Updated 4:45 PM ET

As expected, Ecma, the European-based standards body chosen by Microsoft to fast-track its Office Open XML standard to ISO, voted to adopt OOXML.  The vote was 20 to 1, with IBM casting the only negative vote (as disclosed by IBM VP of Open Standards and Open Source Bob Sutor earlier in the day).  What exactly does the favorable vote mean?  Let's try the Q&A format again to sort it all out.

Q:  Why did Microsoft not send OOXML directly to ISO?

A:  First, let's clear up one thing for accuracy's sake:  while people commonly refer to ISO approval as a shorthand convenience, the actual approving body is a joint committee formed years ago by both ISO, the International Organization for Standardization (right – it's not an acronym) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) to address the then-emerging area of information technology standards.  That committee is called the Joint Technical Committee, or JTC1.  So it's actually joint ISO/IEC approval that Microsoft wants for OOXML, to gain parity with OASIS's ODF document format.  ODF was approved for all practical purposes last May, and was formally published just a few days ago.

Q:  Right.  So why did Microsoft not send OOXML directly to JTC1?

A  Glad you asked.  ISO and IEC are not standards development organizations as such, but rather global bodies that have historically approved standards that were generated at the national level by organizations that were accredited for that purpose by bodies recognized by ISO and IEC.  In the US, for example, the accrediting body is ANSI – the American National Standards Institute.  As more and more IT standards were created outside that system, by consortia, ISO/IEC began to accept those standards as well.  But in either case, a specification must first be vetted, approved, and presented by an organization recognized by ISO/IEC.  Only after that occurs will ISO/IEC present a specification to their global membership of nationally representative members for consideration.

David Berlind posted an interesting interview yesterday with Justin Steinman, Novell's director of marketing.  In that exchange, David focused particularly on how Novell might (or might not) be asked by Microsoft to help it support ODF at some point in the future.  To the extent that Steinman had any actual knowledge on that topic, he not surprisingly declined to show any cards.

Along the way, though, David asked and Steinman answered two interesting questions relating to Novell's own ODF plans.  Here's the first, expanding on Novell's statement in its press release that it would offer its conversion code in open source code to OpenOffice.org, as I discussed yesterday:

ZDNet: ...I was looking at the wording of your announcement and trying to better understand exactly what's going on here. Is there going to be some code that opens and closes and saves OO-XML in OpenOffice.org? Is Novell going to develop that code and then contribute all of it [to the OpenOffice.org open source project] so that any OpenOffice.org user can use it the same way, whether it's Novell's version of OpenOffice.org or another one? 

I posted an update to this story this morning, which you can find here.

Things are changing very fast in the ODF landscape right now: Last week, Corel announced it would provide limited support by mid-2007 for ODF (open, view and edit of text only – but not save), and greater support for OOXML – presentations and spreadsheets as well as text.  Yesterday, Carol Sliwa at ComputerWorld released a detailed story on Microsoft's anti-ODF lobbying in Massachusetts.  Later this week, Ecma will formally vote to adopt OOXML and submit it to ISO for consideration (expect things to pick up on a number of fronts when that happens). 

And yesterday, Novell announced that it would support OOXML in its version of OpenOffice, to a showing of great hostility by many in the open source community who were already incensed over Novell's recent collaboration agreement with Microsoft (see, for example, Pamela Jones piece at Groklaw, titled Novel "Forking" OpenOffice.org).  For a different perspective, see David Berlind's take at ZDNet on the same news. 

I don't want to let the Novell announcement go by without comment.  At the same time, I don't want to get down into the weeds regarding whether Novell is selling out (and if so, who it is they are selling out, and to what effect), or how this latest decision may factor into the long-term strategy of either Novell or Microsoft, or affect the fortunes of OOXML.  Instead, I'd like to put this latest news in the broader context of all of the ODF developments we have witnessed since August a year ago, when Massachusetts announced the inclusion of ODF in the latest version of its Enterprise Technical Reference Model. 

If I pan back and look at this series of events, what I see is an inexorable march of progress by ODF, and the Novell announcement as just the latest in a series of concessions to ODF's importance by companies that might otherwise prefer to see it die rather than flourish. 

Carol Sliwa at ComputerWorld has a hat trick of excellent stories just now on ODF in Massachusetts, based on over 300 emails secured under the Massachusetts Public Records Law (the local analogue of the Federal Freedom of Information Act), as well as research into lobbying records and reports.   The longest and in some ways most intriguing article focuses on Microsoft's lobbying efforts in Massachusetts, and on State CIO Louis Gutierrez's efforts to counter those efforts.  One of the two shorter articles (they will appear as side bars in the print issue) provides details on the various individuals - both Democrat and Republican - as well as associations that Microsoft hired in the last two years to work both sides of the aisle in Massachusetts.  The third and final article reports more narrowly on Massachusetts' decision in the summer of 2005 not to approve Microsoft's XML formats as an open standards.

The lobbbying article confirms a number of things I've written previously, including (long ago) that an amendment intended to rob the Information Technology Division (ITD) of much of its ability to set technology policy was intended to pressure the ITD to back off of ODF, and (most recently) that Brian Burke, the Microsoft Regional Director for Public Affairs, was spearheading that effort.  Overall, the lengthy article describes in detail how Microsoft sought to bring pressure to bear through its efforts to "educate" legislators in an effort to seek a reversal of a Massachusetts policy that threatened its highly profitable Office suite franchise.  

The article relies in large part on a back-channel email correspondence maintained between Massachusetts CIO Louis Gutierrez and Alan Yates, a general manager in Microsoft's worker product management group.  Yates, you may remember, was particularly visible as a Microsoft spokesman in late 2005.  The article includes a number of disclosures that will be of interest to anyone who has followed the ODF story.  For example, in one email, Yates admits that Burke was promoting the amendment, stating, "I am certain that Brian was involved," which Gutierrez not surprisingly found to be objectionable.  Sliwa continues:

But Yates claimed that Burke’s intention was “to have a ‘vehicle’ in the legislature” to address a policy that Microsoft viewed as “unnecessarily exclusionary.” Burke’s aim was “not specifically to transfer agency authority,” Yates wrote.

Presumably, this equates to promoting an amendment that could be used to threaten the ITD into backing down on its support for ODF.

In my last blog post, I focused on the fact that Governor-Elect Deval Patrick had named an eight-member technology adviosry group to counsel him during his transition period.  One of the members appointed was John Cullinane, a senior stateman of New England technology, and the founder of early software-success Cullinet Software, Inc.  Another was Microsoft Regional Director for Public Affairs Brian Burke, who had led the continuing Microsoft effort to persuade Massachusetts not to adopt ODF.

Just now, I received my copy of MHT (formerly Mass High Tech), in which staff writer Catherine Williams is reporting that Cullinane has decided to recuse himself from the appointment, due to the fact that he is the Chairman of the Board of a company called LiveData, Inc.  Why, because that company has an existing contract with Massachusetts.  His replacement will be Matt DeBergalis, a co-founder of a new software startup named Auburn Quad Inc.  Williams reports that this company was used by the Patrick campaign to raise more than $1 million in contributions.   While I'm at it, I might also mention that Court Square Data Group inc.,

In a case of strange political timing, governor-elect Deval Patrick announced 15 transition team working groups the day before Thanksgiving, while most people were leaving their offices and homes early for the holiday.  In that announcement, Patrick named 200 people to a wide variety of advisory groups covering topics as diverse as healthcare and civic engagement.  One of these committees is intended to advise the governor on the technology needs of the state government.

Most of the eight people on that group were not a surprise.  They include:

• Co-Chair, Charles SteelFisher, New Media Director of the Deval Patrick Committee
• Co-Chair, Richard Rowe, CEO of Rowe Communications, and with many credentials in education, government and technology
• John Cullinane, Principal, The Cullinane Group, the founder of early software success story Cullinet Software, Inc., and a long-time New England technology leader
• Louis Gutierrez, the outgoing State CIO and Director of the Information Technology Division (ITD), and now with government IT consulting firm the Exeter Group  
• Keith Parent, CEO of Court Square Data Group, a western Massachusetts-based IT services provider with a number of government customers.  (Parent's appointment helps fulfill Patrick's campaign promise to provide regional representation in his administration)
• David Lewis, a consultant and the Massachusetts CIO prior to Peter Quinn
• Larry Weber, currently Chairman of PR services firm W2 Group, and another local high tech legend as the founder of the Weber Group, which became the largest technology-focused PR firm prior to being acquired by the Inter Public Group in 1996.

 Oh yes.  And one person from a major, out of state software company.  Say what?

In an excellent example of "better late than never," Corel Corporation announced this morning that it's next release of its flagship Corel WordPerfect Office suite will provide open, view and edit support for ODF – and for Office OpenXML (OOXML), the format submitted to Ecma for adoption, as well.  The announcement states that the new functionality will be just a "first step towards a comprehensive set of functionality for both formats," but does not specify what actions might follow, or when.

Corel was one of the original ODF committee members at OASIS, the developer of ODF, and attended a strategy meeting of ODF proponents at an IBM facility in Armonk, NY ion November 4 of 2005, but then declined to commit to support ODF.  Instead, it adopted a "wait and see" attitude.

In its announcement this morning, Corel is positioning itself as a neutral in the current format competition between Microsoft, on the one hand, and a band of disparate allies on the other that support ODF:  Major vendors IBM and Sun, each with an ODF-compliant offering, various proprietary and open source office suite vendors that support ODF, Google (with its Writely-based on-line services), and a variety of other supporters most easily identified by viewing the membership list of the ODF Alliance.

Q:  What will happen next?

A:  As originally planned, early adopter agencies will begin using converter technology to save documents in ODF format beginning in December of this year, thus meeting the goal of beginning the rollout of …

I'm remiss in blogging on the transition in Massachusetts as Louis Gutierrez leaves his position as State CIO (Gutierrez announced that he would resign a month ago), and as Mitt Romney wraps up his single term as governor and looks forward, he hopes, to bigger political games than our small state can offer.

Gutierrez, you may recall, resigned because of the failure of the state legislature to approve the IT funding that the Information Technology Division (ITD) required to continue its long overdue upgrade of systems and services, including the implementation of ODF [Update:  I've just had a conversation with someone at the ITD, who assures me that the ODF transition remains on track.  I'll blog further on this within the next couple of days].  The grim impact of that failure is well reported by Catherine Williams in last week's MHT: after the legislature adjourned on July 31 without approving the funding, 27 contractors were promptly laid off, and thirty IT different projects were terminated.  100 more contractors will be let go in December.

Gutierrez summarized the process more graphically in his letter of resignation:

IT innovation in Massachusetts state government ran out of steam in August, when the legislature closed its formal session without action on the IT and facilities bond.  I am presiding over the dismantling of an IT investment program - over a decade in the evolution - that the legislative leadership appears unwilling to salvage at this time.  I am therefore asking leave to relinquish my posts....  I have no remaining expectation of timely legislative action, and no continued appetite to watch the IT investment program lapse. 

Gutierrez will be returning to the Exeter Group, an IT consulting practice in which he has previously been a principal.  Whether he expects this to be a temporary or a long term home remains to be seen, but his past record is primarily a succession of challenging, hands-on positions in large and complex organizations in both the public and private sectors.

The final version of the Office Open XML 1.0 draft was posted an hour or so ago at the Ecma site (the draft itself is dated simply "October 2006).  The draft is the work of  Technical Committee 45, a committee chartered "To Produce a formal Standard for office productivity documents which is fully compatible with the Office Open XML Formats."

As previously announced, the draft will be voted on at a December 7-8 Ecma meeting, at which votes to approve or disapprove (but not make changes) may be cast.  After the anticipated approval, the draft will be submitted to ISO for consideration, as contemplated by the second task of TC 45's original charter:  "To contribute the Ecma Office Open XML Formats standards to ISO/IEC JTC 1 for approval and adoption by ISO and IEC."  That process will include a six month comment period during which national committees may vote for, against, or abstain, as well provide comments and requested changes that must be considered.