" 28 August 2007: about 20 Microsoft partners appeared in the final minutes of yesterday's working meeting at SIS (Swedish Standards Institute) and pushed through a majority for a SIS approval of Microsoft's new OOXML file format as an ISO standard."

At a Red Hat retrospective panel on the ODF vs. OOXML struggle panel, a Microsoft representative, Stuart McKee, admitted that ODF had 'clearly won.' The Redmond company is going to add native support of ODF 1.1 with its Office 2007 service pack 2. Its yet unpublished format ISO OOXML will not be supported before the release of the next Office generation.

Following criticism from the Open Source Industry Association (OSIA) over its ambition to have the Office Open XML (Open XML or OOXML) format accepted as an international (ISO) standard, Microsoft's group product manager for Microsoft Office, Gray Knowlton, spoke with Computerworld about why the world needs two standard document formats.

Multi-trade International Corporation for Research of Office Software Open Format Technologies (MICROSOFT) has announced their surprise decision, that they cease to support OOXML document format (Office Open XML), acknowledging at the same time, that the ANSI-developed & supported TXT format will be a better, universal, solution.

Sign petition: Say NO to the Microsoft Office format as an ISO standard.Microsoft is currently trying to make the ISO National Bodies believe that its Office Open XML (OOXML) format is a good standard. This website discusses why this broken proprietary standard should never be accepted by ISO.

I kept waiting to weigh in on the ISO approval of Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) format, searching for some kind of silver lining for open source. Sure, there are those that say technical and interoperability issues will limit uptake of the standard. But this is Microsoft and Office we’re talking about, so it seems clear that there will be some pretty widespread adoption.

In a reversal, the American representative to the ISO standards body is now tentatively supporting the approval of Microsoft's Office Open XML document format as an open standard this year.

Hungary's state Competition Authority raided the offices of Microsoft Corp.'s local subsidiary as part of a probe into the company's relationship with large software distributors. Microsoft used sales conditions and offered software distributors incentives - described as "loyalty discounts" - so they wouldn't offer clients anything but Microsoft Office products.

Late last month, evidence emerged indicating that Microsoft has used financial incentives to influence the outcome of Office Open XML (OOXML) fast-track approval in various national standards bodies. Although ISO ended up voting against fast-track approval for OOXML, the company's efforts have created doubts about the reliability of the standards process.