Peter Galli well covers the current news surrounding proposed ODF adoption in Texas and Minnesota, and the ISO vote on OOXML in its first phase in this article. There are two quotes in particular that leap out, both from Tom Robertson, Microsoft General Manager of Standards. Let's look at the latter one first:
But the company supports customer choice and interoperability and urges governments to also support these, he said.
"In that vein, we encourage them to adopt neutral technology procurement practices so that they have the greatest choice among available technologies, and so encourage competition in the marketplace and get the maximum value out of their IT investments," he said. "Mandating a specific document format for government use reduces a government's ability to communicate with its constituents, make the best use of available technology, and promote competition and innovation in the marketplace."
A lawyer's oeuvre, as is a journalist's, is defined by language. Tom is a lawyer. There is a wonderful shift in meaning of "a specific document format" as Tom slides through the paragraph. He is a consummate linguistic professional.
Tom hopes that customers will confuse the standard for a format, a specification in its own right, but one that encourages multiple competing implementations per the customer's goal, with a format for which there is but one implementation, choking off competition. The statement's irony is indeed rich. Well done, Tom, but your government customers aren't so easily confused.
The earlier quote is simply funny in its own right:
Tom Robertson, general manager for interoperability and standards at Microsoft, told eWEEK that there is a competitive situation in the marketplace, with ODF supporters actively trying to stop even the consideration of Open XML as a standard under the ISO's rules. "This is a pure competitive play on the part of ODF supporters like IBM," he said.
This one wins Obvious-Statement-of-the-Week. Standards happen when a technology space matures to the point that customers are over-served and want choice to encourage competition. Customers complaining about price is the market signal. Competitors know they can collectively chase the incumbent vendor with a standard at this point, if they pick the right level of collective abstraction to standardize. This is how standards work in the marketplace. (I would hope the GM for standards at Microsoft knew this.)
A sympathy play isn't going to work here. Customers WANT the standard that encourages multiple implementations. True Microsoft support for ODF in their Office product suite would have been listening to customers. Complaining that the marketplace is competitive while shoving your own product specification through a standards forum is naive at best and arrogant in the extreme at worst.
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