Microsoft Singed Over Open Document Article

By Greg McNevin

January 25th, 2007: Microsoft is embroiled in somewhat of a public relations battle after it offered to hire an Australian blogger to edit language used in a Wikipedia article on the open document format.

Too keep its information as accurate and unbiased as possible, Wikipedia blocks anyone who is seen as having a conflict of interest from posting or editing articles on its site, and paying third parties to do editing dirty work is also a sin.

Microsoft believes that some of the language used in the Wikipedia article has an anti Open XML flavour and approached Rick Jelliffe, chief technical officer for Sydney computing company Topologi to review the article and make changes if necessary.

The technical website Slashdot has published sections of an email from Microsoft’s Doug Mahugh, a technical expert for the Office Open XML format, to Jelliffe which claims that the Wikipedia article has a “lot of slanted language, and we'd like for them to make it more objective but we feel that it would be best if a non-Microsoft person were the source of any corrections.

“Would you have any interest or availability to do some of this kind of work? Your reputation as a leading voice in the XML community would carry a lot of credibility, so your name came up in a discussion of the Wikipedia situation today."

In his blog on www.oreillynet.com Jelliffe writes that he was “a little surprised to receive email a couple of days ago from Microsoft saying they wanted to contract someone independent but friendly (me) for a couple of days to provide more balance on Wikipedia concerning ODF/OOXML.

“Apparently they are frustrated at the amount of spin from some ODF stakeholders on Wikipedia and blogs,” he writes.

Jelliffe describes himself in the blog as neither a Microsoft herald nor hater, however, he does mention that in the interest of accuracy some alterations could indeed be made.

“Just scanning quickly the Wikipedia entry for OOXML, I see one example straight away: The OOXML specification requires conforming implementations to accept and understand various legacy office applications,” writes Jelliffe. “The bits you don’t implement are no-one’s business. So that entry is simply wrong. The same myth comes up in the form “You have to implement all 6000 pages or Microsoft will sue you.” Are we idiots?”

While Microsoft may have an argument when it comes to correcting some of the language used in the Wikipedia article, the way it has gone about the changes appears to be at least a little under the table.

According to The Sydney Morning Herald, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales thinks that Microsoft would have been better off commissioning a white paper on the subject to represent its position.

"It seems like a much better, transparent, straightforward way,'' The SMH quotes Wales as saying.

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