ISO Says No To Microsoft's OOXML Standard

qcomp writes "The votes are in and Microsoft has lost for now, reports the FFII's campaign website OOXML. The 2/3 majority needed to proceed with the fast-track standardization has not been achieved. Now the standard will head to the ballot resolution meeting to address the hundreds of technical comments submitted along with the votes." Here is yesterday's speculation as to how the vote would turn out.

Comments

Some details...

[frakir]

breakdown by country votes: http://www.theopensourcerer.com/2007/09/03/ecma-37 6-dis-29500-ooxml-the-voting-so-far/

Note 7 countries ( marked *** ) just recently updated their status within ISO from 'O' (observer) to 'P' so they could vote. Those are mostly small countries and likely to be Microsoft puppets within ISO body. Which means MS can now actively block *any* new proposed standard and promote their own more easily.

ISO press release

[eknagy]

Press release:
http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1 070

eknagy

more info

[qcomp]

Microsoft puts its own spin on the result in this press release.

More information on the upcoming proceedings at ISO are explained in this discussion on the currently slashdotted noOOXML site. (my apologies for poor HTML in the original post that made <no>OOXML come out as OOXML.

Groklaw also has some commentary and more links.

It's clear that this is far from over. Microsoft will convince more countries to become O or P members in the respective committees and Further effort (exposing fraud, convincing your national bodies) is required to prevent OOXML from being accepted as a standard. But it is encouraging to see that resistance is not futile ;-)

Re:It ain't over yet...

[Macthorpe]

Actually of the 26 latest P-members, 21 voted 'YES', 1 voted 'NO' and 4 abstained.

You could have said that and people would have believed you, so why lie?

Re:Still not official

[Sesostris III]

The linked article above states the presumed "No" vote to be unofficial and according to unamed "sources". This could well go the other way and in fact be approved. Any celebration should wait until ISO offically releases the voting results.

Like here?

Sesostris III

Re:OOXML and ODF both suck

[thephotoman]

It's because the vast majority of documents aren't really meant for publication. For example, research notes may wind up in a publication (where TeX and PDF would be appropriate), but the bulk of such notes will eventually be edited out of the end publication. Instead, they need to be in an easily editable format so that changes can be made when they occur in the lab. 50 years from now, those research notes may still be needed for one reason or another.

This is where word processing comes in to fill the gap between text editors (which don't have support for rich text or images) and desktop publication (which put out formats that aren't intended to be edited).

familiar scenario

[IronyChef]

This is also how the International Whaling Commission membership has been manipulated toward ending the ban on whaling:

Since the moratorium was adopted, the support for it has dropped from a 75% majority to a 50-50 split, with many of the countries initially recruited by the anti-whaling side now voting with the pro-whaling block. (A 75% majority is needed to overturn the moratorium.) Anti-whaling campaign groups and some governments claim that the Japanese Fisheries Agency has carried out a programme of "vote-buying" - i.e. offering aid to poorer countries in return for them joining the IWC and supporting Japanese positions on whaling. Specifically, Japan has given US$320 million in overseas aid to Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Guinea, Morocco, Panama, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St Kitts and Nevis and the Solomon Islands.

Re:It ain't over yet...

[fritsd]

Netherlands (translation/summary: they worked very hard to stay professional and to stay away from all the turmoil and study the document, and then came to a almost consensus decision to vote "disapproval with comments". Almost consensus because Microsoft alone decided to vote "yes" (with no technical reasons given) so there was no consensus, so in effect the vote of the Netherlands was vetoed. According to the NEN rules, the Netherlands had to abstain, without comments, in this case. [N.B.: I think this means also that all of the dutch technical comments (5 months of work) will not be permitted to be sent on to ISO for review - me]

The article goes on to explain that this one member isoc.nl (who is the longest sitting member of that NEN committee and voted no) finds that it would be appropriate for the submitter of a standard to refrain from voting this actively, especially because Microsoft had already given out a press release that the result would become "abstain" before the vote was actually being held. In other words, they knew they were going to sabotage(*) the dutch "no with comments" vote and told the press in advance.

Please correct any inaccuracies in my post; I really do not want to misrepresent this article, which speaks volumes for itself IMHO.

(*) original meaning of sabotage: to throw a wooden shoe into a machine to prevent it from working properly.