Industry standards may not be open (e.g., Microsoft Word file formats) so there are reverse-engineering risks with any OSS dependent upon those standards. The MoJ preference for open standards (e.g., Open Document Format, which is now supported even by Microsoft) lessens this risk.

This week the Dutch government will discuss a proposal to switch as much as possible to open standards and open source software. The Microsoft director for the Netherlands, Theo Rinsema, responded that Microsoft is not objecting to open standards, but the proposal excludes too many not open standards, like PDF, MP3 and GSM, which are widely accepted standards.

Microsoft's Open XML is not as bad as it has been made out to be, while the Open Document Format (ODF) has many "misleading" claims, according to an open standards activist.

"...Microsoft's proposal is for web developers to opt-in to Internet Explorer 8's standards mode by adding in a new meta tag (or HTTP header) [...] Microsoft are demanding that we web standards developers favour them with time, cost and effort, while they continue to abrogate their responsibilities to their half a billion clients. [...] Microsoft on the other hand are now expecting us web developers to carry the burden of their responsibility. Instead of Microsoft abiding by the responsibility of rendering pages according to the open defined standards, Microsoft are intent on making standards-based pages second class citizens. [...] We web developers should not be paying for Microsoft's mistakes.

Some commenters think I was unfair to IBM in my last post. There I took Big Blue to task for its announcement that it intends to wage war against Microsoft in the world’s standards bodies

Microsoft's plans of having its OOXML document format accepted as a national standard were thwarted by the South African Bureau of Standards in a conclusive vote against the move in a meeting yesterday.

Microsoft back into its walled gardens after bribing, cheating, stuffing ballots, and lying to everyone for the sake of hurting document standards (ODF)

The subject of open document standards grows in importance not only for the technically- minded, but for anyone who uses a computer to work on editable documents. Across the board, standards are crucial.

During the LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco, I met with Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president of open source and standards. We discussed document standards and the implications of ISO's controversial decision to grant fast-track approval to Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) format.