To the casual onlooker, the British Library is solidly behind OpenXML and indeed believes that its adoption as an ISO/IEC standard is essential.
One of the first documents I ran into when I got interested in OpenXML was this powerpoint presentation (it is also available as a pdf if you look on the directory) from the start of the Ecma process at the end of 2005 showing Adam Farquhar from the British Library up there with Jean Paoli and other Microsoft luminaries explaining the merits of OpenXML.
A little later Brian Jones’ blog shows a beaming Adam Farquhar up there on stage with Jean Paoli and Jan van den Beld, the secretary general of Ecma International, and a copy of the Ecma draft. Brian Jones is a “program manager in Office” who does a brilliant job promoting OpenXML in every way possible. He duly gives fulsome praise to Adam Farquhar.
Alarm bells go off. Adam Farquhar has clearly been subjected to some serious schmoozing. Has he, I wonder, managed to retain his critical faculties?
It turns out that he is hosting the kick-off meeting on 10 May 2007 for the BSI subcommittee which is considering the technical merits of OpenXML as an ISO/IEC standard. So I am able to press him on just why he thinks OpenXML is needed.
We work our way through the arguments described in Parts 1, 2, and 3. He is clearly bright, so I find it surprising that he cannot see that the pro-OpenXML arguments in Parts 1 and 2 are plain silly. In other words, he has either got genuinely befuddled or he is thinking tactically like Brian Jones or any other professional advocate: (1) John may be convinced by these dumb arguments, but (2) if not, his time will be up before we get on to more sensible ones.
When I ask him what for evidence that OpenXML is better at representing legacy documents than ODF, he looks confused and says that Microsoft told him. So I am inclined to think he is just befuddled.
Post a Comment