Microsoft are arguing that their Office Open XML format is the best standard for preserving Legacy files, when the world already has an adopted standard, ISO/IEC XML 26300:2006 for storing, recalling, and transmitting documents. This existing, approved standard is relied upon by industry extensively, and has brought the world new highly innovative economic giants and the $100 Laptop.

The Open Document Foundation argue this is both un-necessary, counter-productive, and will not enable Governments and other bodies responsible for safe storage and access to legacy files achieve this objective without being locked in.

In this document by ODF USA, the paper discusses why ICT architectures need to be flexible, built around agreed protocols, to assist data flow seamlessly across different applications and platforms.

Open standards at the heart of these interoperable architectures. This paper analyses the openness of two emerging document formats, openDocument Format ODF, and the Office Open XML OOXML. The four key areas of comparison, are characterised broadly as open life cycle, open availability, multiple implementations, interoperability across different systems. The paper contrasts ODF, and how it was developed in a very open community, compared with OOXML, and the closed nature of its reviewers.

A number of OOXML dependencies with the Microsoft's Windows operating system were found, and the White Paper argues these are not consistent with the philosophy of an open standard. Specific examples are provided and high PR issues and purple dependencies are revealed

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