I doubt that I am unique in having a mother who somewhere in her house has a box of school projects my sister and I made that she wants to save forever. I also doubt I am unique in having a CD or data key somewhere in my house that is an archive of the best stuff I’ve written, both college and beyond, which I want to save forever. And I am absolutely positive that someday I will also want to have a contemporary archive of projects that my own children will make, and that I will also want to save forever.

This is the true promise of Open XML. Documents today are about opening up a multi-dimensional universe of capability with regards to how data is presented. But this shouldn’t come at the cost of preserving fidelity to the past. I want to know that the document format I am using today is going to give me the greatest advantage in terms of productivity and capability, as well as painless access to cherished documents while not sacrificing the potential for new ideas and functionality.

Now, this of course would not apply to construction paper turkeys made from the outline of a child’s hand, but it would be perfectly suited for the presentations that students as well as business people create. And while it wouldn’t make preservation of shoebox dioramas made from Elmer’s glue and Play-Doh any easier, it would ensure access to term papers and marketing plans. By using Open XML, I can be confident that I will always be able to access my old school projects, my current work product, and my children’s future brainstorms in one compatible and interoperable format.

PCs today are not souped up versions of my grandmother’s Selectric. Today’s document formats must be able to harness the true potential of data in order to create new efficiencies and new capabilities. And today’s formats should also faithfully fulfill the responsibility of maintaining our access to the data of yesterday, enabling new capabilities for today, while unlocking a whole new universe of possibilities for tomorrow. The past is always inextricably linked to both the present and the future. That makes the choice for Open XML so much simpler.

In the discussion around Open XML, there seem to be some who have a need to paint what should be a dispassionate technical review on the merits of the specification as some sort of Armageddon-like battle, with the forces of “truth and light” lined up to face the might of “evil.” As a self-confessed political-hack-in-recovery, I have to admit this makes a very compelling story. Much like the newspapers love to show elections as photo-finish horse races, anti-Microsoft partisans have latched onto this “epic battle for justice” storyline and are hanging on for dear life.

Let’s, for the sake of argument, take one more Joe Friday-esque look at “just the facts.”

• Open XML belongs to Ecma. Microsoft does not have control over future developments of ISO DIS 29500;
  
• Microsoft freely and irrevocably turned over stewardship of its intellectual property to Ecma
  
• ISO DIS 29500 unlocks data in an incredibly powerful way that allows people, companies and governments to use their data in new and unique ways;
  

So what’s the real issue? Anyone with a pulse knows what Microsoft has been accused of in the last 10 years so it is a bit disingenuous to say that Microsoft is pulling a fast one. It is a lot more ingenuous, and perhaps ingenious, to ask “who wins if Open XML does not become an ISO standard?”

• Certainly not commercial customers or users, who would be unable to utilize an ISO standard and still benefit from custom schema, backwards compatibility and other enhanced features built into Open XML;
  
• It definitely would not be governments, who would be unable to utilize an ISO standard to maintain their archived data in a format that was designed to be compatible with the documents of today and tomorrow;
  
• And it isn’t ordinary citizens and consumers who just want to be able to communicate and not think about the how or why. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of implementations of Open XML, including everything from Microsoft Office, to Open Office, to Apple’s new iPhone, allowing for ease of use in almost all environments and scenarios.
  

I would encourage everyone to take a look at the noise surrounding this conversation with a dispassionate eye. I think if you do, you’ll see that the opponents of DIS 29500 are very focused on some sort of a “win-lose” proposition. Id est, ISO adoption of Open XML means that Microsoft wins and the world loses. By focusing on this narrow perspective, they are polluting the technical review of an Ecma specification with anti-Microsoft bias. I prefer to look at it from this win-win perspective: If Open XML is adopted by ISO, the whole world can benefit from a robust, powerful document format and feel completely comfortable that it is being maintained by a community of interested parties, rather than a single entity.

The continued negative dialogue by anti-Microsoft partisans is only so much carping by competitors engaging in business strategy painted up to look like honest standards participation. Calling Microsoft dishonest and anti-competitive for simple participation in an international standards process dominated by IBM and others for years now is like a mackerel in moonlight; it both shines and stinks at the same time. The simple truth is that Microsoft’s participation in the international standards process is a strong demonstration of its maturation as a corporate citizen. By repudiating that, the anti-Microsoft crowd does themselves, their customers and the truth a titanic disservice.

Microsoft’s actions, coming as they do amidst ISO’s consideration of a Microsoft supported technology, Ecma Office Open XML, is especially telling about the company’s approach to document formats and customer data.

Why does this matter?

Ecma’s Open XML specification has been under a relentless barrage of nonsense, twaddle and claptrap. It has been accused of being Microsoft’s insidious Trojan horse into networks worldwide to lock-in users to Microsoft’s Office suite. Governments have been told alarming tales of how Ecma’s open, and freely downloadable, specification is really Microsoft’s attempt to lock all of the world’s data up and make it non-accessible to its owners. At, an admittedly hefty, 6,000 pages it is being construed as only implementable by Microsoft. Some of the more extreme ODF partisans have been to governments around the globe painting fearsome pictures of market manipulation by Microsoft.

The fact is that if competitors to Microsoft spent as much time, energy and money innovating on products that customers actually wanted to buy, they wouldn’t have to spend those resources wastefully on a campaign to lock a competing technology out of the market. I hear these arguments about how Microsoft is trying to corner the market, but the fact is that it is our competitors’ who are destroying years of détente in the technology industry by running around advocating government procurement preferences. They tell governments that to protect their citizens they must legislate a preference for their own technology. I don’t know about you, but every time someone starts telling my government that it has to legislate a preference for their technology, I get nervous.

The picture painted is of big, bad Microsoft beating the rest of the world, and the market, into submission. We are painted as an agent of evil for telling the truth about what the Open XML document format means, not just for our customers but customers of Novell, DataViz and soon to be Corel and Sun as well. We are excoriated for explaining our vision of the universe of data already existing and still to be created. By simply participating in the process and telling our side of the story, we are accused of manipulating the process for our own gains.

There’s a saying in the Southern U.S., “That dog don’t hunt.” It means that the statements being made don’t hold up to any responsible scrutiny. Microsoft made a very clear statement about its intentions and its commitment to interoperability and choice in the marketplace when it voted “Yes” for both ISO and ANSI adoption of ODF. Now, let’s see the supporters of ODF tone down the histrionics and have a rational discussion about the merits of Ecma’s Open XML in the marketplace. Only those who lack facts rely solely on emotion. I have a lot of faith in the power of the market (which is saying a lot considering I’m a tried and true Democrat), and I also have an overriding belief in the ability of people to choose what solution will meet their unique needs at that point in time. Let’s stop the one-sided name calling and compete. I’m ready, are you?

Although the domain has now come to a completely different use than I had originally intended for it, the name still kind of fits. This is really a platform for me to share my thoughts, opinions, political views and other issues with my friends, family and even foes.  So, instead of Lucy from the Peanuts gang having her psychiatry stand, I will have my lemonade stand. It also goes along with one of my philosophies of life, that when life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade.

I hope that you will check back frequently, or subscribe to my RSS feed, to see what things I am writing about. I travel quite a bit for work, so I intend to use this as a travelogue, as well as a public forum to discuss my thoughts about the things I am working on, interesting books I am reading, general observations about life and politics, and anything else that pops into my mind that I feel like sharing with the world.

Thanks for reading, and please stay tuned.