Microsoft Faces New Challenges on the Office Front

Published: March 8, 2006

by Alex Woodie

Just as things are heating up between Microsoft and the European Commission on the Windows Server front, the software juggernaut's monopoly with its Office desktop productivity suite now faces fresh challenges, both in the field from the OpenDocument Format Alliance that launched last week and, potentially, in a European courtroom, as well.

First, the legal news. In late February, the European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) filed a complaint with the European Commission regarding Microsoft's desktop practices. The group, which was formed in 1989 and counts IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Oracle as members, asked the EC to take action against the software giant for "a range of Microsoft business practices that threaten to deny enterprises and individual consumers real choice among competing software products."

The complaint covers both existing products and products that have not yet been released, including Windows Vista and Office 2007, both due out later this year. In particular, the ECIS claims that Microsoft has not shared formatting information relating to the .doc, .ppt, and .xls file formats that are needed to build alternative applications compatible with these formats, such as Sun's StarOffice and OpenOffice suites.

Now, the EC is checking into the ECIS' complaints. EC commissioner Neelie Kroes and Kroes' spokesperson have said they are taking the complaint seriously, although there has been no formal declaration as yet.

Some of the same vendors involved in the ECIS complaint, including IBM, Sun, and Oracle, are also attacking Microsoft on the standards front through a newly formed group called the OpenDocument Format Alliance. The ODF Alliance promotes the use of the OpenDocument Format (ODF), an XML-based file format specification that was ratified by OASIS last May, and which is currently being considered as a standard by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

The ODF Alliance is positioning the ODF file spec as an alternative to Microsoft's OpenXML, also an XML-based file format, which has been available in Office and SQL Server for some time, but which will become the new document standard in Office 2007 later this year.

Last November, Microsoft earned points in the eyes of some open-source software advocates when it brought in Ecma International, a standards body founded in 1959 as the European Computer Manufacturers Association, to oversee development of OpenXML in an "open industry consensus process." The company also reduced the potential legal liability of organizations that use its new format by releasing a "covenant not to sue" covering the Office 2003 schemas, and pledging to do the same for the Office 2007 schemas when they're released.

While Microsoft is lowering the potential legal liability of using OpenXML, there are still those--namely ODF Alliance--who would rather have seen Microsoft adopt ODF than develop a competing and "proprietary" format. Microsoft says it considered using the ODF format, but decided that ODF "would not meet requirements for backward compatibility, for forward compatibility, or for performance," according to an interesting FAQ posted to its Web site. Concerns about the roots of ODF in Sun's OpenOffice standards also played a part, Microsoft says, while the software vendor recognized strengths in ODF, it decided in the end to move forward with the OpenXML format.

Microsoft says the OpenXML format would provide several benefits over ODF, including ensuring backward compatibility with billions of documents produced over decades. It would also provide "intrinsic" support for integrating customer-defined XML data, make the speed of opening, working with, and closing documents a priority (especially considering the sluggishness that XML documents often carry), and ensure compatibility with existing applications (OpenXML has already been tested and used in the real world in the Office 2003 suite, Microsoft says). In short, Microsoft wants to create its own new document format based in XML, which shouldn't come as any great surprise.

Spurned by Microsoft, ODF backers are now ratcheting up the noise level, and taking their plight public. "Unfortunately, just using XML does not make a file format either 'open' or a 'standard,'" the group says on its Web site. "While XML is an open standard from the W3C, it does not mean that everything you do with it immediately becomes an open standard."

While both ODF and OpenXML formats are based in XML, there's no guarantee they would be compatible, the ODF Alliance claims. According to a January white paper by IBM called "Emerging Business Value of OpenDocument format v1.0" posted on the ODF Alliance Web site, the vendor claims Microsoft has no plans to support ODF in any of its products. Being locked into a single vendor's proprietary format, IBM says, could "create several serious problems for individuals, public institutions, government agencies, and businesses." The state of Massachusetts is probably the strongest backer of ODF as far as governmental institutions go, but there are many more with concerns about accessing their archives.

Whether or not there is any coordination between the ECIS and the ODF Alliance, the two groups have similar aims: to prevent Microsoft from implementing its OpenXML format. In the ODF Alliance's case, the group is taking a grass-roots approach to convince the world that OpenXML is dangerous, and that ODF is a technologically superior alternative. At the other end of the stick is the ECIS, which is taking the litigious approach with the EC, an antitrust body that has shown itself to be sympathetic to Microsoft's adversaries, and to be tough on Microsoft.

In the meantime, the potential users of Office 2007--namely, anybody who sits in front of a computer--are caught in the middle as the giants of technology, technology standards, and law hash out the details of how computers and applications will work for 2007 and beyond. Things could start getting very interesting.