The Open Source Initiative's chairman, Michael Tiemann, announced Friday that the organization's licensing board have officially approve the version three of the General Public License and Lesser General Public License as OSI-approved.

OK, I sense there's going to be a fight, because Network Appliance is a profit-making corporation and they would be remiss if they didn't try to defend their IP. Did I mention that software patents are evil? Did I mention that software patents make people behave in evil ways?

While many of us have been preoccupied with the OOXML vote, the rest of the world has naturally been continuing to go about its business. One piece of business that took an interesting turn in the last few days is a ruling by a Federal Appellate Court in the United States that breaks new ground in protecting the integrity of the standard setting system.

This is an explanation from Dave at NetApp as to why they are suing Sun.

Norbort Bollow, an XML standards specialist from Switzerland, takes action. He participated in the Swiss 'Open XML' review process (their comments) but technical review was obstructed by political interference and commercial interests. Today he started OpenISO.org.

I submit though, that the job isn't over, but incomplete. The ISO seriously needs to look at fixing how Microsoft attempted to hijack the process to suit their own gain, and ignore the real purpose of International Standards.

The International Organization for Standardization has voted against a proposal to fast-track Microsoft's Office Open XML format as an international standard. Here's how the vote went: all 41 of the of the countries that had worked on the proposal participated in the vote. There were 17 "yes" votes, 15 "no" votes, and 9 abstentions.

Isn't it the job of those proposing a standard to make their case? If consensus cannot be reached, surely the only responsible decision to to vote against the proposal.