OpenXML, comments

I was studying both the 6.000 pages Open XML ISO specification and comments to the fast track procedures by several parties around world. It's clearly impossible to implement such standard as it is by a competitive vendor to Microsoft. Microsoft made a good effort to lock-up his standard and made it unavailable for implementation for anyone else.

The OOXML specification is protected by multiple patents, where as the patent holder Microsoft corporation does not guarantee not to sue or confer any other rights for competitors. The basic implementation of such standard by the competition can face patent infringement cases around the world. This means a real threat for competitive applications even before the development begins.

From the beginning, office suite applications by Microsoft were benefiting from their proprietary standards, where other parties were unable to implement such standard and make their products compatible. Microsoft decided to ignore the existing open standards, and as we have seen in the past, they are trying to bring upon a new “open” proprietary standard that can be fully integrated only by Microsoft itself. There have been Open Standards for document exchange out there for a longer time, Microsoft had pledged only one step for its implementation, but in the end it turns out to be a third party plug-in which was made by another developer (Sun Microsystems).

To date, the standard has not been implemented by its vendor or the competition. It is clear that the Microsoft product will switch to their “open” standard in a certain time; does this mean competition in the field of standards?

Will be Mao Tse Tung replaced by Bill Gates?

According to Greg Mundy speech at Microsoft Innovation day for SMEs in Brussels last week, young people in China need human Icons for leader ship. Greg Mundy describe how similar Icons from United States software industry are well accepted in India and China, countries which are going the Open Source way. Obviously Microsoft is spending lot of money and lobbyist around there to keep up the licensing money come in. It's clear that communistic China won't accept a capitalist leader, no matter if it's proprietary software king or UK Prime Minister, it's literally unreal.

Greg Mundy also describe how the business in EU are going backwards and how we should learn from US and mostly from it's patent industry which protect innovation.

Hopefully, this kind of protection (claiming business, acounting methods and software patents) won't happen in EU.