At a general assembly meeting Ecma created the TC45 technical committee that will handle the production, development, and maintenance of standards based on the Office Open XML Formats, which are the basis of the Office 12 productivity suite.
The formation of TC45 was approved despite a vote against by IBM Corp, and the last-minute intervention of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which wrote to Ecma urging it to reject Microsoft’s proposal on the grounds that it does not meet the basic principles of openness.
While Office Open XML was submitted to Ecma with the support of Apple Computer, Intel, NextPage, Toshiba, Barclays Capital, BP, the British Library, Essilor, and Statoil, clearly Microsoft was responsible for its development, and it is not clear how much of a forum Ecma will provide for the specifications to be modified.
According to an Ecma statement, the role of the technical committee will be to produce a formal standard for office productivity applications that is fully compatible with the Office Open XML Formats, submitted by Microsoft. Ecma said the technical committee would also be responsible for enhancing the standard with new features while maintaining backwards compatibility, as well as ongoing maintenance.
The standards group said it was hoped that the first edition of the standard would be completed before the end of 2006, after which it will submitted for acceptance by the International Organization for Standardization.
The rival OpenDocument Format is already being considered by ISO, having been approved by the Oasis standards group in May. Based on the formats used by the open source OpenOffice.org productivity suite and Sun Microsystems Inc’s StarOffice, ODF will also be supported by IBM Corp’s Workplace offering, Corel Corp’s office applications, among others.
However, Microsoft has said it will not be supporting ODF, a decision that looked like it could cost the company a large amount of business with government organizations in Massachusetts after the state announced plans to move to OpenDocument 1.0 as the standard for all office documents by January 2007.
Massachusetts has provisionally welcomed the submission of Office Open XML to Ecma, although it remains to be seen whether the standards process will be open enough to satisfy the state’s department of administration and finance.
During an open meeting held in mid-September, Massachusetts’s former secretary of administration and finance, Eric Kriss, said Microsoft would need to do three things to get its Office formats reconsidered: drop the patent on the format, publish the standard for peer review, and make provisions for future changes to be handled via joint stewardship.
Microsoft responded by submitting the Office Open XML Formats to Ecma, as well as bringing in a new license including a broad covenant not to sue users of the formats, while the decision-making process that led Massachusetts’ chief information officer Peter Quinn to select ODF has also become the center of political debate.
In late November it emerged that office of Governor Mitt Romney was investigating Quinn’s travel expenses, whether he followed proper procedure when requesting permission to visit conferences, and whether he violated conflict of interest laws. The Boston Globe, which prompted the investigation into Quinn’s actions, is now reporting that the CIO has been cleared of any wrongdoing or potential conflicts of interest following the investigation.
