Following criticism from the Open Source Industry Association (OSIA) over its ambition to have the Office Open XML (Open XML or OOXML) format accepted as an international (ISO) standard, Microsoft's group product manager for Microsoft Office, Gray Knowlton, spoke with Computerworld about why the world needs two standard document formats.

Sign petition: Say NO to the Microsoft Office format as an ISO standard.Microsoft is currently trying to make the ISO National Bodies believe that its Office Open XML (OOXML) format is a good standard. This website discusses why this broken proprietary standard should never be accepted by ISO.

The GNOME Foundation has issued a statement in response to recent accusations that it has been supporting the acceptance of Microsoft's Office Open XML format (OOXML) as an ECMA standard at the expense of the Open Document Format (ODF), the open standard used by OpenOffice.org, KOffice and other free software office applications.

Although Microsoft publicly testifies from every available pulpit of their deep longing for multiple document formats, a quick glance at reality shows that this love remains unrequited in their products. For example, what new formats does Office 2007 include out of the box?

Multi-trade International Corporation for Research of Office Software Open Format Technologies (MICROSOFT) has announced their surprise decision, that they cease to support OOXML document format (Office Open XML), acknowledging at the same time, that the ANSI-developed & supported TXT format will be a better, universal, solution.

Microsoft is pushing to get their new office document format, "Office Open XML" better known as OOXML, through the ISO fast track process in order to get it approved as an open standard.

So ISO rubberstamped Microsoft's OOXML, a lame excuse for an 'open' format. The promise of ODF was that we could free the information inside office documents, making it available to new innovative programs and web services. Sadly, the real aim of OOXML was to maintain Microsoft's Office Monopoly.

Alex Brown, the convenor of the ISO's Office Open XML (OOXML) Ballot Resolution Meeting, has accused Microsoft of failure in its efforts to transform the document format into a genuinely open standard

Ever since Open Document Format was standardized by ISO and Microsoft started pushing its own “open” format a significant portion of the Free Software community has been buzzing about how bloated, not really open and ultimately redundant Microsoft’s format is and moreover how Microsoft is using various “dirty tricks” to get its format approved as an open standard.