Perhaps it is too soon to say that the horribly broken ooxml deal is finally sitting pretty in some trash bin. But given the perception or was that the reality of how the main proponent seems to be so very convinced that they are doing the right thing, perhaps it is time that the world gave it’s collective “see figure one” to them.

ooxml has failed in the US. Hurray! We need to see it fail catastrophically worldwide.

I have been quoted here and I would like to repeat the invitation: “Red Hat’s Pillay also offered his recommendation for a solution: “If Microsoft really wanted to [offer a format benefiting all users], they should just publish [a standard] with no strings attached at all [across] the entire specification, as it [does now] with their [Word] DOC, [PowerPoint] PPT and [Excel] XLS file formats. Nothing can be simpler that that.”

To my friends at MS Singapore: Please try to look deeply into what your corporate entity is trying to do and pushing. Individually, I have great respect for each of you. Somehow, when you don the MS persona, something changes. It does not have to be that way. None of us who do work on standards bodies get paid to do that work – it is additional, national service-like stuff. But, for all of you, failure of the ooxml will mean some KPIs not being met. It does not have to be that way.