IBM killed Open XML

30 Jan 2008 | 14:34 GMT

By Nick Farrell

Microsoft throws toys out of pram, points stubby fingers

SOFTWARE empire Microsoft claims that Biggish Blue single-handedly destroyed its chances of having its Office Open XML (OOXML) standard approved by the International Organisation for Standardisation.

According to ZDNet, Microsoft senior director of XML technology, Jean Paoli, has been muttering that those evil nasty people in IBM did his standard in.

He said that Microsoft would have had OOXML as an official standard if it had not been for those pesky people in IBM.

IBM voted against the approval of OOXML as an Ecma standard, but the Vole thinks that Biggish Blue was up to yet more skulduggery behind the scenes.

Nicos Tsilas, senior director interoperability and IP policy said that IBM had made OOXML adoption into a religious and highly political debate as part of a cunning plan to peddle IBM's consulting services which are based on Open Sauce software.

He claimed IBM wanted governments to have an open-source, exclusive purchasing policy to shut the Vole out. He muttered that it was all a new way to compete by using government intervention.

However, one cannot feel too sorry for Microsoft. After all during the Standard's voting process some meetings were stacked by Microsoft partners who had never attended a meeting in their lives. µ

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