If this process for ISO approval of OOXML had progressed according to what you have written, then there would be no problem or concerns.
Please go to the link I placed in reply #1 and read that article. Clearly, Microsoft has corrupted the process as you outline it and is worthy of the scorn and derision they are receiving if the facts are as presented.
I read that article and quite a few others as well.
The evil Microsoft undermined the standards process by stacking the committee with business partners.
What a load of crap.
Do you really think it was better to have the V1 committee made of of 7 companies, led by Sun pushing their Open Document Format, who's products represented a tiny portion of people using office applications?
The Open Document Format was standardized by a relatively small group of anti-Microsoft companies. They created a standard that suited their purposes, but didn't encompass all the features that Microsoft has in their office suite, which has an overwhelming share of the market.
That's a horrible way to create a standard, but since Microsoft and other companies to whom office productivity suites didn't choose to participate in the standards process, they didn't have much room to complain that the standard didn't suit their needs.
After the fact, Microsoft decided that having a standardized office format was something they needed. So they released what had been their proprietary format to standardization.
Not surprisingly, the small group of companies that had created the Open Document Format fought them. They created ODF and were using the fact that it was a standard and Microsoft's format was not to try and chip away at Microsoft's market share. If Microsoft's format becomes standardized, ODF loses a lot of it's appeal.
Once Microsoft decided to standardize their format, being part of the standardization process became important to a lot of companies who before had considered Microsoft to be the informal standard, despite it being a closed format.
So participation by companies in the standards group tripled.
But apparenly according to all the advocates of openness, more isn't better, it's worse. When more companies started participating. Sun, IBM, Red Hat, and the others that were using the standards body to push their own agenda lost control of the process.
As an ISO standard, OOXML will be maintained and modified by the standards group, not by Microsoft. It is an Open Standard.
Of course a representative of the OpenDocument Format Alliance makes vague claims that the standard isn't completely open and might possibly make it possible for Microsoft to sue companies that try and maintain compatibility over Copyright violations.
There are of course the same people that complain that the claims that using open source code in your own software might open you up to copyright claims if someone put copyrighted code into open source code, are completely overblown.
Microsoft can't maintain copyright claims on things they released to the standards group. Other companies may not be able to identically copy how Microsoft implements things, but the purpose of a standard it to allow compatibility, not hand over all the work a company did implementing their products.
The problem many of these open source groups have with that is that they are generally opposed to ownership of intellectual property, as well as capitalism for that matter.
The open source community has a large faction that are basically communists and believe in communal property rights not individual property rights.
I'm sure a great many posters on Slashdot will be very distressed that Microsoft has been able to undermine the marketing ploy of Microsoft's adversaries.
However, this will make it so those of us that generally use Microsoft Office at work, and Open Office at home with have better file compatibility in the future. Open Office will be able to become a better product in that it suits the needs of it's users better.
It becomes harder for the opponents of Microsoft to say government offices must replace Microsoft Office with Open Office because it has an open file format, but that doesn't harm consumers.
If Open Office can get better compatibility, why would companies still choose MS Office? Microsoft has dumped billions of dollars into developing and improving Office over the years. It's not perfect, but for most companies, it probably is the best product out there, and when you're spending lots of money per hour on labor, you don't need to have the software save workers much time, before Office pays for itself.