Any document standard will not be defined by what exists now, regardless of how much it is embedded in to culture. DOC will never be an ISO standard.

However, many in the pro OOXML camp are using this as a reason to claim that OOXML should be a standard.

They are confusing the market position of Microsoft with the needs of a document standard. Thinking that just because there are a billion plus DOC files out there, that Microsoft will make a better DOC 2.0.

Of course there is probably the other aspect with some people expecting to make money of the transition from DOC to an ISO standard. Given existing partnerships with Microsoft they expect they will have an easier time holding on to their existing markets as well.

None of this is justification for accepting OOXML as an ISO standard.

I don’t understand this. Nobody is going to convert billions of documents into the “new” format, so the .doc binaries are here to stay for most existing documents.

But we can *move on* and create new documents with a good quality standard. It’s not like MS Office has a good backwards-compatibility record to start with!