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ISO Takes Control Of OOXML

Posted by Soulskill on from the down-to-business dept.

mikkl666 writes "Alex Brown, head of the ISO work group responsible for OOXML, has posted a summary of their latest meeting, and he also comments on the resolutions discussed there. The basic message is that ISO now has 'full responsibility for the standard,' and that several workgroups will be established to work on OOXML. An interesting point here is that 'setting up a maintance[sic] procedure for ODF, and then working on cross-standard initiatives' is one of the explicit goals. On a side note, they also reacted to the very emotional discussion on OOXML by posting an open letter: 'We the undersigned participants ... wish to make it clear that we deplore the personal attacks that have been made ... in recent months. We believe standards debate should always be carried out with respect for all parties, even when they strongly disagree.' As Brown correctly points out, 'This content speaks for itself.' We discussed the approval of OOXML earlier this month."

3 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. Microsoft now owns ODF, by ozmanjusri · · Score: 4, Informative
    This is going to get bad.

    The convenor of the committee is Alex Brown, an advisor to the British Library, which was a co-sponsor of Ecma putting OOXML on the fast track.

    They've basically given Microsoft control over ODF's future.

    Bye bye interoperability for another couple of decades.

    --
    "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
  2. About incompetence by firefly4f4 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Meanwhile some on-looking SC 34 people felt insulted. One neutral XML expert, who I know for a fact took a very close technical look at DIS 29500 asked "what are they saying? that we are incompetent? that we do not have the right to decide for ourselves?".

    No, the general public is not calling them incompetent. Other technical committees are calling them incompetent.

    They're just being polite about it.

  3. Re:What do they expect? by Mathinker · · Score: 4, Informative
    > with official bodies denying, often with proof, that no 'backroom dealing' occurred

    Like the Swedish official body?

    From http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/08/31/Sweden-OOXML-vote-invalid_1.html:

    The Swedish Standards Institute has declared its recent vote in favor of Microsoft's Office Open XML format invalid. It means that Sweden will probably abstain from an important upcoming international vote on whether to make the format a standard.

    The reason given by SIS was not the controversial circumstances surrounding the vote, in which Microsoft was found to have offered companies "incentives" if they voted in favor of OOXML. Instead, SIS cited a technicality, saying proper procedures had not been followed.
    SSI more or less admits that MS swayed member companies votes and at the same time claims that was perfectly OK, but there was a technical problem somewhere else (a double vote).

    Are the other official bodies you're talking about applying the same "standards" as SSI to their voting procedures? If so, you might be technically correct, but as far as I'm concerned, it still stinks.