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Quoting:Q: What do you think will be the impact if OOXML is approved by the ISO?

Quoting:Andy Updegrove: It's an interesting question. One answer, and you'll see that people give many different answers to this question depending on what their, how to say delicately, orientation may be, so it's more a matter of emphasis than anything else.

The first thing to reflect, as has been noted by a number of people, is that whether it's adopted or not by ISO/IEC, it's going to be widely adopted in the industry. Why is that so? Well, the first reason is because OOXML, being in a publicly available mode, is actually a very good thing, but it's important to then qualify that by saying: very important thing for whom? And the answer to that is: for Microsoft, first and foremost. Secondarily, for developers that live within the Microsoft ecosystem, and then finally existing Microsoft customers. So, it is good for all of those parties to have Microsoft open the kimono farther on its intellectual property.

So, it was necessary that this would happen, but it's not sufficient. And the main reason it's not sufficient is because OOXML is only useful for that purpose and will not really be able to act in the same way that ODF will.

Microsoft actually admits this and points out repeatedly that OOXML is intended for a different purpose. That's not disingenuous; that's exactly true. So then the question becomes: am I talking out of both sides of my mouth? And the answer to that, I think, is No. Those that are interested, I've done a long exegesis on this at my blog -- Standards Blog -- dated February 24th, so I'll summarize it very briefly here rather than in detail. But I think it's actually good that OOXML is open, but that it would be bad if OOXML became ISO-certified, because one of the few ways in which adoption or non-adoption does matter will be whether governments place it on an equal parity with ODF-compliant applications. And that is where it really matters. And it matters in two senses.

One is, only if there's a sufficiently large marketplace for ODF-compliant applications will both open source and proprietary vendors feel that it's worth their while to spend enough time to come up with truly competitive, robust, world-class, head-to-head competing products. That's the first way.

The second way it matters is because I believe that OOXML is just the first in a number of standards that are going to have significance far beyond the vendors. These are standards that are core to... are increasing, for example, dependence in society upon the Internet. And one of the reasons that ODF has inspired so much popular enthusiasm and support is because people recognize is that document formats are different from wifi implementations. It doesn't matter a whole lot which wifi implementation specification reaches the marketplace. People's lives won't be affected one way or another. It does make a difference whether open documents formats truly take hold in the industry.