Here's the story from France so far. Apparently, the majority voted No with Comments in a pre-vote, but I understand France is a country that must reach consensus.

The day is fast approaching when the comment and voting period for ISO/IEC DIS 29500, the draft ISO specification based upon Microsoft's Office Open XML formats, will either be approved or not. As Sept. 2 comes closer, Microsoft appears to be stuffing the ballot boxes of some countries' ISO organizations while open-source and standard organizations are firing back with furious words.

There is now a report from Norway on how Microsoft rallied its partners to try to get a favorable vote on MSOOXML. Norway will tell us the vote results on September 2.

I'll predict that there will be few large vendors (with deep pockets) rushing to generously support the FSF/SFLC in this battle versus Microsoft.

Seems a slashdot reader has discovered a company using Free Software in their products without complying to the GPL. It seems they've even deliberately tried to hide those, wrapping them in dlls.

Hello to Tuesday's IT Blogwatch: in which the deadline looms for national standards bodies to vote on Microsoft's proposed "Open Office XML" ISO standard. Not to mention comparative lavatories...

IDG in Sweden is reporting the contents of a leaked Microsoft memo sent to Microsoft partners there, telling them to join the Swedish Institute of Standards and vote yes on OOXML.

"There is no question that all over the world the competing interests in the Open XML standardization process are going to use all tactics available to them within the rules." - Microsoft's Director of Corporate Standards Jason Matusow. Well, you have to hand it to Microsoft. They are nothing if not thorough, and leave as little to chance as possible.