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"Brazil, India, and China, which together count for more than a third of the world's population, all voted against Office Open XML in voting last week before the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Russia was the only member of the so-called BRIC nations to vote in favor of ISO ratification for OOXML."
OpenDocument and OOXMLWith fewer than 48 hours to go throughout most of the world, only a small percentage of the 87 countries that voted last summer on OOXML have announced whether they will stand by, or change, the votes that they cast during the original six month voting period.
Microsoft is being very coy and dishonest this week. Having ensured that Microsoft itself is ‘representing’ entire countries and stealing the election in the majority of them, Microsoft wants the world to believe that over three quarters of ‘the world’ supports OOXML. Of course, it’s a foolish thing to believe and a lie of very great proportions.
Votes from South-eastern Europe and former Yugoslavia countries showed Microsoft's domination of that market, and especially good connections with authorities because most of the national standardization bodies voted "Yes with no comments". Just how did Microsoft get OOXML support in Eastern Europe? More corruption?
I think I see a way we could be really helpful to the ISO folks having to sort through all the 10,000 comments the various countries filed with their votes on MS OOXML.
The US delegation to the International Standards Organisation (ISO) has voted to maintain its “Approve” recommendation for Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) to be adopted by the body.
China has unanimously voted "no, with comments" on OOXML. As I had noted in an earlier blog entry, China had been signalling some displeasure with Microsoft and OOXML in recent weeks, via Xinhua, the official government news agency, so this is not totally a surprise.
"Geneva, 1 April 2008. The International Organization for Standardization announced at a press conference that its processes are "broken" and "need radical reform". ISO president Håkan Murby told journalists that "the Microsoft OOXML process was a near-disaster and we want to make sure such a thing never happens again."