From: Vance, LA Larry @ IS [mailto:Larry.A.Vance@L-3com.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 5:44 PM
To: isot@ansi.org
Cc: PJ@groklaw.com
Subject: ECMA 376 Office Open XML

Dear Sirs,

As a consumer and citizen of the United States of America I would like to make known my objections to approving ECMA 376 Office Open XML as a standard. 

At first introduction of an XML format file system for Microsoft Office products I was enthused by the prospect that they may be turning over a new leaf and making interoperability with other vendors and with their own previous applications a possibility.  After further investigation I have come to the conclusion that Microsoft is about the same old games of "embrace, extend, extinguish" that they have used frequently in the past.  I have come to the realization that XML is only a bottle and the potion inside is still poison.  I have been hampered in my career by incompatibility of Microsoft products with others and even themselves.  My data becomes locked in a format that is forever locked to the application that created it.  OOXML specification has embedded binary blobs that can only be provided by Microsoft, for Microsoft, through Microsoft.

I am a proponent of XML from the standpoint that it provides a framework for generating documents that can be freely exchanged and interpreted, but when the framework is diverted to use it for proprietary objects that become part of the specification then the use violates the premise of having a framework that allows interoperability.  The best they can be accused of is associating the terms XML and Open with what they have done with this specification.  Open should mean that the definitions are open for inspection and implementation for the entire specification, where extensions could be allowed, but only in the case that the extension would not make other implementations of the same standard unworkable.

Please register my dissenting vote, for whatever it is worth, to allow ECMA 376 Office Open XML as a standard.