Day may just serves to further tarnish Google’s reputation in the open source community. I expect Google to beat Microsoft through the same type of innovation it has demonstrated over the years, not through political pressure, phony grass roots organizations and other plays out of Microsoft’s playbook.

Do you think it matters whether OOXML receives ISO certification?

• Microsoft
• google
• OOXML
• ODF
• ISO