"As you will recall, V1, the INCITS Technical Committee that addresses document format standards, was unable to reach consensus on a recommended US vote to either approve or reject DIS 29500, the draft ISO/IEC standard that describes Microsoft's OOXML formats. As expected, Microsoft is seeking to gain a US vote in favor of OOXML..."

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.

Technical Committee 182 decided on August 30th to accept Microsoft format Office Open XML as an ISO standard. Another committee already voted against OOXML last week, but the KT 182 decision is the final vote of Poland sent to ISO on August 31th.

Microsoft has hailed the ISO's acceptance of the Microsoft Open Office XML despite controversy in standards communities about voting irregularities. The new vote reverses last year's rejection of OOXML. Norway's Standard Norge dismissed members and three staff members reversed a no vote. Other countries also reported OOXML voting problems.

There are some important questions regarding OOXML’s upcoming ISO bid that Microsoft cannot answer or just simply won’t. From 25-29 February 2008 in Geneva, Switzerland, the ISO community will hold a Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) of the National Boards to discuss and vote finally on OOXML as an ISO standard. This article raises questions that Microsoft should answer to the satisfaction of the ISO community as part of the deliberation leading up to the BRM vote.

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.

This is different. There is a report by Borys Musielak of PolishLinux.org that Poland met to vote on OOXML on Thursday. Of 45 members of the committee eligible to vote, 24 showed up to vote, and it split almost down the middle, with 12 for, 10 against and 2 abstaining. This is extraordinary, since Poland voted yes in September, despite the technical committee being opposed. I call that progress.

As I reported on July 23, INCITS, the US balloting body on the OOXML vote, put out a ballot to see whether the US should vote to approve OOXML, with the ballot to close on August 9.

The U.S. delegate organization to the powerful ISO standards body is now almost sure to vote against approving Microsoft Corp.'s Office Open XML document format as an open standard this year.