Polarisation

Slashdot takes the IBM line:

At this point nobody has the vaguest idea what OOXML will look like in February, or even whether it will be in any sort of stable condition by the end of March. ‘While we are talking about interoperability, who else do you think is going to provide long term complete support for this already-dead OOXML format that Microsoft Office 2007 uses today? Interoperability means that other applications can process the files fully and not just products from Microsoft. I would even go so far as to go back to those few OOXML files you have already created and create .doc, .ppt, and .xls versions of them for future use, if you want to make sure you can read them and you don’t want to commit yourself to Microsoft’s products for the rest of their lives

Alexander Falk, CEO of Altova, which makes a popular Windows XML editor:

I see the ISO vote as a non-event. In my opinion, the real-world adoption of OOXML is primarily driven by the ubiquity of Microsoft Office much more than any standards body…In terms of actual customer inquiries regarding need for ODF, we have not seen any interest from our customers…My advice to dev shops is to start working with OOXML as early as possible.

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One thought on “Polarisation”

  1. Falk is right and Slashdot is wrong. In the end, the winning format is going to be decided by utility and custom, not fiat.

    I happen to work in an organisation where we have 70,000 desktops, and the client OS will soon be Vista running Office 2007. Our current standard document format hasn’t been ratified by ISO, so do we give a damn about any new ISO vote?

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