What's the importance of the ISO standard?

What's the importance of the ISO standard?

Posted Sep 6, 2007 9:38 UTC (Thu) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646)
Parent article: OOXML loses a battle

Yes, it is quite possible that OOXML gets to be an ISO standard.

But IMHO the importance of ISO standards in general is over-emphasized, and the anxiety about ISO's good reputation is a shenanigan -- as everyone can attest, who remembers the struggle between the ISO/OSI network model and IP network architecture. Don't you remember that there's a reason for the proverb »the nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from«?

We should tell it like it is: MS's Office formats already are de-facto standards in business, and also in government in many places. People try to change the latter with the goal to get rid of proprietary file formats. (They hope that companies will follow suit, especially when they do business with government.) Rubber-stamping OOXML as an ISO standard hinders that goal.

That's all. There are no other real disadvantages -- business doesn't care if Office is an ISO standard, they are already satisfied with the available de-facto standard as it is. If you do business beyond the restricted IT realm, you know how ubiquitous Office is. Even more so in small companies than in big companies. Staff from big companies often knows that there are different file formats -- employees from small companies take it simply for granted that everybody has Office. I have received emails from potential customers in doc format, and just in doc format, without plain text; and after an inquiry from me they complained »what? you don't want work from me? I'm the customer and I do as I want!« (paraphrased).

Joachim

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