Microsoft is facing growing criticism of its bid to have Office Open XML (OOXML) accepted as an international standard ahead of a crucial vote by the ISO scheduled for February.

Redmond initially promised that the ISO would have control of OOXML if and when it became a standard. Critics reckon Microsoft is now backsliding on this promise via plans to retain indirect control of the standard through Ecma International, the group that originally rubber stamped OOXML.

The proposals have raised concerns that the ISO would be unable to make OOXML compatible with existing standards, leaving the ISO relegated to the role of publishing a list of errata (corrections), with Ecma left in charge.

The dispute over the oversight plans is the latest in a string of controversies over OOXML concerning allegations of vote fixing and more that wouldn't be out of place in the more heated diplomatic disputes that took place during the Cold War.

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In the recent accusations that the GNOME Foundation has been supporting Microsoft's OOXML format at the expense of ODF, KDE has been presented as a counter-example. Based on a KDE News article, Richard Stallman suggested that "major KDE developers" had announced "their rejection of OOXML" and urged GNOME to do the same. More recently, a widely linked story on ITWire used the same article to declare that KDE has taken a "principled stand" against OOXML. However, if you go the source, the story is more nuanced than these claims suggest.

True, KOffice -- not KDE, which is a separate project -- will not be implementing OOXML in a hurry, and part of the reason is political. However, the decision is also a practical one, and KOffice has not rejected the possibility of supporting OOXML in the future.

David Faure has been a KDE developer for nine years, and a KOffice developer almost as long. Few developers, you may safely say, are stronger advocates of ODF than Faure. Speaking unofficially for his fellow KOffice developers, Faure says, "What we like about it is that it was designed from the start to be independent of the design of the application, like HTML or XML. It is also based on many existing standards."

KOffice's stance against OOXML more practical than political, developer says