The New York Times reports that hardware/software vendor IBM is threatening to leave the ISO standards body after the controversy regarding Microsoft’s Office Open XML.
IBM published a new set of guidelines it plans to follow, which include encouraging standards bodies to have rules to protect their decisions from “undue influence,” a clear reference to competitor Microsoft.
Microsoft has long been accused of dominating the market for office productivity programs due to its use of closed file formats. Microsoft changed course, however, and submitted its OOXML format to become an international standard, which means other vendors could implement OOXML in their products.
But OOXML was criticized for being unnecessarily complex. Also, Microsoft was accused of pressuring countries to support the standard, which left companies such as IBM fuming. IBM is a long-time backer of ODF.
IBM’s new guidelines are intended to pressure organizations such as the ISO and ECMA, an industry-led standards organization, into rethinking their procedures.
I doubt they’ll do it, since as the article points out, that would mean that IBM would no longer have leverage.