OOXML: Triumph or Pyrrhic victory?

"One more such victory will utterly undo me!" said Pyrrhus of Epirus after defeating the Romans at Asculum in 279 BC.

Although won, this battle and a previous one cost him such devastating losses that he was unable to eventually win the war. Today, this is referred as Pyrrhic victory.

I can see significant evidence for such a costly victory in the way OOXML passed through the ISO. Even with the ISO certification though, the "OOXML war" is not over yet because there will certainly be challenges.

Several irregularities have been reported so far. Among those, the case of Norway got the most press coverage. There is an ongoing investigation by the European Commission, Directorate General for Competition, that will surely have an eye on the Norwegian happenings. The EU already fined Microsoft twice.

Consequently, one of the worst nightmares should be another imposition on the self-lobbying in getting the OOXML specification through the ISO. In the worst case, the EU might even issue a recommendation to not acclaim OOXML as an international standard. A scenario like this can end with a domino effect, when countries like China and India, which are reported to have voted against OOXML, do the same.

After winning the costly battle over OOXML at the ISO, where Microsoft followed somehow the rules, but broke a lot of conventions. Will they be able to set up the next line of defense?

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Peter Cheng

Peter Cheng is a community strategist and open source evangelist, who is based in Beijing, China. In 2003, he initiated the Open Source University program to gather industry experts and help spread open source technology and culture to over 100 universities. In 2007, he organized the Open Source Camp in five Chinese cities, with the aim to enable the open source community to share and exchange ideas and to promote the technology in China. Peter currently runs TargetSource Tech, a company he founded to provide consulting services on enterprise open source software.