BECTA's Complaint About OOXML Returned on Monday

BECTA's complaints have not ceased yet [1, 2]. Monday saw another wave of coverage. Here are some of the latest articles, which are pretty handy because they show a long-time Microsoft 'alliance' and its growing pains. An obedient client of Microsoft, BECTA, mops the floor with this attempt to go too far with lock-in. Microsoft believes that if it builds it (OOXML), they will come. "They" as in customers? Or as in anti-trust regulators?

The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) said Monday that it has filed a complaint with the European Commission against Microsoft, alleging that its new Office 2007 file format will impede educational initiatives because it does not natively support open standards.

Here is another article where Marino's comments are quoted:

In response to last week's action by Becta, the ODF Alliance's managing director, Marino Marcich, released the following statement today: "That a major government agency, in this case the UK Government's lead agency for information and communications technology (ICT) in education, felt compelled to take such an action demonstrates that the wider marketplace, which includes educational and training organizations, libraries and archival institutions, will be adversely impacted by OOXML's impediments to interoperability. We have repeatedly urged Microsoft to provide native, built-in support for the truly open ODF document standard, as [Becta] has suggested."

You Don't {"Get What You Paid For"}â„¢

You get a lot more.

If you think that you always get what you pay for, the just-released beta of OpenOffice 3.0 should convince you otherwise. This free, open-source software suite provides most of what anyone could want in an office suite, including a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, database, drawing tools, and math equation editor.

Then again, doesn't Microsoft try to force OpenOffice 3.0 to implement the 'unimplementable', essentially tossing thousands of pages of bug-ridden specifications that nobody will ever comply with, not even Microsoft itself? Rest assured, it's a goalpost-moving routine that is nothing short of technical sabotage of competitors' products. Microsoft wants it both way: get praised for 'openness' while at the same time stifling interoperability.

A Missed Opportunity

In this new article from Australia it is said that an opportunity was missed when Australia chose to stay neutral. The claim was made by by a Red Hat representative.

Australia was one of 41 countries that participated in decision to replace the previous standard, OpenDocument Format (ODF), with OOXML (Open Office XML) which is developed and promoted by Microsoft. Denmark, Germany, Japan and Singapore were among 24 countries that voted in favour of Microsoft’s format. Eight countries, including China and New Zealand disapproved, while nine countries, including Australia, chose to abstain from voting. “I was very disappointed that Australia did not vote,” Feldmann said. “Your New Zealand cousins did, and they said no.” “You really missed an opportunity there,” he said.

For more information about OOXML and Australia, consider reading:

• Standards Australia Feet Still on Fire, Microsoft Spin Persists
• If You Live in Australia, Justice Needs Your Help
• OOXML in Australia Revisited
• OOXML: Stacking, Exclusion and Snubbing in the US, Australia and New Zealand

Under normal circumstances, Australia would have probably voted "No". Every country would. In reality, however, it was more of a Puppet Show®.

Relying on Ignorance, Apathy, Specifications Scale

OOXML is still very broken, sometimes by design. We last wrote about Excel/OOXML issues a couple of days ago. Here is a technical analysis.

In theory, the OOXML (OXML) specification is supposed to define what Excel 2007 reads and writes. In practice, it's not true at all; the latest public drafts of OOXML are unable to represent many actual Excel 2007 files.

Won't people realise this at some stage? Will people understand that they get betrayed by the spreadsheets that they use are forced to use? ⬆ "Let's face it - the average computer user has the brain of a Spider Monkey."

--Bill Gates