OOXML Won't Get Fast-Track ISO Standardization

realdodgeman writes "The International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) recently held an internal poll to determine the position that the United States should take on Microsoft's request for Office Open XML (OOXML) approval. With eight votes in favor, seven against, and one abstention, the group was one vote short of the nine votes required for approving OOXLM ISO standardization. This will mean a huge slowdown to the standardization to the OOXML format. 'Given the controversial nature, relative complexity, and significant importance of the standard, the results of INCIT's vote is unsurprising. An INCITS technical committee also voted against fast-track OOXML approval last month prior to the executive board's vote. Further deliberation is clearly needed as well as further refinement of the format. It seems as though many of the organizations participating in the approval process are generally supportive of the standard itself, but are unwilling to voice unconditional support until their concerns are resolved. OOXML may be down, but it's certainly not out.'"

Comments

Re:this is disgusting

[Zeinfeld]

it is disgusting that it came out with: "With eight votes in favor". i think these 8 members of the board need re-evaluated. This is a sad reflection on how big business can mess-up wonderful things made by society.

The fact that everyone acknowledges here is that Office is the defacto standard for document markup. So recognizing it as a dejure standard makes perfect sense.

The ISO process does not require standards to be open. An ISO standard can be entirely encumbered by patents. So OOXML is much better in that regard than the average ISO standard.

Meanwhile Sun's proposal is just as proprietary as Microsoft's, neither is the process of an open design process, they are merely a schema dump from an existing program. And Sun has a vastly worse history as far as open standards go, suing companies for not implementing Java in their prefered maner.

So all in all I think that in this particular faction fight I have zero sympathy for the anti-Microsoft position. Recognize other formats as well, but certainly recognize the market leader.