Thousands petition against OpenXML standard

More than 20,000 people have signed a petition against the fast-track adoption of Microsoft's new Office formats as an international ISO standard, according to the organisers.

Standards committees in countries across the world are being asked to vote this summer on whether the Open XML formats, used in the latest Office 2007 suite, should be endorsed as a standard.

A different Open Document Format (ODF) has already been adopted but there is nothing to stop ISO accepting second specification. Both formats are based on the XML description language.

A lot of money is at stake as Microsoft stands to lose lucrative government contracts if OpenXML is not endorsed. Among its backers is the British Library.

The battle has turned nasty with each side accusing the other of being driven by commercial interests. ODF is backed by IBM and Sun.

The petition against Open XML has been organized by a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII). Benjamin Henrion, who wrote it, claimed people were outraged by the Microsoft application. "It's gone global. Users are happy with the existing international standard for documents, and can't see why Microsoft is forcing its own standard except in pure self-interest."

FFII president Pieter Hintjens accuses Microsoft of manipulating the standards process by "stuffing ISO national committees with its business partners so it can buy 'yes' votes."

He claimed: "In Italy, an eleven-member committee suddenly found itself with 70 members. The same has happened across the world. We are witnessing the rape of the international standards process by a convicted monopolist."

Graham Taylor, chief executive of OpenForum Europe, said: " The market wants a single truly open standard that can act as safe harbour for our documents for the next hundred years, and encourage innovation and choice in applications."

Microsoft argues that it needed to developed Open XML to be completely backwards compatible with its old binary office formats, which are a de facto standard by virtue of the fact that nearly everyone uses them.

There's a lengthy exposition of the rest of its case here