The teams developing the OpenDocument Format and Office Open XML standards should work together, evolving the two in parallel, the editor of the ODF standard said Tuesday in an open letter to the standards-setting community.

The Microsoft-sponsored OOXML document format is just days away from a critical meeting that will influence whether the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) will adopt it as a standard, as its rival ODF was adopted in May 2006. Relations between supporters of the two formats are, for the most part, combative rather than cordial.

Patrick Durusau, ISO project editor for ODF, or ISO/IEC 26300 as it is known there, thinks supporters of the two formats would be more productive if they allowed the formats to co-evolve, he wrote in his open letter. Durusau thoughtfully avoided the ODF and OOXML formats for his letter, choosing instead PDF, itself adopted as an ISO standard in December.

"If we had a co-evolutionary environment, one where the proponents of OpenXML and OpenDocument, their respective organizations, national bodies and others [sic] interested groups could meet to discuss the future of those proposals, the future revisions of both would likely be quite different," Durusau wrote.

"Peaceful co-evolution will mean better standards at lower costs in a more timely fashion," he said.

ODF, based on a file format used by Sun's StarOffice application and the open source productivity suite OpenOffice.org, won the support of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, which fast-tracked it through the ISO standardization process.

Microsoft offered its OOXML file format to ECMA International, which adopted it as one of its standards before proposing it to ISO for the same fast-track process.

An ISO committee rejected OOXML at a first vote last year. Since then, ECMA has been responding to the objections expressed in that vote, and the ISO committee will consider the revisions it proposed at a so-called ballot resolution meeting next week. There are 1,100 comments to process during the five days of the meeting. National standards bodies will then have one month to decide whether to change their vote in light of the changes made.

ISO accepts recommendations for fast-tracking from industry standards bodies. Specifications that take this route can become standards quicker and with less debate than by the regular route.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.

Whitepapers

• The Trend from UNIX to Linux in SAP(r) Data Centers
• Secure Wireless Printing Options
• Network-Wide Change Management Visibility with Route Analytics
• Getting in Compliance With Government Data Regulations By Leveraging Online Security Technology
• How to Offer the Strongest SSL Encryption
• Maximizing Site Visitor Trust Using Extended Validation SSL

View more NETWORK MANAGEMENT whitepapers

Webcasts

• Managing the End User Experience-A Real World Example of Success
• Branch Office Trends and Best Practices
• Correlating granular network and application visibility
• Migrating to an MPLS-Based Network
• Round Table Webcast with Forrester Research
• Best Practices for Deploying WAN Optimization for Disaster Recovery

View more NETWORK MANAGEMENT webcasts

Special Reports

• WAN Optimization: The Ultimate No Brainer
• Ehternet Services: WAN options mature
• Keeping Spam at Bay
• Network World Executive Guide: The Virtualization Equation
• Application Performance Management Executive Guide
• Executive Guide: Building a Service Oriented Architecture

View more NETWORK MANAGEMENT special reports