Office OpenXML was approved as the Ecma 376 standard on 7 December after a committee process that included representatives of Apple, Intel, Novell and Toshiba, as well as non-vendors such as the British Library.

However, IBM voted against standardisation, with vice-president for open-source and standards Bob Sutor claiming that the process was “nothing more than ‘standardising’ Microsoft’s formats for its own products”. Sun and IBM both support Open Document Format (ODF), a rival XML-based effort.

At a meeting with UK media this morning, Sun chief open source officer Simon Phipps also doubted the viability of OpenXML as an open standard and questioned Ecma’s credibility.
“Ecma is a coin-in-the-slot standards organisation,” he said. “The OpenXML [submission] is 6,000 pages. Imagine what it takes to implement that specification.”

On his blog yesterday, IBM’s Sutor also doubted the success of third-party efforts to support OpenXML.

“Make sure you follow how well the Novell and Corel implementations do,” he wrote. “If they falter, watch out for those who try to blame those companies or open source itself, when the root of the problem may be with the Microsoft Office OpenXML spec in the first place.”