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The Inside Story on Norway's Yes to OOXML

Posted by timothy on from the distracted-by-short-skirt-during-brief-summer dept.

Steve Pepper writes "The former Chairman of the Norwegian ISO committee, who resigned two weeks ago in protest against his country's vote of Yes to OOXML, tells the inside story of how the decision was reached: how a single bureaucrat from Standards Norway sidelined the overwhelming majority of Norwegian technical experts and changed Norway's vote from No to Yes. The story is so surreal it's hard to believe." It's as depressing as it is brief.

1 of 254 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I was kind of puzzled by SgtPepperKSU · · Score: 5, Informative

    I suggest you go read the article again.
    It wasn't 2 people for and 2 people against. They reached a consensus that 2 of the comments had been satisfactorily resolved and that 2 of the comments hadn't been satisfactorily resolved. They then couldn't come to a consensus on whether the remaining 8 comments were resolved. The 80% number was the number of people that were not satisfied enough to vote yes.
    They had agreed that 2 of their comments were not satisfactorily resolved. Which way the remaining 8 comments fell could only increase this number. Roughly 80% of those present didn't want to vote yes.
    The final change to yes came down to one man, who seems to have had his mind made up ahead of time.