The Open Source Industry of Australia (OSIA) has formally contacted Standards Australia, requesting that Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) format not be endorsed by the body as an ISO standard.

Microsoft's plans of having its OOXML document format accepted as a national standard were thwarted by the South African Bureau of Standards in a conclusive vote against the move in a meeting yesterday.

Just like the UK National Archives fell for the myth of better archival through MS-OOXML, which has been analysed in more depth in a recent followup article in the BBC Technology news, influential groups like Gartner have swallowed the converter claim hook, line and sinker.

The BBC wants to put its shows on the Web, and made a deal with Microsoft for the technology required to do that. (That’s the Tardis, from Dr. Who, one of many fine BBC programs.)
This has the BBC in political hot water. Boingboing says it’s a DRM issue, but the country’s Open Source Business Consortium has complained to the EC, calling it an attempt to cement Microsoft’s monopoly:

One thing I should state immediately is that I think that Ogg Vorbis is great: it's cool technology doing all the right things in the right way. So my doubts about this campaign have nothing to do with any weaknesses in Ogg. It's just that I wonder whether this is really something the free software world should be expending much energy on when there are other more pressing problems.