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.

Allegations of procedural irregularities in the OOXML approval process have raised serious questions about the integrity of ISO. Some national standards bodies complained that their views were disregarded or ignored during the OOXML ballot resolution meeting because of unreasonable time constraints. Some critics fear that the problems that arose during the ISO evaluation of OOXML will contribute to disillusionment and apathy towards open standards.

I asked Sutor if he thinks that the murky OOXML process will lead to uncertainty about standards in general. He doesn't accept that possibility and argued instead that the widespread public scrutiny received by OOXML is a sign that people are beginning to care deeply about open standards. He says that the extensive mainstream press coverage and public discussion about the OOXML decision helped to boost the visibility of ODF and increase awareness of standards-based technology.

Although he doesn't believe that the OOXML controversy will slow down adoption of open standards, he suspects that ISO will lose some credibility. The national bodies that were not permitted to present their proposals during the review process clearly feel that they were marginalized by blanket voting and other procedural shortcuts. This has led them to question the inclusiveness of ISO. The organization's dismissive response to the allegations has seriously exacerbated the issue and is reinforcing the perception of exclusivity.

ISO asserts that the approval of OOXML inherently validates the process. It also argues that the procedural shortcuts that blemished the OOXML process were permissible because they were instituted by the will of the majority. The ISO standardization model clearly favors consensus over technical validity, which means that it can provide no substantive guarantees that the standards it produces are actually sound. Sutor says that this revelation will compel some to question whether ISO is really a suitable venue for technical standards. In practice, the consensus-driven approach may be well suited for standardizing things like paper sizes, but not document formats.

If ISO declines to acknowledge the problems with its standardization model and pursue needed reforms, then it could face irrelevance, Sutor said. He pointed out that ISO has no inherent authority beyond the trust vested in it by national standards bodies and implementors of standards. He argued that anyone can create a standards organization and that other organizations will emerge to displace ISO if it loses public trust.

I asked him if he thinks that ISO approval of OOXML will drive implementors and adopters away from ODF. He has seen no evidence of such a trend and argued that uptake of OOXML has been slow. He claimed that the complexity of the standard has deterred acceptance and said that Microsoft's next-generation office suite hasn't significantly accelerated usage of OOXML in the wild. The vast majority of existing documents are already in the old binary formats and he contends that many users of Office 2007 still save new documents in the binary formats to accommodate compatibility with the older version. He thinks that implementors want to tap into that massive legacy document base and don't see much value yet in supporting OOXML in their software.

He is convinced that the industry will regard OOXML as a dead end, and that will force Microsoft to accept ODF. We have already seen some evidence of this in Microsoft's recent decision to support ODF in Office—a change of heart that was precipitated by pressure from ODF adopters. Sutor suspects that this trend will continue and that Microsoft will eventually fully embrace ODF.

Sutor acknowledges that ODF lacks support for some of Office's functionality, but he is convinced that the gaps can be filled if Microsoft is willing to collaborate with OASIS and propose improvements to the format. His chief concern is that suspicion and distrust of Microsoft could undermine any collaboration, so he strongly encourages ODF advocates to keep an open mind and give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt if the company makes a bona fide effort to participate in the evolution of the standard.

If Microsoft isn't given the opportunity to participate in shaping the future of ODF or chooses not to, he says we will likely see the company embrace and extend the format with its own non-standard extensions. He hopes that the ODF community can collectively work with Microsoft to prevent the format from suffering that kind of fragmentation.

The road ahead for ODF is filled with both challenges and opportunities. Sutor sees a very promising future for open standards and is convinced that companies and governments are now capable of recognizing the value of interoperability.