We laughed heartily when we heard about Microsoft allegedly making their Office XML formats open to the public. It sounded ridiculous and sure enough, it was.
Here at Office Watch Comedy Central we laughed heartily when we heard about Microsoft allegedly making their Office XML formats open to the public. It sounded ridiculous and sure enough, it was.
Office XML is an XML based version of the Word, Excel etc document formats.
What happened is that the good burghers of Massachusetts came to an agreement with Microsoft about the accessibility of the Office XML formats. The US state has a new ‘Open Standards’ policy that prefers open source software and standards over those generally favored by Microsoft.
So Microsoft agreed to amend the licence for the state government so that the documents it produces are ‘open’. But what does that mean?
It seems to mean that end users can open Office XML documents and read them are not in breach of the licence to use Office. Big deal – many companies and governments publish documents in the usual Word format for download from web site, email or other means. All these documents can be distributed and opened with various pieces of software – not just Word. That normal use of Word documents is a far cry from making a file format ‘open source’ with the inner-workings open to the world and useable in other programs.
What Microsoft and possibly Massachusetts defines as ‘Open Format’ may not be what the broader computing community considers ‘open’.
That said, the Office XML standard is a step forward. It is understandable that Microsoft wants to keep parts of it proprietary since they have commercial rights to protect. The fact that Office 2003 users can publish to an XML format is an important step forward. While it means little to most people (content with the standard Word and Excel formats) the XML option is a boon to those with more integrated systems.
Microsoft’s statement on the changes to the licence is here. If you want to see the XML schemas for the Office applications then look here. Some people might find them interesting or, more likely, an alternative to sleeping pills.
