Open Office XML standardisation bid falters

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by Stephen Withers

Wednesday, 05 September 2007

! The proposal to make Microsoft's Office Open XML an international standard has failed to gain sufficient support in the first round of voting. Related stories Review: Too Human Yahoo!'s Zimbra spiffs up iPhone support Microsoft investment shows all is not well at Novell Microsoft IE8 Beta 2 released: the web browser for jerk-offs? It’s the end for the “Frickin’ Laser” ISO procedures require at least 66.66 percent of participating members' votes cast to be in favour and no more than 25 percent of members to be against. The OOXML proposal failed on both counts, with 53 percent and 26 percent respectively. According to Andrew Upgrove, a US lawyer specialising in standards-setting, voting among participating members was 17 in favour, 15 against, and 9 abstentions. Even though the proposal barely gained support from a simple majority of participating members, Microsoft officials claimed "strong global support" for OOXML's standardisation. Various news outlets have quoted Open Document Format Alliance head Marino Marcich as saying "The large number of reported no votes and abstentions demonstrates the depth of concern around the world over OOXML's interoperability and openness." The next step is that Microsoft and Ecma have the opportunity to review comments made alongside the votes, and either propose changes to accommodate them or simply suggest they are ignored. National bodies then have six weeks to consider those changes prior to a ballot resolution meeting scheduled for February 2008. "Technical experts around the world have provided invaluable feedback and technical recommendations for evolving the format," said Tom Robertson, Microsoft's general manager for interoperability and standards. "The high quality of the Open XML format will be improved as a result of this process, and we take seriously our role in working within the Ecma technical committee to address the comments received. We believe that the ISO national bodies will be pleased with the results." Not everyone would agree with Robertson's characterisation of the proposed standard as "high quality" - during the US domestic process, IBM (admittedly a supporter of the ISO/IEC 26300 ODF standard that was ratified over a year ago) identified more than 1700 technical problems and described it as being of low quality. Only those members that voted in the recent ballot (including those that lodged an 'abstain' vote) may vote at the ballot resolution meeting. It is possible that abstaining participants such as Australia will be subject to intense lobbying, and that additional observer members will upgrade to participant status. Upgrove has pointed put that of the 11 recent upgrades, nine voted in favour of OOXML. If enough of the national standards bodies change their votes at the ballot resolution meeting to meet the above thresholds, ISO/IEC DIS 29500 will enter the panoply of international standards. Should OOXML fail to gain sufficient support at the ballot resolution meeting, the proposed standard will lose its fast-track status. Some of the opposition to ISO/IEC DIS 29500 came from those who thought it was too important an issue to rush through without providing sufficient time for interested parties to study and comment on the proposal. Please enable JavaScript in your browser to post your comment! Tags See All Tags IBM  Microsoft  OOXML  OPen document format  Software  Standards  Stephen Withers  Get stories like this delivered daily - FREE - subscribe now

 

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