The Document Foundation (TDF), the nonprofit organization behind LibreOffice, published a strongly worded article on February 6th.Blog contentThe Document Foundation has again accused Microsoft of prioritizing "commercial interests" over technical standards. The Foundation argues that Microsoft artificially created interoperability barriers by building the extremely complex OOXML (Office Open XML) file format, aiming to lock users firmly into its ecosystem.
Who can finish reading a 7000-page instruction manual?
Italo Vignoli, a founding member of the Document Foundation, stated bluntly that Microsoft's attempt to force the industry to accept OOXML, a "pseudo-standard," is outrageous. He pointed out that the OOXML specification document is 7000 pages long, making it virtually impossible for any third-party developer (such as LibreOffice, WPS, etc.) to achieve "completely correct" compatibility.
Ironically, Microsoft Office itself doesn't even adhere to its own "Strict" standard, instead using a "Transitional" variant burdened with numerous historical baggage. The specification even includes instructions like `autoSpaceLikeWord95`, requiring modern software to mimic specific behaviors of Word 95 from 30 years ago, clearly contradicting the original intent of open standards.
The scientific community was forced to bow its head: Excel arbitrarily changed names, forcing genes to be renamed as well.
To demonstrate Microsoft's disregard for standards, Italo Vignoli cited a famous, disastrous example in the scientific community: Excel's incorrect formatting of gene names.
In genetic research, scientists often use alphanumeric abbreviations to record genes. For example:
• MARCH1 (Membrane Associated Ring-CH-Type Finger 1)
• SEPT1 (Septin 1)
However, Excel will meddlesomely force these inputs to be converted to date formats (e.g., March 1st, September 1st). This "thoughtful" feature may be convenient for financial statements, but it is devastating for scientific data.
A 2016 study published in Genome Biology found that after analyzing 3597 papers with Excel attachments, about 20% of the files contained gene name errors caused by automatic conversions by Excel.
And what happened? Microsoft remained indifferent for years. Ultimately, the HUGO Genetic Nomenclature Committee (HGNC), responsible for standardizing human gene names, was forced to compromise. To avoid misinterpretations by Excel, they revised the naming rules for approximately 27 genes in 2020 (for example, changing MARCH1 to MARCHF1).
Although Microsoft eventually released an update in 2023 that allowed disabling the automatic conversion feature, the damage had already been done. The Document Foundation believes that it is simply absurd that a tool that was supposed to serve humanity has ended up demanding that the scientific community change academic standards to accommodate the software.
