Where are we now?

Microsoft’s position is hardening as the ISO vote on OOXML (DIS 29500) in Geneva approaches at the end of this month. We know more clearly now how Microsoft and its proxy group, ECMA, will position Microsoft’s OOXML specification in advance of the vote. In short, Microsoft is betting that its influence with National Bodies will allow it to push through a specification which elevates its own interests over that of truly competitive, open international standards. In the end, it will be Microsoft’s own inflexibility that will be its undoing, and that undoing means knocking the OOXML out of approval for ISO status.

Now that the Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) in Geneva is over I thought people might be interested in the analysis the NZOSS provided on Ecma's responses to Standards NZ comments. Note that last August Microsoft and Ecma promised they would "fix everything" in time for the BRM. Have a look at the document attached to this article.

OOXML, or the infamous ISO/IEC DIS 29500, is crawling towards the Ballot Resolution Meeting to see whether it can make the status of International Standard. Now ECMA, the body which hastily (to say the least) decided to make it an industry standard and presented it to ISO with a "fast track" procedure, has reviewed the comments of the national bodies, made a proposal for addressing them.

There will be a BRM (Ballot resolution meeting) in Geneva on 25-29 February 2008 to answer the comments by National Standard Boards on OOXML and to resolve issues. Microsoft has set up a situation where many of the shortcomings and thousands of comments which need to be resolved at the BRN will not be addressed. They have closed this process as much as possible and have delayed National Boards from having adequate time to review proposed changes.

Next month, national standards bodies will vote for the second time on whether to adopt the Office Open XML (OOXML) document format as an international standard.

The following six questions relate to the application of the ECMA/MS-OOXML format to be accepted as an IEC/ISO standard. Unless a national standardisation body has conclusive answers to all of them, it should vote no in IEC/ISO and request that Microsoft incorporate its work on MS-OOXML into ISO/IEC 26300:2006 (Open Document Format).

After the Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) of the International Standards Organisation (ISO) failed to resolve the differences around Microsoft's proposed OOXML standard, what happens next?

As the date for the February BRM (Ballot Resolution Meeting) on ISO/IEC JTC1 DIS 29500 (a/k/a Ecma 376, a/k/a Microsoft OOXML) approaches, more and more attention is being paid to how Ecma will propose the disposition of the comments submitted during the general voting period. This level of heightened interest is legitimately urgent, due to both the great number of the comments that need to be resolved