Slashdot Mirror
OOXML Rumored to be Approved, Announcement Wednesday
dominux writes "Rumors are already circulating that Microsoft's OOXML has been voted in by the standards board. The Open Sourcerer claims to have results of the ballot on dis29500. According to the site Microsoft managed to flip enough countries to make it stick. 75% of the P members who didn't abstain voted for Microsoft (That is 58% of all the P members). 14% of all the P and O members voted to disapprove it, this includes all the new O members that joined just in time to cast their vote. Norway has asked that their vote be suspended due to voting irregularities, but it would take more than that to make a difference to the result. ZDNet is still playing it cautious, noting that an announcement either way is set to be made on Wednesday."
Microsoft has performed a valuable service without really meaning to.
By demonstrating once and for all how embarassingly corruptible the ISO is, it calls into doubt the validity of many past and future ISO standards, and will force us into a proper re-evaluation of self-appointed standards bodies and the standards they whore around.
For too long we've taken the rather naive view that being an 'open standard' is enough. At last we see the foolishness of that view.
And in this case, I think it's somewhat unfair to judge Microsoft too harshly for wanting to game the system any way they could- what company wouldn't have done in their position?
But it is to ISO's massive, disgusting and probably reputation-destroying shame they they simply laid back and allowed themselves to be corrupted, defiled and sodomised by a large multinational. And they didn't even get a kiss afterwards.
I hope everyone who played their part in this sordid venture has plenty of time to repent at leisure when they realise that the ISO can never, WILL never, be trusted again.
I am hoping one or two countries stand up and say that how this standard was passed shows that all ISO standards are worthless.
With dozens of countries reporting massive voting problems they had better not pass it, or at least switch those countries from yes to abstain until future reference. Norway had the majority vote againist the standard but still voted yes, Poland, germany, France all had voting irregularities. I hope the EU launches an Anti-trust investigation into MSFT's business practices on it. that would be so much fun to watch.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
>75% of the P members voted in favor of the standard. This is 58% of the entire P group.
At least one memeber of the P group did not vote at all, so the 58% is not completely accurate.
>New O members who voted all joined specifically to vote against it.
The only O members that voted "Not Approved" were Brazil and Cuba. Were they both new? In any case, they were hardly that many. There were on the other hand 37 O members that voted "Approve". Are you saying none of them joined recently?