[A2k] IP-Watch: Office Open XML Officially Approved As International Standard

Wed Apr 2 06:25:02 2008

http://www.ip-watch.org/weblog/wp-trackback.php?p=3D986

1 April 2008
Office Open XML Officially Approved As International Standard

By Kaitlin Mara
The much-debated open document standard Office Open XML (OOXML) has
been approved by the International Organization for Standardization
(ISO), according to a document obtained by Intellectual Property Watch.

The result of the voting showed 24 supporting votes by participating
national standards bodies allowed to vote, known as =93p-members,=94
versus eight opposing votes. This translates to a 75 percent approval
rating among bodies which cast a vote, greater than the two-thirds
approval required for approval by ISO. However, nine national
standards bodies who abstained from voting were not included in this
calculation.

The ISO document is available here.

The Microsoft document standard, which is a 6,000 page set of
specifications, has been hotly contested, culminating in two parallel
meetings in Geneva this February (IPW, Access to Knowledge, 27
February 2008): one, the Ballot Resolution Meeting meant to resolve
technical issues with the specification before approval as a standard
and the other, called OpenForum Europe, in which free software and
rival Open Document Format supporters called for the rejection of OOXML.

Though the public announcement has not been made, Ecma, an industry
standards-making body that had approved OOXML previously, has released
a press statement welcoming the approval, with secretary general
Istvan Sebestyen calling it =93an important milestone.=94 Microsoft=92s
statement hailed the appearance of =93extremely broad support=94 for the
standard at the end of the ISO voting process.

Opponents of the OOXML standard disagree about the support, and
accused Microsoft of irregularities during the voting process (IPW,
Access to Knowledge, 29 February 2008). Knowledge Ecology
International released an early statement saying it was =93disappointed=94
about the likely approval and that =93Microsoft=92s control over document
formats has destroyed competition on the desktop.=94

Several other sources have raised questions about apparent last-minute
vote changes, with several countries changing their votes from
disapproval or abstention to approval in the eleventh hour, they said.
Most notable of these is Norway, whose reportedly last-minute =93yes=94
vote has raised questions about legitimacy, according to a Norwegian
IT blog.

The ISO is a 157-member network of national standards bodies based in
Geneva.

Kaitlin Mara may be reached at kmara@ip-watch.ch.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. All of the
news articles and features on Intellectual Property Watch are also
subject to a Creative Commons License which makes them available for
widescale, free, non-commercial reproduction and translation.

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Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
thiru@keionline.org

Tel: +41 22 791 6727
Mobile: +41 76 508 0997