Posted on Monday, March 17, 2008 6:27 PM
Bill Gates heeft afgelopen bij een Amerikaanse Congrescommissie
gepleit voor het standaardiseren van Microsoft's documentformaat OOXML. Volgens Gates levert OOXMl "een bijdrage aan innovatie en is het in het belang van burgers ten allen tijde toegang te hebben tot informatie". Dan is het toch grappig hoe IBM's Rob Weir momenteel op zijn blog
uiteenzet wat er zoals ontbreekt en onlogisch is aan OOXML. Zomaar een citaat:
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In his most recent post, "Russian Peasant" Patrick suggests that the only reason one would vote against OOXML is spite, and that any problems could be fixed in maintenance.
Let's try another analogy. You are shopping for a new TV and you go to your local consumer electronics store and look at the array of television sets lined up. Most come with a warranty. Any defects detected within the maintenance period will be fixed at the manufacturer's expense. This is generally a good thing, having a maintenance period to fix problems that were not evident at purchase time.
So you find the model TV you want, the salesperson rolls out the box and just before you hand over your credit card, you notice a big gash on the side of the box, where a forklift had pierced it. You say, "I can't accept this TV, it has been smashed!". The salesperson says, "Don't worry. No TV is perfect. We can fix this in maintenance. You're fully covered."
Do you hand over your credit card? Of course not. Maintenance periods, with TV's as with standards, are for defects detected after the fact. It is not a replacement for proper inspection, review and approval processes. You expect a TV to work properly at the start.
No standard is perfect. We all know that. But at the time of approval, NB's should be confident that their technical review was sufficient to find all of the important issues, and that these issues have all been fixed in the standard. OOXML should not be approved unless it is suitable now. The maintainers of OOXML will be busy enough fixing other problems that will be found later. We should not willingly approve a defective standard and set up a future maintenance group for failure by front-loading their agenda with defects that we already know about."