It appears as though OOXML might be put on the ice for a while longer amid complaints

As the ISO announced, the planned ISO/IEC DIS 29500 cannot be published until these complaints have been heard. Procedure requires that they be dealt with by the end of June, when the ISO and IEC have to hand over their comments on the complaints to two management committees for a final decision.

Andy Updegrove has the news that South Africa has filed an official appeal, protesting the approval of OOXML, and their action means that OOXML is now in limbo until the appeal ends:SABS, the National Body member of ISO/IEC JTC1 for South Africa, has filed a formal appeal with both ISO and IEC, challenging the Fast Track adoption of OOXML.

One reader is suggesting that there might now be 5 (formal appeals against OOXML); Germany's DIN jumps in to the debate also

Norbert Bollow, founder of OpenISO.org, has just released the OpenISO.org Call For Participation for creating a "problem report" document about OOXML, that can help ISO/IEC national member bodies with evaluating whether the changes that will be decided at the OOXML "Ballot Resolution Meeting" (BRM) in February are sufficient to address OOXML's most serious problems.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has not received a formal appeal of its approval of Office Open XML as a standard, but it looks more unlikely with each day that passes.

We have already seen street protests in a few places including Norway (photo above; here is a video and the full story). The BSI (UK) came under legal fire as well. The European Commission is dealing with several investigations as complaints continue to come (more recently from BECTA, whose formal complaint was added to the pile).

Microsoft is said to be censoring complaints about Hotmail and there is precedence

Here's South Africa's appeal against OOXML as text, our final section of our text versions of the entire memo [PDF] sent by the heads of ISO/IEC to the Technical Management Board suggesting that the four appeals against OOXML, attached as exhibits, be denied. The TMB decides what to do next. I know. Such suspense...