How Microsoft Ratted Itself Out Of Office

(MoneyWatch)  Developers hoping to hitch a ride on Google's Wave have discovered that Microsoft may have unwittingly helped them resolve the single greatest problem they needed to overcome in order to challenge the dominance of Office.

When Microsoft set out to create Office 2007 using a brand new code base XML format -- Office Open XML (OOXML) -- it needed to accomplish two goals: make it compatible with all previous versions of Office, and have it accepted as a standard file format for productivity tools so that governments could continue using it while complying with rules forcing them to use standards-based software.

So like a Mafia don accepting an honorary degree from Harvard while simultaneously continuing to collect his vigorish, Microsoft applied to the International Standards Organization (ISO) for its patina of technical respectability while continuing to sell client access licenses to the masses. But it underestimated the fight opponents would put up to this certification, and ended up publishing reams of documentation as proof that its document protocol was truly open and available to all.

Buried in the two thousand-plus page documentation it provided was the key to the kingdom -- true compatibility with Microsoft Office file formats -- past and present. And compatibility has been the stumbling block over which the likes of Sun, IBM, Novell and the Open Document Foundation all stumbled as they tried to introduce rivals to Office. While they all succeeded in providing superficial compatibility -- Star Office will open a Microsoft Word document, for instance -- none of them can reliably translate complex business processes (like calls to Web services embedded in an Excel spreadsheet). Large organizations can't afford to lose that level of compatibility, which is why ODF failed its trial with the state of Massachusetts.

Microsoft dodged a bullet in Massachusetts, but realized that if its Office productivity suite wasn't adopted as a de jure standard, rather than merely a de facto monopoly, it would eventually lose customers who were mandated by law to use only standards-based applications. That's why it fought tooth and nail to convince ISO to adopt OOXML as a standard -- even if that meant publishing its entire specification.

What no one realized until now, however, is the degree to which Microsoft's own document contained the information competitors really need. Gary Edwards, a Web developer and former executive director of the Open Document Foundation wrote in an email:

Without systems and technologies designed to integrate deep into the Office productivity environment, we can't connect Wave to the legacy of existing applications, documents and business processes...

[But] one of the interesting things we are finding is that OpenXML might be a bit more "open" than Microsoft intended.

Depending on your perspective, either Microsoft has sowed the seeds of its own undoing, or international standards bodies succeeded in forcing Microsoft to open itself up. Either way, Microsoft has given away the key to compatibility with Office documents, allowing all comers to overcome the one barrier that has heretofore prevented customers from dumping Microsoft's Office suite.