[Infowarrior] - MS OOXML Standard Said to Get Global Approval

[Richard Forno]

(would prefer this be a story that got broken tomorrow, given that it is
April Fools today.......rf)

April 1, 2008
Microsoft Open Format Standard Said to Get Global Approval
By KEVIN J. O'BRIEN
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/technology/01cnd-soft.html

Microsoft won an international standards designation for its open document
format, according to a copy of voting results obtained Tuesday, apparently
ending a divisive year-long battle with some of its software rivals before a
global standards-setting organization.

Microsoft¹s Office Open XML, a format for interchangeable Web documents, was
approved by 24 of 32 countries in a core group of nations in a ballot by the
International Organization for Standardization, according to the document.
Approval by the Geneva standards-setting body, which is known by its French
acronym, I.S.O., is almost certain to influence software spending by
governments and large companies.

The tally reverses Microsoft¹s loss in first-round voting before the full
87-nation panel in September in a process that has been marked on both sides
by heavy-handed lobbying of members of national standards committees,
typically made up of technicians, engineers and bureaucrats.

³This has been a remarkable process, involving literally thousands of
technical experts, technology consumers, and governments in 87 countries,
whose input has helped to improve² the document format, Microsoft said
Monday in a statement that did not mention the results.

In the final round of voting, which ended Saturday, three-quarters of the
core members, including Britain, Japan, Germany and Switzerland, supported
Microsoft¹s standard, called Ooxml, according to the results document. Of
the 87 nations total national votes, only 10 opposed the standard, including
Brazil, Canada, China, Cuba, Ecuador, India, Iran, New Zealand, South Africa
and Venezuela.

Under organization rules, at least 66 percent of core group members must
accept a standard for it to be approved, and no more than 25 percent of all
voting nations can oppose it.

Roger Frost, an I.S.O. spokesman in Geneva, would not confirm on Tuesday
whether Microsoft¹s format had been designated as meeting the organization¹s
standard, saying the organization would disclose the vote on Wednesday after
informing its membership. The International Herald Tribune obtained the
results from one of the member delegations contacted by the I.S.O.

Microsoft¹s request for fast-track approval of its Ooxml standard in early
2007 unleashed an intense lobbying campaign by International Business
Machines and Sun Microsystems, which helped develop a rival interchangeable
document format called Open Document Format.

O.D.F. was the first interchangeable document format to receive I.S.O.
approval in 2006, and its backers used the exclusive I.S.O. endorsement to
pitch the technology to governments and large companies. O.D.F. is now being
considered for use by 70 nations.

Controversy over the approval process continued into this week.

On Monday, the chairman of an advisory committee to the voting body, Steve
Pepper, asked the I.S.O. to suspend Norway¹s vote to approve Ooxml until an
internal investigation could take place, saying the ballot cast did not
reflect the interests of his group. ³The vast majority of people were
against this,² Mr. Pepper said.

Ivar Jachwitz, the deputy managing director of Standards Norway, the
country¹s national standards organization and the person who ultimately
submitted Norway¹s ³yes² vote for Ooxml, disputed Mr. Pepper¹s assertion
that most people involved in Norway¹s voting process had opposed Ooxml.

³We had an initial vote back in 2007 of nearly 50 people and the vast
majority were in favor,² Mr. Jachwitz said. He did acknowledge that 21
members of the group last week submitted a letter asking for Norway to
oppose Ooxml. ³Our vote reflected the majority opinion,² Mr. Jachwitz said.
³I do not see that it was improper.²

Mr. Frost said he had received Mr. Pepper¹s complaint, but upon
investigation considered the Norwegian dispute to be an internal matter. ³We
have received background information from them and have no reason to
question the validity of their vote,² Mr. Frost said.

In Malaysia, which abstained on Ooxml, members of the country¹s voting
delegation barred uninvited employees of Microsoft and I.B.M. from
participating in their deliberations. Sweden nullified its support of the
standard last year after one member of its delegation reportedly voted
twice.

And some members of Germanys delegation complained that I.S.O. rules had not
been properly followed and a steering committee of the country¹s national
standards group, called D.I.N., was called in to rule on whether rules had
been followed properly. In the end, the D.I.N. decided to submit no formal
second vote to I.S.O., which allowed Germany¹s initial approval to stand,
according to Jan Dittberner, a spokesman for D.I.N.

Demands for speedy approval of Microsoft¹s 6,000-page document sparked
objections from many I.S.O. members, who felt the organization was being
pressured by Microsoft, whose Office application suite is the standard on
more than 90 percent of computers and archives around the world, according
to International Data Corporation, a research group in Framingham, Mass.

Contention over the outcome even influenced the remarks of representatives
of countries that abstained from the vote, like the Netherlands. ³This is
like someone with six shopping carts of food trying to go through the
express lane at a supermarket,² said Michiel Leenaars, a member of the Dutch
voting delegation. ³The end result of this will be confusion. The standard
is simply too big. There are still a lot of questions out there.²