Open Standards: Through the Looking Glass

If Lewis Carroll were here, I suspect he might have written this about Alice encountering Microsoft’s proposed Office Open XML specification . . .

"There was documentation lying near Alice on the table, and while she sat watching the Redmond King (for she was still a little anxious about him), she turned over the leaves, to find some part that she could read, ` -- for it's all in some language I don't know,' she said to herself.

"It was like this.

YKCODNEPO

sedoloponom eht dna ,gillirb sawT`
yfrutortsa eht ni rebbalf dna mulf diD
,sedocytfos eht erew orcim llA
.yfruteirpoprp sdradnats eht dnA
"I puzzled over this for some time, but at last a bright thought struck me. `Why, it's a Looking-glass standard, of course! And if I hold it up to a glass, the words will all go the right way again."

"This was the poem that Alice read.

OPENDOCKY

`Twas brillig, and the monopolodes
Did flum and flabber in the astroturfy;
All micro were the softycodes,
And the standards proprieturly.

`Beware the Opendoc, my son!
It's Socializy! And balderdash!
Beware the Armonky bird, and shun
The netty Googlesnatch!'

He took his FUDdle sword in hand:
Long time the bizzy foe he sought --
So rested he in an Ecma haven,
And stood awhile in balmery thought.

And in procurable mood he stood,
The Opendoc, with specs royalty free,
Came whiffling through the govy wood,
Bringing interoperability!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The FUDdle blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its quinny head
He went galumphing back.

`And has thou slain the Opendoc?
Come to market, my encumbered boy!
It's formaty Confusionism and lockety lock!
He chortled in his RANDy joy.

`Twas brillig, and the monopolodes
Did flum and flabber in the astroturfy;
All micro were the softycodes,
And the standards proprieturly.
"It seems very open,' Alice said when she had finished it, `but it's RATHER hard to understand!

"Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas -- only I don't exactly know what they are! However, SOMEBODY is trying to kill SOMETHING: that's clear, at any rate -- "